Love Stories in This Town. Amanda Eyre Ward

next five minutes? Neither Joe nor Sally knew whether we should raise our price or not. “They could have a lowball offer,” said Sally. She added, “Or they could have a higher offer.” She took a bite of her bagel. “Yum,” she said.

      Greg had done some calculations on his laptop (he loved Excel spreadsheets) and concluded the house was worth less than the asking price. We decided to hold firm, and headed out with a list of addresses, waiting nervously for Sally’s phone to ring. “Might as well keep looking, just in case,” said Sally. The flight back to our rental apartment and my dogeared copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting was at 4 P.M.

      On Scullers Cove Court, we entered an airless house where someone collected Hummel figurines. “This would be a great house for an older couple with no kids,” mused Sally. She stood in the hallway, telling us about Girly, and how she didn’t like tummy time, but how Sally had to make her do her tummy time. It was so stressful, said Sally.

      Back in the minivan, we parked outside another (gigantic) house. “Whoops!” said Sally. “Y’all? It looks like I locked my purse inside that other house? And my phone’s in it, and my Palm. And it’s locked, oh, whoops! And we can’t look at any other houses, cause my realtor key is also—”

      “In your purse,” Greg finished.

      Sally thought fast. “How about I drop y’all off for a nice lunch?” she suggested. “And I’ll go get all this worked out? And y’all can have a real nice lunch?”

      “It’s ten-thirty,” I said. “I don’t want lunch. Our flight leaves in a few hours!” I was a wreck, admittedly.

      “Oh, whoops,” commented Sally.

      At the hotel concierge desk, Sally made some calls. Greg stared at his nice new shoes. The night before, we had made each other crack up by saying, “Diet Dr Pepper!” and “Girly!” Now, nothing seemed so hilarious.

      Sally finished her whispered calls and approached, looking a little less spry. Again, she made the case for an early lunch.

      “What about the house?” said Greg loudly.

      “Oh, right,” said Sally. “I did talk to Joe. We lost the house. But how about I run get my keys, and…a nice, you know, lunch?”

      I listened vaguely as Greg discussed the situation further, learning that we had been outbid, and it was over, though we could make a backup offer. When the calls were made and what phones worked and where various keys ended up, we were too exhausted to clarify. I would never stand in that beautiful kitchen, eating an ice-cream sandwich in my bathing suit.

      I went upstairs and changed my Maxi Pad and swallowed my pills. I took off my oversize sunglasses and lay down. Reflexively, I put my hands on my stomach, but then remembered, and let them fall open.

      We spent a long afternoon looking at other homes. We tried to convince ourselves that a too-small house with a crazy water feature was even better, all things considered, but as Sally dropped us off at the airport, a sinking feeling was already settling in.

      “Don’t forget,” said Sally, as I climbed from the van, “the perfect home is out there.”

      “Okay,” I said. Four days before, a technician had moved her wand on my skin and looked at an image on the screen. The doctor was sure everything was fine. The ultrasound was just a precaution. Greg told me he could see the baby’s face—its eyes—but when the doctor explained that the baby had never grown more than a few weeks old, that it had no head, and no heart, Greg said he must have been wrong.

      In two weeks, my baby, the mass of cells, would be analyzed and we would be told it was tetraploidy. The doctor wrote something on her rectangular pad, then handed it to me. The paper read, “Tetraploidy. 92, XX, YY.”

      “Any questions?” asked the doctor.

      I knew that to Greg, these symbols would mean something, bloom into a narrative. To me, they were cruel and unfathomable. “But why?” I said. “What did I do?”

      She sighed, and said, “Nothing, Kimberly. It had absolutely nothing to do with you. It’s just…the way things work out sometimes.” She scribbled again, handing me a prescription for Prozac. When I got back to our apartment, I put both sheets of paper in my underwear drawer.

      Outside the Houston airport, Greg waited, holding our bags. He stood, broad shoulders a little slumped, and watched me. I remembered the sweet shock I’d felt when I’d first seen him, in the audience of my graduation fashion show. Most of my classmates, like Greg’s sister, presented glamorous gowns, but I designed coats for little girls, swinging cape-style coats made of wool and fastened with vintage toggles. I knitted matching scarves and mittens. I’d worn only plastic parkas growing up—my designs came from my imagination, and a picture I’d seen once of a Parisian schoolgirl, standing in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Though the SCAD store had wanted to buy my whole collection, I saved one red coat, one scarf, one set of mittens.

      “Have a safe trip home,” said Sally.

      “Okay,” I said. I walked to my husband, and he folded me inside his arms. I wanted to say something, to fix something. He looked so young, and so bewildered.

      “I can’t believe it,” I said. “It happened so fast.”

      “There will be another,” he said.

      We looked at each other. There would be another, there would. But I wanted the one that was gone.

       On Messalonskee Lake

      ONE

      A woman had drowned in the lake, but that did not make it any less picturesque. We hadn’t known her, after all; I had never met her, and my husband, Bill, was a boy when she died. She was Bill’s aunt Renée, married to his father’s brother, Gerry. She played the violin. This was all I could get out of my husband during our drive up I-95.

      “So she fell out of the boat?” I said, waddling into the cabin, which smelled of either pine, Pine-Sol, or both.

      “Yeah,” said Bill.

      “When was this?”

      “A while ago,” said Bill. “I told you, I was just a kid.”

      “Jesus,” I said.

      “We need some air,” said Bill. He was wandering around, opening doors and windows.

      “Who falls out of a boat?” I said. “It’s very sad.”

      My husband approached. He tried to take me in his arms, but I barely fit. “Here,” I said, pressing his palm to my stomach. His fingers were warm, and I leaned into him.

      “What?” he said, into my hair. He moved his thumb along my neck softly; I kissed him.

      “I think it’s hiccuping,” I said. There was a bubbling sensation inside me, not the kicks I had come to know, but something lighter.

      “Maybe it’s laughing,” said my husband.

      When we realized we would never be alone again, Bill and I had decided on a romantic week at his family’s Maine cabin. He had spent his childhood at Camp Snow Island, and I knew he wanted to move back and run it someday. Unless I was hit by a bus or got trigger toe, I wasn’t leaving the Boston Ballet, but I was happy to spend a week in the wilderness.

      I asked for an economy car when I called Thrifty Rental, but when we took our key into the parking lot, there was a PT Cruiser in Slot A-8. “No,” said Bill, when he saw it.

      “I think it’s cute,” I said.

      “You cannot drive a PT Cruiser to Belgrade Lakes,” said my husband. “You can’t step out of that car and buy bait.”

      “I’ll buy the bait,” I said.