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if he got a bonus, we could go on vacation—anywhere I wanted to go.
    â€œSo where’s it going to be, Nev?” he had asked. “Disneyland? Hawaii?”
    â€œI don’t know. How about … Seattle?”
    It was the first place that sprang to mind. But once I’d said it, I was pleased with my answer. I could picture the three of us moseying around the Pike Place Market in our rain jackets, ducking into a café for clam chowder when the heavens decided to open. “I liked the movie, Sleepless in— ”
    â€œSeattle!” Grace said. “Of course, I loved that movie. That scene where they meet on the top of the Empire State Building and … hang on—” Grace clapped a palm to her cheek. “New York! That’s where we should go. That’d be cool, right?”
    â€œGrace,” my father warned. “It’s Neva’s choice.”
    â€œUh…” I was caught off guard. My thoughts scrambled to catch up. “New York would be kind of cool … I guess.”
    â€œJust think about it,” Grace said. “We can go to the top of the Empire State Building just like Meg Ryan and Tom Cruise—”
    â€œHanks,” I corrected.
    â€œâ€”and we can go ice skating at Rockefeller Center!”
    Dad frowned. “It’s August, Grace.”
    â€œâ€”and we can picnic in Central Park!” Grace was beaming from ear to ear. It was hard not to get caught up by her enthusiasm.
    â€œNow, wait just a minute,” Dad said. “The destination is Neva’s choice. Not yours.”
    Grace pouted. “She said it sounded cool—”
    â€œMaybe it does. But if she wants New York, I’m going to have to hear it from her lips, understand? Her lips?”
    Two heads swung to me. And because they were staring at me, and because I did think New York would be kind of cool, I nodded. But a few days later—once Grace had booked the tickets—I realized I didn’t really want to go to New York. I wanted to go to Seattle.
    *   *   *
    I rolled over in bed, trying to get comfy. It was no good. My belly felt heavy and it wasn’t just my belly. This wasn’t how I’d wanted things to go. I knew, with the rational side of my brain, that people would find out I was pregnant sometime. But another part of me believed that as long as I could keep it to myself, I’d be in control.
    Giving up on sleep, I headed for the kitchen. I had visions of warm milk with cinnamon and honey, but as I had neither cinnamon nor honey, it would have to be plain milk. As I stood waiting for my mug of milk to heat in the microwave, a shadow appeared on the floor beside me.
    â€œGeez, how’s a man supposed to get any sleep?”
    I smiled. “Don’t you have your own place, Patrick?”
    â€œYou gave me a key!”
    â€œFor emergencies. Three years ago.”
    I removed my milk and turned around. Three years ago, Patrick had been a new divorcé, drowning his sorrows in the bars that were a lot closer to my College Hill apartment than to the East Greenwich home he’d shared with his wife. He never told me the details of the split and I didn’t ask. I didn’t need to. Patrick was a good guy, and a wonderful doctor, but when it came to women, he was like a fat man at a buffet: he couldn’t help himself. After several weeks of him ringing the buzzer—or climbing up the fire escape—to my apartment in the small hours of the morning when he’d had too much to drink, I relented and gave him a key. I expected that once Karolina moved back to Germany he’d start spending more time at his own home, or maybe buy himself an apartment in town. But three years on, I still regularly found him on my couch, snoring after a big night out or catching some z’s before an early shift at the hospital. The strangest part about it was … it wasn’t