Page 57 of The Night We Lost Him

I stare at him in disbelief. “No. You didn’t.”

He shrugs. “It’s complicated. I don’t think he was particularly happy to hear that Dad left both of us in charge. As opposed to just him.”

“You told him that you were coming here, though, right?”

Sam walks up the front steps of the cabin, taking them two at a time.

“Not in so many words.”

“In any words, Sam?”

Before he answers me, the front door swings open and Tommy’s wife, Kira, is standing there. Beautiful Kira, who is also very pregnant.

She looks back and forth between us. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

I give Sam a look, which he ignores.

“For starters,” Sam says, “your husband’s a liar.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Kira says.

Then she moves out of the doorway and lets us in.

“How are you feeling, Kira?” I ask.

“Like I have two four-pound babies inside of me. I thought twins were supposed to skip a generation.”

“Not all the time,” Sam says.

“You think?” she says.

She turns back toward me, looks me up and down. “It’s been a while.”

It’s true. I haven’t seen Kira since her and Tommy’s wedding six years ago. I attended the ceremony but then snuck out before the reception. (Tommy and Sam’s mother’s chilly greeting that afternoon was enough to remind me that the ceremony was all that I was really wanted for.) They had been together since their senior year of college—Tommy and Kira—and the longest conversation we’d had was early on when Kira noticed that Tommy’s mother harbored nearly as much disdain for me as she usually reserved for her. This was something Kira wasn’t used to and couldn’t understand. She was an artist, a young and successful designer, self-sufficient and in love with Tommy. How unfair that Sylvia wasn’t welcoming. For a nanosecond, it made Kira interested in befriending me.

“You look different,” she says now. “Are you pregnant too?”

That moment of her seeking friendship has long passed.

I force a smile. “I’m not, no.”

“I guess you don’t want kids.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

I don’t elaborate. I’m not about to get into baby planning with my sister-in-law, especially in a moment that feels particularly complicated. Jack and I had been discussing how much we both want a baby. We were discussing a baby and my dreams for expanding the firm and Jack opening a second restaurant. We were discussing everything about the future. Until it started to feel like a jinx to me, to trust the days to lay out before me in that way, to trust them to keep turning up uninterrupted.

“Well, it was a nightmare to conceive these two,” Kira says. “So if I can give you a little advice—”

“I’m good,” I say.

“I would get on it sooner rather than later,” she continues, ignoring me. “No offense, but the clock is ticking for you way more than it was for me.”

Then she heads back into the main living area.

I smile at Sam. “She’s charming.”

Sam lets out a laugh. And we follow her into the other room, where she sits down in the window seat. The uninterrupted ridge is lit up behind her, its hills and trees jutting up against a cloudless hidden valley.

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