Zoe started whimpering louder, but Emily rocked her back and forth, swaying like she’d done when her nephews were tiny, and Zoe quieted down.
“I’m Emily,” Emily told the baby, even though she knew that at six months old, developmentally the baby had no idea what she was saying. Words didn’t have meanings yet. But she kept talking, knowing the sound of her voice could be soothing. “Some kids I know call me Auntie Em. You can, too, if you want.”
Zoe leaned over and started sucking on Emily’s shoulder.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” she said. “Well, I’ll get you that bottle as soon as we make it to the deli. I’ll order my sandwich—I think it’ll be an egg salad on rye with tomato—and while we wait for my lunch, I’ll give you yours. How does that sound?”
Zoe continued sucking on Emily’s shirt, and Emily could feel it getting saturated with baby drool. She laughed.
This is what it’ll be like, she thought. I’ll be covered in drool, and I won’t mind a bit.
* * *
—
As Emily sat in the deli feeding Zoe, waiting for her sandwich, a ballad she’d never heard before came on the radio, but the melody somehow felt familiar. So did the voice. She listened to the lyrics.
I build you a castle in my dreams
With towers
With turrets
With everything always how it seems
I thought my love for you would die
Would wither
Would fade
But it beats strong inside me still
So I build you that castle on a hill
A crystal castle on a hill
The artist sang, his baritone strong and full, with a rasp that gave it added warmth. It felt familiar but at the same time, new. With a jolt, Emily thought she recognized the singer, but then she wasn’t sure. So much time had passed. She hadn’t heard his voice in years.
There was so much emotion in the performance that Emily found herself blinking back tears. She felt ridiculous, crying in a deli because of a song on the radio, and quickly wiped her eyes with Zoe’s burp cloth.
“It’s just pregnancy hormones,” she told Zoe. “That’s all. That’s all it is.”
After burping Zoe, Emily slipped the sandwich into the diaper bag and walked back to her office. But she couldn’t get the song out of her head. It beats strong inside me still. So I build you that castle on a hill. A crystal castle on a hill. The melody was familiar. And that voice. With those lyrics. Could it really be him?
11
The next week, while Ezra was on call, Ari came over to help Emily go through the piles of stuff in the second bedroom. She walked into Emily and Ezra’s apartment with a hiking backpack, the one she’d carried on a family trip to the Grand Canyon the year before.
“Are you staying the night?” Emily asked when her sister came through the door.
“I wish,” Ari said. “I brought you all my maternity clothes.”
The women were just about the same size, Ari a little softer around the edges, not quite as muscular as her younger sister.
Emily unzipped the bag. At just shy of seven weeks pregnant, she wasn’t showing. Even Ezra couldn’t see the difference in her body. She could feel it, though.
“Did you vacuum-pack these or something?” Emily asked, pulling out what looked liked a compressed plastic-wrapped cube of clothing.
Ari nodded. “It saves so much space in the attic.”
Emily started laughing and Ari looked at her quizzically until she started laughing, too, realizing belatedly why someone might find vacuum-packed clothing funny. It was often like that with Ari. It took her a moment to get out of her own brain, to switch her point of view, but when she did, she could laugh at herself. Or understand why something she said might have been hurtful. Emily often wished Ari were able to do that before she said the hurtful thing, but at least she understood afterward.
Arielle sat down on the couch and started un-vacuum-packing the clothes so Emily could see what was there.
“Here,” Emily said, as she went into the kitchen. “I made parmesan monkey bread and tomato sauce.”
Her sister smiled at the dish. It was something their mom used to make, though as she got sicker, she needed their help to open the jars and eventually to roll the balls of dough in grated parmesan cheese. Now that she was pregnant, Emily found herself thinking about her mom even more often.
“She would’ve been so excited,” Ari said, pulling off a section of the bread to dip in sauce. Emily didn’t have to ask who she meant.
“I know,” she said. “There’s so much I wish I could ask her.”