Renee had laughed, but she’d also felt relief. Jonathan was right: the Skinners would endure.
But now, here in the institutional hush of the empty cafeteria, sitting across from her dead patient’s husband, Renee realized with a small, terrible shock: Joe will never have children. Renee felt loss again, not of Joe, her brother, but of possibility. Of the future.
Renee still had not answered Carl’s question. She was forty-two years old. It was no exaggeration to say that she and Jonathan had everything they’d ever wished for.
“No, I’ve never wanted kids,” Renee answered at last. “Not really.”
Carl shifted in his chair, gripped the coffee cup but did not drink. “Well, Melanie wanted me to give you her eggs. That’s what she said. She said she wanted to donate them to you. She didn’t have any sisters. And her friends—it’s hard to maintain friendships when you’re in the hospital for so long. She admired you, Dr. Renee. She cared about you.”
Carl’s phone began to beep. “Oh, shit,” he said. “I’m late for work. Overnight shift. Dr. Renee, think about it, okay? You and that boyfriend of yours. Kids. I’m not having any, not without Mel around, but she’d love it if a part of her was tumbling around the playground. Or learning how to play the violin or be a doctor or whatever. I’d really love it, too. I wouldn’t bother you. We could make whatever kind of legal agreement you want. Anyhow, I gotta go. Think about it, Dr. Renee. Just think about it.”
Carl left the cafeteria, but Renee sat for a while. Perhaps twenty minutes, perhaps an hour. She held on to her coffee until it grew cold.
Renee told no one about the eggs. She filed away their existence into a compartment that contained the things she did not want to think about. The man in the car. Luna Hernandez. The ring. Those bruises on the thin, fragile skin of Joe’s forearm. That night on the balcony at the party. And so Melanie Jacobs’s eggs remained frozen in a basement laboratory in New York-Presbyterian Hospital while, fourteen stories above, Renee went about her profession. She transplanted lungs and kidneys from the dead into the living, she taught medical students and residents about cross matching and pulmonary function tests. Her patients were young and old, responsible and careless, and grateful, all of them, grateful beyond words for what she and her team had granted them. Time.
* * *
I was at work when Caroline called to invite me to lunch. It was two days before an environmental conference on the Paris Accords, and I had been spending long hours at the office, writing speeches for Homer, researching our position papers. At night I was working on a new project, the Love Poem, about a man and a woman who lived in a hot climate, who in many respects appeared different in background and aspirations, but who had discovered in each other something rare.
My assistant, Hannah, put the call through. “Caroline something,” Hannah said. “I didn’t catch the last name.”
I paused. “Masters?” I said, referring to one of our major donors, heiress to a shipping fortune and, thankfully, dedicated to ocean preservation. She was fifty-five years old and looked thirty, as was the job of an heiress.
“No,” said Hannah.
I thought of other Carolines I might know.
“Duffy?” I said.
“Yes! I think that was it. Duffy.”
“Hm.” The line was blinking red; Caroline remained on hold.
“Who’s Caroline Duffy?” Hannah asked.
“She’s my sister.”
“Sister? But I thought her name was Rachel.”
“Renee. Renee is one sister. Caroline is the other.”
“Oh, two sisters! That’s a lot of sisters. You’re so lucky to have sisters! I only have a brother, and he’s younger and totally ridiculous.”
I had hired Hannah, but there were times when I deeply regretted it. “Yes, very lucky,” I said. “Okay, put her through, please.”
And then I was hearing Caroline’s voice for the first time in nearly five years.
“Fiona,” she said without preamble, “I’d like to see you. Lunch, with Renee, too.”
“Oh,” I said. “When?”
“Maybe, gosh, I don’t know. Tomorrow?”
I had a meeting tomorrow at eleven o’clock, another at one that was sure to go late. In the lull before I answered, I heard Caroline’s breathing, the delicate in-out of my sister’s lungs.
“Okay,” I said. “Where?”
We met in the city, at an Italian place that none of us had been to before. Only half full on a Friday afternoon, with plastic flowers on the tables and a balding waiter who stood at the back of the room and jiggled change in his pocket. The kind of restaurant frequented by lost, footsore tourists or illicit lovers looking to hide.
I cancelled all my afternoon meetings. We stayed three hours and drank two bottles of wine.
Caroline told us she was leaving Nathan—had left him, in fact, although they both still remained in the Hamden house. He was looking for another place, but these things took time. They had told the kids, who were understandably upset but coping, she said, as best they could. There was a counselor, the school had been notified, the parents of their best friends.
“But why?” I asked Caroline. The table had been cleared; we awaited our dessert of tiramisu and affogato. Caroline’s marriage had always seemed immutable, incontrovertible as a law of physics. Till death do us part. The happily ever after.
“Nothing happened,” she explained. “I mean, nothing dramatic. No affairs. No drug habits or porn habits or anything like that. I just couldn’t become the person I wanted to be. I couldn’t even figure out who that person was. With Nathan I could only be the same old Caroline.” She took a sip of wine and then shook her head, flapped her hand to signal a change in topic. “And listen, you won’t believe it, but yesterday I saw someone who looked like Luna Hernandez. On the train platform, just as the train was pulling in. She got onto a different car, and I wanted to go look for her, but I hate stepping between cars when the train is moving.” Caroline paused. “I’m sorry we never found her,” she said.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said.
Renee rolled her eyes.
“Don’t do that,” said Caroline to Renee.
Pointedly, Renee did it again.
“I know it’s silly,” Caroline continued, shifting her attention fully to me, “but . . . I think about Luna a lot. I joined that thing Facebook. Have you? It’s so easy to look for someone. I looked for her, but maybe she changed her name. Or maybe she’s not on it yet.”
“I think about Luna, too,” I said. I considered telling my sisters about my walks, my lists, my belief that Joe was leading me somewhere, that I would see him again someday. This was the place, this was the time to talk about these kinds of things. Finally together again, a blanket of otherworldly calm thrown over us by the wine and the dim lights. If I didn’t tell them now, I never would. But I stopped myself. It seemed too unreasonable, too self-important. Selfish, almost. Of course they missed Joe, too. Of course they had loved Joe, too. But hadn’t I loved him the most?
“Please stop. I don’t want to talk about Luna,” said Renee. “I can’t talk about this.” Her face was drawn. As she pushed hair behind an ear, I saw her hand shake.