How to Love

on our doorstep. Lydia brings changes of clothes. Hannah comes down with a summer cold that keeps us up nights and turns me, for all intents and purposes, into an extra from a movie about the zombie apocalypse; Sawyer turns up at the hospital to take her off my hands for twenty-four hours, hands me a Tupperware container full of risotto I can tell he’s made himself.

“I owed you dinner,” he tells me, hitching the baby up on his hip.

“You owe me more than dinner,” I tell him, but there’s no real heat behind it. I grab his free hand, squeeze a little in spite of myself. “Thanks.”

Sawyer smiles. “You’re welcome.”

We don’t talk much, my family. Cade paces. I read magazines. Soledad prays. She’s stopped eating almost entirely; I think of Jesus in the desert, fighting his demons for forty days.

“About the thing,” she says suddenly, one night when I come to relieve her. She’s watching Leno with heavy-lidded eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that to you. I shouldn’t have told you to think. I know you think.”

“It’s fine.” I shrug. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, though.”

“Yeah,” I say eventually. “I guess it does.” I hold up a bag of takeout and think of how Cade and I used to beat the crap out of each other as kids and then move on a minute later as soon as something more important came up, like nothing had even happened. Maybe that’s just how families work. “I brought you food. Drive-thru was the only place open.”

“Thanks, sweetheart.” She sighs. “Sawyer has the baby?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“He doesn’t do a bad job with her,” she says. “I have to hand him that.”

I think of Seattle, of rainy woods and coffee on cloudy mornings. I think of the desert and hot, arid air. I think of the middle of this country, the endless rolling green of it, and I want so badly, badly, badly to get out of this place.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “You really do.”

* * *

On the way home the next morning, I stop by Target and pick up a road atlas of the continental United States.

Just to see.

* * *

Hannah and I are splitting a PBJ in the kitchen when the bell rings—not once, but five or six times in a row, incessant. I pad barefoot through the living room with the baby on my hip and fling it open: There’s Shelby on the other side of the door, wearing a Ms. Pac-Man T-shirt and a scowl, holding a big glass tray of marbled brownies. “I made these,” she says curtly, thrusting them at me. “Eat them or don’t.”

I reach my free hand out like a reflex, barely catching the tray before it crashes to the tiles. With everything that’s been going on around here, our paths haven’t crossed in a couple of weeks. “Thanks,” I tell her, a little shocked; then, trying for a smile: “Did you poison them?”

Shelby’s eyes narrow. “I should have,” she huffs. She squares her shoulders, muscles past me into the house. “I told you I wasn’t going to be shitty as long as you weren’t shitty,” she announces, flouncing onto the couch. “Well, you were shitty. But I’m gonna be cool.”

I blink, not totally understanding, resting the tray of brownies on top of the TV. “Really?”

“Yes, really.” She still looks annoyed, but she holds her arms out for the baby, waits for me to hand her over and cuddles her in the crook of her freckly arm. Hannah babbles her giddy pleasure—she loves Shelby, always has. Shelby traces her thumb over Hannah’s downy ear. “I feel like maybe you haven’t had a whole lot of breaks. So I’m giving you one.”

Right away I feel a lump rise up in my throat. My hands flutter sort of helplessly at my sides. “You always give me breaks,” I manage, voice cracking a little bit—and I don’t deserve her, I don’t, somebody as fierce as Shelby to help me fight my wars. “You’re my best friend.”

Shelby cocks her head to the side, wrinkles up the edges of her mouth like maybe she’s worried I’m going to get her started, too. “Oh, stop it,” she orders gruffly, but then: “You’re my best friend, too.”

Well, that does it. I’m crying for real when I sit down on the sofa, everything so painfully close to the surface all the time. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, almost too far gone to get the words out. “I didn’t mean to mess with your brother. I didn’t mean to screw everything up.”

Shelby slides an arm around my shoulders so she’s holding me and Hannah both. “I know,” she tells me, her ginger temple bumping softly against mine. “I’m sorry, too. I should have come over here right away, when your dad got sick. That was really shitty of me.”

“I thought you were going to hate me forever,” I tell her, and realize that it’s true: I thought for sure our friendship had gone the way of mine and Allie’s, that I’d lost her for good and would never be able to find a way back. I’m so hugely relieved that she’s here.

Shelby smiles. “I could never hate you, dummy,” she tells me. “I love you too much for that.” She sighs a little, squeezes. Waits for me to quiet down. “Shh, Reena. You’re okay.” She says it again a minute later, just quiet: “You’re okay,” she promises softly, and there’s something in her voice to make me believe.

48

Before

I sat on the floor of Shelby’s bathroom for a long time, forehead on the edge of the tub, not talking. The porcelain felt cold and clean against my skin. Shelby leaned her back on the door, cross-legged and patient, dragging the edge of the cardboard box beneath her nail. I could hear her mother moving around in the kitchen, making dinner and singing along to the radio, the sound of life spinning on.

I was pregnant.

Me.

“Jesus Christ, Shelby,” I finally whispered, bracing my hands on the tub and looking up. My head, as I lifted it, felt heavy enough to snap off my neck entirely. I wished for a swamp to swallow me. I wished for my mom. “What am I going to do?”

I had to tell Soledad.

I had to tell my father.

I had to tell—

Oh God.

I splashed some water on my face and drove south down 95, toward Sawyer and the crumbling stucco house. It was past twilight, palm trees silhouetted gray and graceful against the darkening sky. I sped. I sped a lot, actually, and also I was crying again, and when I made the left turn onto Powerline Road I came within centimeters of smashing into a canary-yellow pickup truck and very nearly killed myself.

I very nearly killed myself and my kid.

The blaring horn faded in the distance and I pulled over as soon as I could, two hands shaking on the wheel. I thought of Allie and near misses, wondered why on earth things happen the way they do. I missed her more than I ever had, if that was possible. My breath came in crazy gulping sobs.

“Congratulations,” I said suddenly, talking to her like she was sitting in the passenger seat beside me, feet up on the dashboard and singing along to the radio, her head thrown back to laugh loud and hard. I’d never done that before, not in all the months she’d been gone. “You were right. I couldn’t handle it. I can’t handle it, and it just—it would have been great of you to stick the hell around and help me out.”

Cars whizzed by on the avenue. Allie didn’t reply.

Finally I pulled it together enough to make it the rest of the way to Sawyer’s, gliding silently up to the curb across the street. I shut off the engine and got out, flip-flops sinking into the dry, brittle grass. The remains of two broken beer bottles were scattered on the pavement, green and sharp.

I had a long stare at the low, sprawling house: It looked worse than I’d remembered, dirty aluminum