“Anything’s possible,” he’d said. “You could always try praying.”
“I was thinking,” Ty said, taking his cap off and rubbing his head. It was unusually cold this January, and the chill clung to his clothes. Temperatures had dipped into the twenties and thirties for long stretches, downright frigid for south Alabama. “He didn’t say it couldn’t happen. Or that it would never happen. We’ll just keep trying.”
“I’m tired of trying. I’m tired of looking at my calendar, counting days. Of having to be so careful and exact. It’s exhausting.”
“So let’s not do it like that. Let’s just get back to me and you, minus the calendar. Like it used to be.”
Betsy sniffed and wiped her cheeks again, unsure if it was possible to go back to that carefree, casual place they’d been before they decided to start a family. Maybe for him it was. But it wasn’t a possibility for her. Not yet.
“There’s also adoption,” he said.
She looked at him. He held his hat in his hands and smoothed a frayed string at the edge of the brim.
“Do you even know how much that costs? Way more than IVF.”
“Not always. I’ve done a little research.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “If you go international, yes, it’s expensive, but adoption within the U.S. is less, maybe even more so if you stay within the state. And there’s even a program where you can foster a child first, then apply for adoption. That brings the cost down more.”
Betsy blinked hard and pushed herself up until she was sitting. “Is that really what you want? To adopt?”
“Betsy, I have what I really want. Do I want children with you? Absolutely. But you are who I want. I know you want this more than anything, so I’m trying to figure out a way to make it happen.”
She’d known it then, even in her haze of grief and disappointment. Deep down where it mattered, she knew now. He loved her. Her. He was reserved, but forthright. Calm, but decisive. When he spoke, she knew she could trust him. They’d chosen each other, above all, and she’d make the same choice again every time.
Three days of silence was long enough. She pulled her phone back out of her bag and tapped out a quick text.
Will be home for dinner. Let’s talk tonight. ❤
When the sun had lowered in the sky and clouds bloomed from the horizon in the south, Betsy followed the girls to the water’s edge to look for shells. The wind had picked up and the tide was higher now, creeping up past the soggy mounds of their sand castles, inching toward beach chairs that had been on dry ground hours ago. As they walked, eyes on the sand, the warm water rippled over their feet.
They came to a stretch where the shore flattened out, revealing a wide strip of damp sand not yet covered by the tide. It was speckled with shells, none of them deemed beautiful or special enough for the stream of shell-hunting vacationers to have picked up earlier in the day. To Addie and Walsh, they were a treasure. Soon their hands and sand pails were full of broken shells in tan, yellow, pink, and blue.
“Look!” Walsh called, her voice high with excitement. “A heart!” She bent down low over a pile of shells and picked up one with a small hole at the bottom. Half the diameter of a pencil eraser, the hole was jagged, making the delicate outline of a heart. “It’s for you,” she said. “You keep it.”
Betsy thought of the Mason jar by her side of the bed where she’d deposited all the heart-shaped items the girls had collected over the course of the summer. The faded yellow shell would fit right in with the others.
“And look at these.” Addie peered down at a spread of coquina shells with both halves still attached. “They look like butterflies.” She picked up a handful and passed them to Betsy. “These are for you too.”
Betsy laughed, her hands full. “I don’t know if I can hold any more. You’re filling me up with too many pretty things.”
As they continued their walk, clouds overtook the sun. Betsy found a tan-and-white spiraled shell half buried in the sand. Wide at the top and twisted to a fine point at the bottom, it fit snug in the palm of her hand. While Betsy rinsed the shell to rid it of sand, Addie ran to her holding something in her hand.
“Look,” she said, hushed and reverent. A quarter-size sand dollar, bleached white by the sun, sat in the center of her palm.
“Wow,” Betsy breathed. “I can’t believe no one picked it up already.”
“It was hidden under another shell.”
“Well, it must have been there just for you to find. Want me to add it to my bucket?” She held out the pail so Addie could place it inside.
Addie shook her head. “No, this one’s for Mommy. I’m going to give it to her when she comes back.” She held the sand dollar with one hand cupped under the other one and stared down at it. Her long blonde curls, frizzed at the edges by humidity, flared out around her face, just like Jenna’s used to in the heat of the summer. Walsh stood on tiptoes next to her sister, her damp hair clinging to her cheeks.
There was a photo at Betsy’s parents’ house—probably stuck in a box somewhere—of Betsy and Jenna on a beach trip in elementary school, before boys and cameras and textbooks became priorities. In the photo they both wore swimsuits, Jenna’s thin, reedy body nestled up against Betsy’s, already a little fuller, curvier than her little sister’s. Betsy had flung her arm around Jenna’s shoulders. Their heads tilted at the same angle, but in toward each other, their cheeks inches apart.
Closing her eyes, Betsy could feel the warmth of her sister’s
