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Martin invited me to meet his mother. We had lunch at Alice’s favorite German eatery down in Pioneer Square. At her insistence, I agreed to let her order for all of us: feather-light potato dumplings served with a creamy bacon sauce.
    “Holy butter, Batman,” I remarked after I’d practically licked my plate clean. “That was amazing. Is there a way I can become an honorary German?”
    Martin leaned over and whispered in my ear, “German by injection, perhaps? I have just the tool . . .”
    I punched him playfully and he pulled away, grinning.
    “Tell me, Cadence,” Alice said, ignoring our antics. “Do you want children?” She didn’t speak with much of an accent, but the edges of her words were noticeably clipped, as though she were forcibly restraining herself from giving you a piece of her mind.
    “Mama . . .” Martin began, but I set my hand on his forearm and squeezed.
    “No, it’s okay,” I said. Our conversation had been fairly tame up to this point; part of me welcomed a more challenging subject. “I’m only twenty-six, Mrs. Sutter. I’ve been pretty focused on my work at the paper. I haven’t given babies much thought, to tell you the truth.”
    “But you want them,” she said. “You aren’t one of those girls who think they’re not cut out to be a mother, are you? A
career
girl.” She said “career” the same way she might have said “hooker.”
    I tilted my head and gave her a closed-lipped, tight smile before responding. I had to be careful here. I wanted to make a good impression. “Well. My career is definitely important to me. And actually, I think it’s a
good
thing that women can decide for themselveswhether or not they want kids. There’s no law that says it’s some kind of requirement of womanhood.”
    “Perhaps there should be,” Alice said.
    “Mama, please,” Martin said. “Leave poor Cadence alone.”
    “Martin,” Alice said. The word was sewn through with warning.
    Martin sat back in his chair and pressed his lips into a thin line. His acquiescence was surprising, but I assumed he did it to avoid a knock-down, drag-out with his mother in front of me. I imagined him chewing her out later, after he dropped me off at home. I imagined him standing up for the woman he loved.
    “Don’t you consider owning your bakery a career?” I said, unable to keep myself from making this point.
    Her eyes narrowed the slightest bit, though the rest of her face remained impassive. “Yes. I do. But I would have given it up immediately if having my bakery meant I wouldn’t have had Martin. He was the most important thing. Always. No question. He still is.”
    Martin nudged the edge of his foot against mine beneath the table. I nudged his back and took a deep breath before speaking again.
    “Like I said, I haven’t thought about it a lot, but if I found the right man, then yes. I’d want to have a baby with him.” I looked at Martin. “Someday.”
    Two months after that luncheon, Martin asked me to move into his Capitol Hill apartment. My mother approved of this living arrangement; his mother did not. The fact that Martin didn’t let Alice’s opinion sway him reassured me. For a while, we enjoyed that honeymoon stage of nesting, when I still found it adorable that he needed all the canned food labels facing in the same direction and he didn’t complain that the contents of my closet were strewn across the bedroom floor.
    That blissful period of time came to an end on a crisp December evening. I was curled up on the couch with a book when he stepped in from our bedroom, holding a white sheet of paper.
    “A note from my mom,” he said, waving it at me.
    “Let me guess,” I joked. “Thanking me for all my help at Thanksgiving?” I had not been allowed in the kitchen to help with the food preparation during my first holiday spent at Martin’s childhood home. “Oh, no,” Alice said. “Don’t bother. Really. I’ll take care of it. You just sit. Relax.” So I lounged