Priya looked up at her. “Both,” she said. “But truly, once I had Anika, once she got older, I stopped thinking about it as much.”
She picked up her coffee cup from the table in front of the couch and took a sip.
“Thank you for telling me,” Emily said.
“I do still think, sometimes, about how old that child would be now and whether—” There was a commotion outside in the waiting area, students coming in, saying hello, taking granola bars. Priya looked at her watch. “Maybe a conversation for another time?” she said. “We both have patients soon, and I should go, but please come talk to me whenever you need to. I think one of the hardest things was how taboo the subject seemed to be. How it seemed shameful to share my pain. So . . . come talk if you need to. You’re not alone.”
“Thank you,” Emily said, her eyes tearing up again.
She and Priya hugged, and then Emily locked her emotions away so she could talk to her first patient of the morning. Shower, Get Dressed, Eat Breakfast, Go to Work. Four down, five to go. And she’d see Ezra, and they’d talk and fix things and everything would be better. She could handle it. She could handle it all.
xxii
That fall, I went back to school with a renewed purpose. I wanted to be a therapist. I wanted to help people the way Dr. West was helping me. I thought maybe if I did, everything that happened would make sense. It would be like my mom said—things happen the way they’re supposed to, and I was supposed to help people. It felt good to think that way.
28
Tessa came into Emily’s office that afternoon.
“How’s it going?” Emily asked her.
Tessa closed her eyes briefly before opening them again. “How often do you think is too often to leave your kid with a babysitter?”
“Do you think you’re leaving Zoe with a babysitter too often?” Emily asked back.
Tessa shrugged. “Chris and I hadn’t been going out at all, as a couple, you know. And I thought maybe if I went out with him more on the weekends, it might be good for us. But the stuff he’s doing—day drinking at a ball game, going out with his coworkers to a rooftop bar—it’s not stuff we can bring Zoe to, or we could, but it would change the vibe and we’d probably have to leave early and Chris would hate that, or he’d tell me to leave with her and he’d stay, and I didn’t want that, either. So now she’s with a babysitter for at least some part of every day. And I feel like I’m . . . I’m choosing Chris over her. Is that terrible? Am I terrible?”
Emily felt a surge of envy and reminded herself to take a deep breath. “I think Chris is pressuring you to make a choice that puts you in a terrible position.” She tried to keep her own feelings neutral. She wanted to help Tessa, she felt for Tessa. But she was also, she realized, jealous of Tessa, whose body had produced a beautiful baby girl without even trying. “Have you talked to Chris about any of this?”
Tessa nodded. “Sort of. I tried hinting once that maybe he could come home earlier and be with her while I’m studying—I wouldn’t feel quite so bad that way—and his suggestion was that we ask one of our moms to keep Tessa until I finished school.”
“How did that make you feel?” Emily asked, keeping her face unreadable, even though it felt like a vise was squeezing her heart. Having this conversation with Tessa right now seemed almost cruel.
Tessa pulled the tips of her hair in front of her eyes, examining her split ends. “Like he doesn’t really care if she’s around. Or maybe worse, doesn’t actually want her around. He said it’s not true, just that he wants things to be easier for me, but I don’t know. It’s not like she’s a box of sweaters we can leave in my mom’s basement. She’s an actual person, our baby, and it would change her relationship with us if we asked one of our moms to take care of her until May. But I don’t want to dismiss his ideas, either.” She looked up at Emily. “What do you think?”
Emily smiled slightly, sadly, but didn’t say anything. There was a brief silence in the room until: “You want me to figure out what I think,” Tessa said.
“You got me,” Emily answered. She was glad she’d been able to keep her voice steady when saying that, because all she could think about was the unfairness of it all. That she and Ezra had everything they needed to take care of a baby and they didn’t have one, and then here was Tessa whose boyfriend was making it clear that they weren’t ready for a baby, and perhaps didn’t even really want one but had one regardless.