We had celebrated his birthday with dinner at home. He had been especially affectionate, though now I knew Priya was already working in his department.

The memory gave me a strange feeling.

PART 3: The Photograph in My Hand

For twenty minutes after the doctor left, I sat with the ultrasound photograph turned toward the light.

There was almost nothing to see: a small gray shape, measurements printed along the edge, a date that would never again be ordinary to me.

The nurse returned with a cup of water and the careful expression of someone who had seen both kinds of tears in the same room.

“Is there someone you’d like us to call?” she asked.

I thought of Warren. Before I could stop myself, I looked at the place on my phone where his number had been for fifteen years.

I had changed his contact from Husband to Warren Hale the day the divorce was final.

I hadn’t deleted it. “Not him,” I said.

“My friend Nora.”

Nora Whitcomb arrived with her coat buttoned crookedly and a bag of crackers she had purchased from the hospital gift shop.

She had been my closest friend since graduate school and had asked only one question when the marriage ended: Are you safe?

When I gave her the ultrasound, her expression transformed.

“Grace.” She sat down because her knees seemed to give way.

“Oh, Grace.”

“I haven’t decided what to feel.”

“You don’t have to decide today.”