I pushed my pelvis up against his, just to keep his mind whirling and defenses down. “I can’t stop thinking about Amelia and Fritz. I’m worried about them.”

He kissed my cheek. “I think they’re doing pretty well.”

“Yes?”

“I spoke to Fritz yesterday,” he said.

“And?”

“It looks like that baby … the baby they want to adopt…” He traced his finger over the outline of my mouth.

“Yes?”

“It’s going to happen. He said it’s going to happen.”

I focused on my breath, low in my body. Shallow, high breathing leads to anxiety and vice versa. “Wow. Is he happy?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“But he’s going along with it?”

“He thinks it’s too late to turn back because Amelia’s frantic. He thinks that she’d lose her mind if he stopped her.”

I rolled off Ian and lay next to him, my head on his shoulder, until he fell asleep. I looked at his digital clock periodically throughout the night, almost every hour, and counted the minutes until I could go home. Ian slept soundly.

The next day, I had a genuine excuse to leave—an early-morning job shooting newborn twins. He insisted on making me a cappuccino with his shiny red Nespresso machine. Before I left, we confirmed our date for the following week. I couldn’t risk losing momentum.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was the week of March 21. I had a sinking sensation every morning when I woke up and looked at my phone. I was hoping for a message from Amelia, but received none. It was almost two weeks since I’d seen the Straubs. I feared that I’d lost my place in their life. I’d had a growing conviction that Amelia was attached to me. And then there was the shattering episode with Lucia, and the fear that she was going to replace me.

I gathered that I’d handled certain things poorly. Maybe Amelia felt that I hadn’t been helpful in facilitating the adoption. Amelia and I were very close, as long as the ground rules were understood: We were both working on making her life better. Her life was the one we were focusing on. I didn’t mind that aspect of our relationship. In fact, the ground rules usually served me well, since scrutiny of my own life wasn’t an option.