Then Came You

looked at me, her cheeks rosy, eyes clear. It was true, I thought, what they said about pregnant women. Annie was glowing. “Do you have time to look around a little when we’re done? Did you see the china on our way in here?”

“Are you in the market?”

“For that? No. But I like the way they’re set up. It’s like a museum.”

“Sure,” I said, thinking again how much I liked her. She was friendly and nervous and eager to please; not dumb, even if she had only a high-school degree and was completely lacking in fashion sense. I wanted to show her things: the rooms that Kelly Wearstler had designed to display the store’s wares, the shabby-chic cracked leather couches and how they set off the delicate Limoges china. I could take her for tea at the Pierre, where I took my assistant every December, as a holiday treat; I could even bring her to see the apartment, put up her feet and take in the view.

“How are the boys?” I asked, after I’d ordered fruit and she’d asked for apple cobbler. When she reached into her purse for her phone pictures I knew she’d have, I saw a sippy cup, the box for a Dan Zanes CD, a wallet bulging with change and receipts, and I recognized her, the way it felt like that performance artist had once recognized me, like I could see who she really was; everything she wanted, everything she dreamed of. At that moment I felt like I could be a sort of fairy godmother, not just an employer but a friend. I could make her dreams come true the way I’d wanted someone to make my own dreams come true. . the way I’d wanted my mother to come back, to take me out of that cold and cheerless house in Toledo and take me to California, land of golden sand and lemon trees and men who’d play their guitars on the beach.

Annie looked startled when I reached across the table and squeezed her hand, but she squeezed back gamely, smiling at me. “You must be so excited,” she said. “This must feel like it’s taking forever.”

“I can wait,” I told her. I’d waited for love, I’d waited for Marcus, and I could wait until May for the arrival of the baby who would serve as living, breathing, evidence of our love; the baby who would make us complete.

JULES

A fact I have learned as I’ve moved further away from childhood: if the telephone rings before seven a.m., it’s never good news.

In the predawn gray on a Thursday morning in October, the buzzing of my BlackBerry jolted me awake. Rajit, I thought, rolling over with my eyes still shut. I’d been in the office until eleven the night before, working on the common stock comparison for a footwear factory that one of our clients in Kansas was planning to acquire, and rather than bothering Kimmie, who went to bed at ten, I spent a rare night at home. Rajit had probably forgotten his passwords again (after being up all night doing cocaine, I suspected) and was calling me to get them.

I saw a Pittsburgh area code — not Rajit, then — and pressed the button that would connect the call. “Hello?”

I half expected I’d hear my father’s voice, but instead, there was a stranger on the other end of the line, a woman who sounded young and unsure of herself. “Is this Julia Strauss?”

I sat up, my mouth suddenly dry and my heart beating too loudly. “Yes.”

“This is Sergeant Potts with the Pittsburgh Police Department.” I knew then, before she had to say another word. “Your mother gave me your contact information. I’m calling about your father. I’m afraid I have bad news.”

“Is he…” I swallowed hard, my throat clicking. “Is he in trouble? Did he get arrested? Does he need…”

“We got a nine-one-one call this morning, just after five a.m. Your father’s girlfriend had found him unresponsive. The para-medics made attempts to resuscitate him, but…”

But.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you,” said Sergeant Potts, “your father is dead.”

I closed my eyes, holding perfectly still, like maybe if I didn’t move I could unhear what I’d just heard. Outside my door, my roommates were stirring around me, getting ready to start a normal day, Amanda plodding into the kitchen to make coffee, Wendy flushing the toilet and turning on the shower. “Ma’am?” the police officer said.

“How did it happen?”

“The investigation isn’t complete,” she said. “We’re still talking to people. Gathering evidence.”

“Were there drugs involved?”

Sergeant Potts paused.

“My dad was in rehab this summer,” I said. “He was in a halfway house for six weeks after that. He was going to meetings. I thought. .” My voice caught in my throat. I thought he’d get clean. I thought he’d be grateful. I thought my sacrifice would have meant something.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.

“Yeah,” I told her. “Yeah, I’m sorry, too.”

I left Rajit a message, telling him there’d been a death in my family and that I’d need the rest of the week off. I pulled my laptop out from under the bed, turned my back to the door, and called my mother. “Oh, honey,” she said. “Oh, no.” I could picture her, in her blue robe, her hair in a ponytail, coffee mug in her hand, pitying me and Greg, of course, but maybe feeling relieved, too, glad that this was over, that he wouldn’t be in the newspapers again, that he wouldn’t embarrass us anymore.

“Sweetheart, there’s nothing more you could have done,” she said. “I hope you know that.”

But it hadn’t mattered. Nothing I’d done had mattered. I bit back my tears. I had arrangements to make, plane tickets to book, a funeral to plan. “Do you know anything about what he’d want?” I asked.

She sighed. “Probably the veterans’ cemetery. That was what he always said.”

I told her I’d call her once I’d bought my ticket. She said she loved me and that she’d see me soon. Then, because I couldn’t think of what else to do, I went to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. “Jules, you’re gonna be late!” Amanda sang toward the door. Amanda was an actress, which meant, these days, that she was mostly a caterer.

“I think I’m sick,” I said. My voice was convincingly froggy, which would spare me the trouble of telling them what had happened. I’d have to do it eventually, have to endure their sympathy and come up with some story about my father’s death, but not yet. I made sure the door was locked, picked up my phone, and called Kimmie.

“Hey!” I could hear noise around her. She was in the subway station, I figured. On her way to the lab, with her backpack bouncing on her narrow shoulders, sneakers neatly laced. Something inside of me shifted, and I felt almost faint with longing. I wanted so badly for her to be with me.

“Hey!” came Kimmie’s voice again, bright and almost jubilant. “Jules, is that you, or are you pocket- dialing?”

“It’s me,” I managed. One tear rolled down my cheek and plopped onto my shirt, leaving a damp circle. “My father died.”

“Oh,” Kimmie said. “Hang on. I’ll be right there.”

I packed up my makeup bag, my toothbrush, my comb. From my free-standing wardrobe, I extracted a black skirt and gray blouse, an outfit that always made Rajit, wit that he was, tell me I looked like I was on my way to a funeral. Black pumps, a bra, and a few pairs of panties. I had other stuff, sweatpants and Tshirts and pajamas, at my mother’s place.

My BlackBerry lay on my rumpled bedspread, blinking, probably already filling up with messages from work. I ignored it, pulling on jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, yanking on socks and my running shoes and shoving everything into a duffel bag.

Forty minutes later Kimmie was at the door, with a to-go cup and a cinnamon roll in wax paper. She shooed me into the kitchen, which was blessedly roommate-free, and handed me the cup. “What can I do?” she asked. “How can I help?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I was collapsed at the table for two wedged into what the real-estate agent had optimistically referred to as a “breakfast nook.” Part of me had known this day would come… but, even so, I’d done