“Is it weird to be friends with people and then have your fingers in their vagina?” Eve asked cheerfully.
Nora chuckled. “It’s actually not as weird as I thought it was going to be.”
“What about balls, though? That must be weird. You feel up someone’s balls and then you run into him at, like, the farmers’ market?”
She remembered how nervous she’d been about that very thing, about whether people should call her Dr. Walsh or Nora. All that junk had just faded away. “Not really. I think I’ve learned to compartmentalize.” Even more, she sort of liked the whole feel-someone’s-balls-and-run-into-them-at-the-farmers’-market thing. She felt like a mother hen to the town—in a good way. She handed Eve some tissues. “All done. I’m going to write you a requisition for blood tests. Get those done and get this”—she handed Eve her prescription—“filled and make an appointment to come see me. IUD insertion is generally easier when you’re on your period because your cervix is dilated, so if you can, try to time it so you come back then.”
“Great. Thank you so much. Dr. Walsh.”
“Nora.”
“Yeah, but we’re compartmentalizing, right?”
Nora smiled. “Right.”
“But do you want to hang out in another compartment soon? I haven’t seen you since you got back, and— Crap. I never even asked you about your family, the funeral.”
“It’s okay, and yeah. Let’s get together. Let’s get together soon.” She suddenly felt like she really needed to…be in another compartment with someone who wasn’t Jake. “But can we do it not at the bar? Or the inn?”
“Oooh, the plot thickens.”
Hopefully not.
Definitely not.
Or at least it was highly statistically unlikely that the plot was going to thicken.
“How about Maya’s place?” Nora suggested. “I’ll arrange it with her and let you know.”
“Great!” Eve said. “Can’t wait to have some drinks and talk about something other than my vagina.”
Right. We’ll talk about mine.
It was the second day of the new year, and Jake was still freaking out. It was the day Jude would have been four years and three days old. Because Jude’s birthday was December thirtieth.
Jake always spent Jude’s birthday by the lake. Sometimes on it, in the canoe, depending on how cold it was and how icy the cove was.
Regardless, he always spent Jude’s birthday alone. The first year, Sawyer and Law had invited him to a movie, and when he’d demurred, they’d tried to elbow their way into his house. What he’d said that day, rebuffing them, was the most he’d ever said directly to them about Jude—about the Jude-shaped hole in his life. “I am only going to say this once. I know you mean well, but back the fuck off. December thirtieth is never going to be a normal day. I don’t want it to be. Get the hell out of here and leave me alone.”
And to their credit, they had. It hadn’t come up again, with them or with anyone else. Probably because he made sure to spend every subsequent December thirtieth alone. Well, alone with his boy under the big starry sky next to the big black lake.
Until the year he hadn’t spent December thirtieth alone with his boy.
Because he’d forgotten his boy.
His hands were frozen as he paddled back to shore. He’d spent most of today canoeing. Yesterday, too, after Nora had finally fallen asleep and he’d crept out of the cottage. His muscles ached from all the paddling, but it still didn’t feel like enough.
He should have felt bad leaving her—she was mired in her own grief, and none of this was her fault. But what he had done—what he had not done—was too big for him to stay there.
It still was. Being on the move was the only way he could outrun his panic. Keep it even slightly in check. Give himself the space to think.
He had to cool it with Nora. What they had was supposed to be casual. Friendly.
But if it was making him forget his own child, his own dead child, how casual was it? If he was capable of being distracted from what was important to him by zombies and orgasms, it followed that he needed to arrange his life so it contained fewer zombies and orgasms.
So that was what he was going to do. He wasn’t going to break up with her or anything. They weren’t together to begin with, so that wasn’t called for. He just needed to…cool things a bit.
After Nora emerged from her office—where she’d retreated after seeing Eve—Amber cornered her. “We’re getting a little backed up. I have what I’m sure is strep in Room Two, and—”
“I need to step out for a minute.”
“Uh…okay?”
Amber was surprised. Nora wasn’t prone to bailing in the middle of a busy day.
“Just quickly.” She was already on her way down the short hallway to her office for her coat and keys. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
Nora hadn’t counted on the fact that she and Eve would be going to the same place. Eve was putting on her coat in the waiting room when Nora rushed out—and ground to a halt. “Hi. I was…ah…I forgot something in my room at the inn.”
“I’ll walk with you.” Eve was chipper, which must have meant Nora was doing a sufficient job disguising her internal terror.
“Everything okay?” Eve asked as they waited for a lone car to pass before crossing Main Street.
“Yeah, yeah.” But actually…“No. Everything is not okay. Can you come up to my room with me for a second?” She had just decided, back in the exam room, that she was going to confide in Eve and Maya. She’d been thinking some evening this week. She’d buy a pizza and take it to Maya’s place.
But what the hell—why not now?
“Of course.” Eve’s brow knit as they climbed the stairs to the top of the inn, and when she closed the door behind her in Nora’s room, she said, “What’s up?”
It was kind of funny the way the tables had turned. Ten minutes ago, in a room as small as—though considerably less pink than—this one, she’d asked Eve that exact question. She sighed. “I suddenly realized I forgot to take my birth control pill three days in a row, and they’re in my suitcase somewhere.” She started rummaging through said suitcase, which had gone from Toronto to Jake’s to here and which she hadn’t gotten around to unpacking yet.
“Okay, well, you’re the doctor, but don’t you just double up for the next two days?”
“Yes.” She extracted the pill packet and popped two out. They both looked around the room. There was a can of Diet Coke on the dressing table Nora knew was half-finished. She picked it up and took the pills.
“Okay, so that’s fine, then?”
“Yes.” It was fine. It was. That’s what she would have told a patient in her circumstances. The chances that she was pregnant were extremely slim. It was just that…“I have had so much sex in the past few days.” She buried her head in her hands and sat on the bed.
“You were getting it on in Toronto!” Eve sounded altogether too delighted. “Who’s the lucky guy? Oh my gosh! Was this funeral sex?”