His question sends a chill of unease through me, and makes me wonder if he’s toying with me. He must sense that I’m thinking this. “I’m not saying right now, of course,” he continues. “But someday, I’d love to make you pregnant. Can I say that?”

“It depends. Do you mean it in a macho, spread-your-seed sort of way?”

“Of course not!” He laughs. “In an ‘I would love to have a baby with you’ way. I keep imaging you with Simoné.” His three-year-old son. “Seeing the way you are with me, I think you’d be such a great mother.”

Part of the reason for treatment was fear that I was becoming like mine. It had already started happening, me using Anna’s faults as ammunition. My mother had taught me that trick. Once, Anna dropped a wineglass on my kitchen floor and I lost control. I screamed at her, insulted her, and stopped myself just before calling her absentminded and unfocused, her weaknesses, and using them against her for extra impact. Afterward, I stood in front of her breathing heavily as she stared back at me, stunned and afraid of what I’d just done. I’ve always wanted kids, but the risk of becoming my mother was too high to ignore.

“It would be great to have a daughter,” Matías says. “I’d want her to be just like you.”

In bed that night, he places his hands on my cheeks, looks me in the eye, and tells me he loves me. I immediately push his hands away and turn my head. “Don’t say that,” I tell him.

“Why not?” he asks. “Don’t you feel the same?”

“I mean, don’t say it that way, right now.” I know that I need this from him—love—but I also need it to be real this time, and not an outcome of passion, or jealousy, or control. I need it to just be.

•

A week later, Matías and I are asleep when the phone in his hotel room rings. We both jump up immediately. I look to the clock on the nightstand and see that it’s three a.m.

He picks up the phone and hunches over it. I can hear the faint murmur of a voice on the other end. I caress his back, but he doesn’t seem to notice. I draw my hand away, feeling strangely afraid.

“What?” he says, cupping the receiver. “Of course, I do.”

He mutters a few more innocuous words before hanging up. He then lies back down and tosses his arm over me like nothing happened. I scoot out from underneath it and turn to face him. “Who the hell was that?” I ask.

“Oh,” he says, as though he’d already forgotten about the call, “it was just Claire.”