Laura felt the suspicion she had been trying to retire flare again, then settle into something more complicated than jealousy: grief for a life in which a nurse's mistake could have been true, and wasn't, and still left a mark.
"Thank you for telling me," she said.
That afternoon Laura walked the house like a surveyor. Guest room: Rachel's suitcase open on the chair, neat stacks of folded clothes, a framed photo of Mara and Rachel as teenagers on the nightstand. Nursery—reclaimed guest-turned-nursery—with crib, mobile, the soft giraffe Ethan had cleaned. Hall bathroom with a drying rack of tiny onesies. Ethan's room with a drawing on the desk: four figures and a blob that was probably Oliver, labeled in pencil, Mom Dad Me Rachel Baby. Mom stood a little apart in the drawing, as if Ethan already understood distance.
Laura sat on Ethan's bed and cried again, quietly, because her son had made room in his stick-figure heart and she did not know yet whether she could.
Two weeks after her return, Laura and Rachel attempted what Daniel called, unwisely, a "clear-the-air lunch." They went to a quiet place in Bethesda with cloth napkins and salads priced like penance. Oliver remained with Daniel; Ethan was at school. Without the baby as buffer, the two women faced each other across water glasses and the awkwardness of shared bathrooms and shared tragedy.
"I need to know if you want him," Rachel said bluntly, once the waiter left. "Oliver. Not as a guest star in your marriage. As a child who will call your house home for years."
Laura stabbed a cucumber. "Want is a blunt word for a sharp thing. I want my mother back. I want Chris and Mara alive. I want the last year rewritten. Within the world that exists—yes. I am choosing him. Choosing is slower than wanting. It has paperwork."
Rachel almost smiled. "Mara would have liked you more for that answer than for an easy yes."