Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

I look up at the lighthouse. There is a plaque here that says it was built for the first time in 1810. That, after a hurricane in 1815, it was built again, bigger and stronger, this time of stone. In spite of the lighthouse, wrecks continued with great regularity.

Safety is relative. You can be so close to shore that you can practically feel it under your feet, when you suddenly find yourself breaking apart on the rocks.

After I lost my baby at twenty-eight weeks, after I went home from the hospital into a house with no music, I received a phone call.

Is this Mrs. Baxter? a woman asked.

I barely knew who I was anymore, but I said yes.

Daniel’s here. Your son is waiting for you.

The first time, I thought it was a cruel joke. I threw the receiver across the room, and when the phone immediately rang again, I disconnected it. Max found it that way when he came home from work, and I shrugged. I told him I didn’t know how that had happened.

The next day there was another phone call.

Mrs. Baxter, please, Daniel’s waiting.

Was it really that easy? Could I move into an alternate universe just by completing the one act I hadn’t: finding my son, picking up where we had left off? I asked for an address, and that afternoon, I got dressed for the first time since I’d been home. I found my car keys and my purse. I drove.

I marveled at the white pillars, the grand staircase leading up to the building. I parked in the circular drive, black as a tongue, and slowly made my way inside.

“You must be Mrs. Baxter,” the woman at the reception desk said.

“Daniel,” I said. My son’s name, in my mouth, was as smooth and round as a sweet. A Life Saver. “I’m here for Daniel.”

She disappeared into the back room and returned a moment later with a small cardboard box. “Here he is,” she says. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

It was no bigger than a watch box, and I could not reach for it. I thought if I touched it, I might faint.

But then she was offering it to me and I saw my hands folding around it. I heard my voice saying Thank you. As if this was what I’d wanted all along.

I have not been to Reid and Liddy’s house in a few years. There is a profusion of color in the front yard-mostly roses, Max’s handiwork. There is a new gazebo on the lawn, painted white, with heliotrope crawling up its side as stealthily as a jewel thief. Max’s battered truck is parked behind a gold Lexus.

When I ring the doorbell, Liddy answers. She stares at me, speechless.

She has tiny lines around her eyes and her mouth, now. She looks tired.

I want to ask her, Are you happy?

Do you know what you’re getting into?

But instead, I just say, “Can I speak to Max?”

She nods, and a moment later, there he is. He’s wearing the same shirt he had on in court, but there is no tie. And he’s wearing jeans.

It makes this easier. It makes me able to pretend I am talking to the old Max.

“Do you want to come inside?”

In the back of the foyer, I can see Reid and Liddy hovering. The last thing I want to do is go into that house. “Maybe we could go over there?”

I nod to the gazebo, and he steps onto the front porch. He is barefoot but follows me to the wooden structure. I sit down on the steps. “I didn’t do it,” I say.

Max’s shoulder is touching mine. I can feel the heat of his skin through his dress shirt. “I know.”

I wipe at my eyes. “First I lost my son. Then I lost you. Now I stand to lose the embryos, and most likely my career.” I shake my head. “There won’t be anything left.”

“Zoe-”

“Take them,” I say. “Take the embryos. Just… promise me that it ends, here. That you’ll keep your lawyers from bringing Lucy into court.”

He bows his head. I don’t know if he’s praying, or crying, or both. “You have my word,” Max says.

“Okay.” I rub my hands over my knees and stand up. “Okay,” I repeat, and I walk briskly back to my car, even though I hear Max calling my name.

I ignore him. I get into the car and back out of the driveway and park near the mailbox. Even though I can’t see them from here, I imagine Max going into the foyer and telling Reid and Liddy. I picture them embracing.

All the stars fall out of the sky and rain on the roof of my car. It feels like a sword between my ribs, the loss of these children I will never know.

Vanessa is waiting for me, but I don’t drive home right away. Instead I take aimless left and right turns until I find myself in a field somewhere on the back side of T. F. Green Airport, beyond where the courier planes sleep at night. I lie on the hood of the car in the dark with my back against the sloped windshield and stare up as the jets scream down to the runway, so close it seems I can touch their bellies. The noise is absolutely deafening; I can’t hear myself think or cry, which is perfect.

So it makes no sense that I go into the trunk for my guitar. It’s the same one I used at the school to teach Lucy. I was going to let her borrow it, for a while.

I wonder what she said. If this allegation was the distance between who she was and who her parents needed her to be. If I had been completely off the mark and had interpreted her comments the wrong way. Maybe she wasn’t questioning her sexuality; maybe that was simply on my mind, because of the trial, and I painted my own thoughts over the blank canvas that Lucy actually was.

I take the guitar out of its case and crawl back onto the hood of the car. My fingers settle over the neck, stroking frets as lazily as they’d move across an old lover, and my right hand goes to strum. But there is something bright, fluttering, caught between the strings; I fish it out carefully so that it won’t fall into the sound hole.

It is the chord progression for “A Horse with No Name.” In my handwriting. I’d given it to Lucy the day we were learning the song.

But on the back, in green marker, five parallel lines have been drawn. A musical staff. On the top bar, two slanted lines break through, like train tracks.

I do not know when Lucy left me this message, but that’s what it is. Of all the musical symbols she might have drawn, Lucy’s chosen a caesura.

It’s a break in the music.

A brief, silent pause when time isn’t counted.

And at some point, when the conductor decides, the tune resumes.

In court the next morning, Angela Moretti’s face is pinched shut as tight as a lobster claw. “My client is withdrawing her objection, Your Honor,” she says. “We ask that the embryos not be destroyed per the contract and that they be released to Max Baxter’s custody.”

There is clapping in the courtroom. Ben grins at me. I feel like throwing up.

I’ve felt this way since last night. It started when Zoe bolted out of the driveway. And then when I walked back into the house, blinking because the lights were so suddenly bright, and told Liddy and Reid that Zoe was going to give in.

Reid lifted Liddy in his arms and danced her around the foyer. “Do you know what this means?” he asked, grinning. “Do you?”

And suddenly I did. It meant that I would have to sit by quietly and watch Liddy getting bigger and bigger with my baby inside her. I’d have to hang out in the waiting room while Reid took part in the delivery. I’d have to watch Reid and Liddy fall in love with their baby, while I was the third wheel.

But she looked so goddamned happy. She wasn’t pregnant, and there was already a glow to her cheeks and a shine to her hair. “This calls for something special,” Reid said, and he left me standing alone with her.

I took a step forward, and then another. “Is this really what you want?” I whispered. When Reid came back, we moved apart. “Congratulations, Sis,” I said, and I kissed her cheek.