She responded immediately, “No. Why?”
If she didn’t know yet, there was no point in worrying her. Oh, God. What if that man was Tom? What if it was Adam? Could any of them possibly have survived? I couldn’t breathe. Even still, I managed to type back, “No reason. Just wondering.”
I leaned over and put my head between my legs. Mom rubbed my back. “Sloane, it’s going to be OK,” Caroline said. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
But it wasn’t going to be OK. It could never be OK. Earlier that night, I had felt like I could do it alone, like I could make this work. But now, when I finally feared that the worst had happened and my nightmares had come true, I felt more hopeless, lost, and terrified than I ever had before. And I couldn’t begin to imagine how I might face this world without the man who had changed mine completely.
IT TOOK MONTHS FOR Adam to forgive me after I told him I didn’t want kids. But we had worked through what still remains the biggest test of our marriage. It hadn’t been easy, and there had been so many times I thought it might go another way. But, in the end, Adam decided he loved me more than he loved his future, unborn children. He had committed his life to me—and that meant he owed it to me to try to work it out, no matter how badly I had screwed up.
When I look back on it now, I can see that the issue wasn’t ever that I didn’t want to have children. It was just that after what I had endured, I had so many layers of fear and terror to pull back and so many years of trauma to work through. Marrying Adam and realizing it hadn’t been scary, but, instead, had been wholly wonderful, was a huge part of my healing process.
But the pivotal moment of change didn’t have anything to do with Adam. Emerson, Caroline, James, Vivi, Adam, and I were in Peachtree visiting Mom. We set aside a full week every summer to be together, and although we certainly saw each other plenty throughout the rest of the year, I always looked forward to it.
Only, this year, I knew things were going to be different. I had received a phone call from James earlier in the week, which was kind of odd. I was scared something was wrong, so I ran out of the gift shop where I was working, saying, “I’m so sorry. I have to take this.”
“Sloane,” he had said, his Northern accent a bit of a shock after being surrounded by so many Southern voices. “I think I may need your help.”
His accent saying that was really a shock. “Are you guys OK? Is Caroline OK?”
“Not really,” he said, and I felt my stomach clench.
“Sloane, she is obsessed with having another baby. It’s all she can think about, and I’m really worried about her.”
I knew Caroline was getting ready to try in vitro again, and I knew she was consumed by this quest. But I reasoned that anybody would be.
Two days later, I saw for myself exactly what James had been worried about. Caroline had talked about nothing but babies and pregnancy since we arrived.
Ironically, Caroline was the one who had always been best at talking sense into people. It wasn’t my forte, but I was going to try. I waited until the two of us were alone in the kitchen.
“I’m going to have some of my fertility tea,” she said, getting up from the island and walking to the stove. Then she turned back to me. “Hey,” she said, “do you want some?”
I smiled. She was sneaky.
“You know I don’t want children,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, Sloane. It’s not that you don’t want children. You’re scared to have children.”
“And?”
“And there’s a huge difference.”
She filled up the teapot and turned on the burner. She leaned against the counter and said, “I’m scared too. I’m terrified. I’m terrified every day that Vivi is in the world that something horrible might happen to her.”
“So why do you want to do it again?” I asked.
She leaned over the island toward me. “Because, Sloane, one moment of your child being on earth is worth millions of years of worry. There’s no way to explain how magical it is to bring another life into the world, how soul-satisfying it is to be someone’s mother.”
If I was honest, I had started wondering lately if I could do it, if I could put aside my fear and trust enough to give my husband the thing he wanted most in the world, the thing that loomed between us every time we made love.
“It’s scary as hell,” Caroline said. “In fact, I’d venture to say it’s the scariest thing you’ll ever do.” As the kettle began to sing, Caroline added, “But I swear to you, Sloane, once you have a child, you’ll feel like your life before was black and white. And now everything is in color.”
I realized that night I hadn’t done a thing to convince my sister to give up her fertility project. In fact, quite the opposite. She had convinced me to take up a fertility project of my own. I woke Adam up. He smiled at me sleepily. “What’s shaking, sugar?”
I had had my IUD removed years before, and I was holding my birth control pills in my hand. Adam closed one eye and looked at me. “What are you doing with that?”
“I’m throwing it away.”
“Is it bad or something?” he asked.
I shook my head. “It’s not bad,” I said. “It’s just that I think we should have a baby.”
Adam shot up in bed and looked around. “Is this real? Am I dreaming?”
I kissed him softly and laughed. “You’re not dreaming. I’ve been thinking about it for a few months now. I don’t think I
