She waved off the significance of this with both hands. “A hired hand could do that. I’m talking about inside. I never felt that hunger to be a mother, that gnawing hunger so many women talk about. I always assumed I’d have a child at some point, but it wasn’t with any urgency. If anything, it was with resignation, the way you assume you’ll probably have your wisdom teeth extracted at some point.” She looked off toward the water where two little girls were digging in the sand at the edge of the waves. The sun was beginning to set and the sky along the horizon had started to turn pale green and pink, like an unripe tomato with a faint blush of color. The wind had picked up some since he’d come out of the water, and Desmond could feel the fine white sand blowing against his ankles. He didn’t know how to respond to any of this; talk about parenthood had a vague, intangible quality to him, like listening to people talk about their vacations in places he had no particular interest in visiting.

“It’s not something you can talk about with anyone,” she went on. “I suspect Rosemary feels the same way about children, but I’d never talk about it with her. Nothing’s considered more hateful in a woman han not wanting to bear children. Even women who abandon or abuse their kids are regarded with less suspicion, since they at least had them in the first place and there’s always the chance they can be reformed.”

“You had Gerald,” he reminded her.

She shook her head slowly, back and forth, her tight new curls unmoving. “Almost from the day he was born, he was a completely independent person. I’d look down at him in his crib and he’d be staring at me with this indignant look in his eyes, as if he was saying: ‘What do you want?’ It must have been a response to something I was doing without even knowing it.”

“Everyone probably feels that way at some point.”

“They dont, that’s the odd part. I used to meet with a group of new mothers to talk about feeding and sleeping and trying to fit motherhood into our lives. After a month, I had to drop out. I couldn’t understand half of what they were saying, and it made me feel as if I wasn’t a real mother. Worst of all, that I wasn’t a real woman.” She paused. “I’m sure none of this makes sense to you.”