She blinks a few times. “What do you mean?”

“I understand you respect Abby and want her to have a baby,” he says, “but if you don’t mind my saying so, you seem very eager to make this happen. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

I kick my husband’s leg under the table. “Sam…”

“No, I think it’s a fair question.” He doesn’t take his gaze off Monica’s face. “Don’t you, Monica?”

Her eyes dart briefly in my direction, then she nods. “Yes, it’s a fair question.”

The waiter comes by at this moment to drop off our drinks. Water for Sam and Monica, wine for me. I take a big gulp.

“Dr. Adler, Abby tells me you’re a math professor,” Monica says.

He hesitates, then nods.

“So I’m assuming you like math a lot,” she adds.

“Yes,” he agrees.

I snort. That’s an understatement.

“So say you finished college and you weren’t allowed to keep going to school to learn math.” She takes a sip of her water. “And the cost of going to school to learn more math was more than you could ever hope to save in a reasonable amount of time. What then?”

“I’d take out loans.”

“Well, what if your loan payments were already more than your rent?”

Sam is quiet for a moment. “There’s always a way.”

“Right.” Her eyes meet his. “There’s always a way.”

He frowns at her. He picks up the straw in his water glass and stirs the ice cubes around the glass. After a minute of silence, he picks up his pen again. “So when is the last time you’ve had a physical exam?”

I smile to myself. Monica may not realize it, but she’s swayed him. We’re that much closer to getting our baby.

Chapter 7

“On a scale of one to ten,” Shelley says, “how much do you hate Denise?”

“Twelve,” I say.

“Might I remind you, this is a scale of one to ten.”

“A hundred.”

“I feel like you’re not taking the parameters of this question seriously.”

I signal to the waiter that we’re ready to order. We can’t spend very long at lunch today because Denise saw us walking out. And asked very pointedly where we were going. And when Shelley replied “to lunch,” she looked aghast. I don’t know if I’ve ever used the word “aghast” before, but the expression on Denise’s face when we informed her we’d be leaving the premises to eat lunch was a perfect personification of the word “aghast.”

The waiter approaches our table carrying a wine glass filled with dark red liquid and places it down in front of me. I suppress an urge to roll my eyes—poor service is something I have a low tolerance for.

“I didn’t order that,” I inform our waiter.