“Don’t be afraid. It will.”

Reema went for a jog one early morning along Boathouse Row to clear her mind. Two of the boating clubs were out on the water, pulling their oars back and forth in synchronous movements, cutting through the water gracefully but powerfully. They moved as one unit, not one person disturbing the quiet rhythm they had generated together. She kept her eyes on them until they went under the bridge and then out of sight.

She hadn’t been jogging in several months, not since her dissertation research had begun in earnest. Her endurance had certainly suffered from a lack of practice, as now she found herself panting from having completed a small hill, one that she had, in the past, accomplished without having noticed the incline of the road.

Her slower pace allowed her ample time to think, to remember her dilemma. “My mother is right,” Nadia had told her that night in her apartment. “George is an only son, and his parents would not let him marry me, knowing the situation.”

“But don’t you think he should know about it? He doesn’t have a clue why you stopped talking to him.”

She shrugged. “He’ll forget me eventually. Besides how could I put him in that situation? I know he loves children.”

Reema was struck by Nadia’s woeful tone, but also by her sense of righteousness. She truly believed she was somehow saving George from a lifetime of sorrow by pushing him away, by ending it.

“What does that mean then?” she’d asked her. “Do you think you somehow don’t ‘deserve’ to be married to someone you love because you might have troubling having children?”

Nadia had only shrugged, and Reema had suddenly been struck by a painful thought—“She really doesn’t care about herself at all.”

“Nadia, he loves you.”

“Reema,” she had said wearily. “I don’t know what else to say to you. I wish I hadn’t said anything at all. It’s over, and I’ll be fine—don’t worry. We can’t change anything.”

Reema turned and headed back toward the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the way she had come, to return to her apartment. As she ran, forcing herself to push off her heel smoothly into the next step, she felt her breath coming back, filling her lungs, and the old exuberance she used to have as an undergraduate, when she ran every other day with her customary “long run” on Sundays.

To her right, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the rowing team returning across the river. This time she stopped, moved off to the side, and shielded her eyes from the sun to observe them more closely. Their arms were once again in unison, sweeping the oars back and forth, the water parting before them obediently. They were powerful, majestic, and beautiful to see.