Chapters (65)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Part Two
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Part Three
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- About the Publisher
I had a deposition scheduled. It wasn’t a big deal. Wouldn’t take more than a few hours. But Ruth nearly lost it when she called me at work. The deposition was on a break and I’d been standing near Pat’s desk when the call came in. Pat handed me the phone.
“Cally’s water has broken,” said Ruth, breathing heavily. I could feel her smiling, the joy in her voice. I asked Pat to transfer the call so I could talk in private.
“Where are you?” I asked, closing the door to my office.
“At home,” said Ruth, sounding panicked. “But I’m leaving . . . I’m going to pick up Cally . . . at her apartment and I—”
“Okay, slow down. Just breathe,” I said, as if Ruth were the one going into labor.
“I gotta go,” she said. “Can you meet me there?”
“When?” I asked, checking the small marble clock on my desk.
“Now!” she said, as if that were obvious.
“Well, not now, obviously,” I said.
“Why not?” Ruth had that demanding tone in her voice that I dislike, but I understood this was a big day.
“I’m in the middle of a depo, for one thing.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, the longest bit of silence in this conversation by far. She exhaled, breathing hard into the phone and not in a sexy way. Finally, she said, “I wish you wouldn’t have done that.”
“What, Poppy?”
“Scheduled a stupid deposition this close to the due date!”
I swiveled my chair to look out the window. The sky was blue, and the ground was covered in thick snow, narrow lanes plowed for cars on the streets, heaps piled high on the edges of sidewalks and corners of parking lots. The sun was out, but it was twenty degrees. “I understand,” I said. “It will only take another hour or so, and then I can be there. At the hospital. With you. Okay?”
“I just want you to be as excited about this as I am.”
I pressed the receiver tightly to my ear, bringing Ruth as close as I could. “I am excited. Of course I’m excited. I just, you know, I’ve been through it before.”
Ruth scoffed and I knew to be careful with this. She hated that I’d had experience with childbirth and she hadn’t. “I know,” she said.