Sam walks into the apartment in the middle of that sentence. I’m not sure how much of my little tirade he heard, but his brown eyes go wide. Enough, I guess.

“Okay,” the girl says softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Good,” I say. And then I slam down the receiver.

That’s the best part about having a landline. You can slam it down. You don’t get the joy of slamming a phone down when you’re on a cell phone. What can you do—press “end call” really angrily?

Sam runs a hand through his hair, but does the thing he always does where he stops midway through his scalp so that his hair stands up straight. “Uh, who was that?”

“One of your students.”

His mouth falls open. “You talked that way to my student?”

“Yep.”

I stare at him, daring him to scold me further. I don’t want to fight with Sam right now, but I will. It would be only too easy.

But he doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he crosses the room and plops down next to me on the sofa. He reaches for my hand, and just like that, all the anger drains out of me. And all that’s left is sadness. And emptiness.

I can’t believe we’re not going to have our baby. I wanted it so badly. More than words can express.

Ironically, it was Sam who initially pushed for us to have a child while I resisted. Not that I didn’t want children—I definitely did, but not until I was at least thirty-four, when my career was on solid footing. Denise had ranted long and hard about what motherhood would do to my prospects at Stewart, and it had left an imprint. I wanted to wait. Thirty-five, I told Sam when we got married. Maybe thirty-four, depending on how things are going.

Sam felt differently about it. His own father had been forty when he was born and then died suddenly of a heart attack when he was in high school. His dad never got to see him graduate high school or college, never got to see him become a professor, never got to be at his wedding. Although he’s in much better physical condition than his father ever was, Sam was terrified of being an “old dad” and missing out on large chunks of his children’s lives.

“I don’t want to die when my kids are still in school,” he said, his voice breaking.

So right after we got married, he started gently pushing for us to try for a baby. I was only twenty-seven at the time and it felt inconceivable. But when Sam hit thirty, his pleas became more insistent. And then Shelley and Rick decided to start trying, so I finally gave in.