In Five Years

Chapter Eighteen

David and I are supposed to meet with the wedding planner next Saturday morning. It’s now mid-September, and I’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, that if I do not choose flowers now I will be using dead leaves as centerpieces.

The week is crazy at work — we get hit with a ton of due diligence on two time-sensitive cases Monday, and I barely make it home except to sleep all week. I take out my phone as I walk to the elevators the following Friday night to tell David we may need to push the meeting — I’m desperate for some sleep — when I see I have four missed calls from an unknown number.

Scam calls have been rampant lately, but they’re usually marked. I check my voicemail on my way downstairs, hanging up and re-trying when I get down to the lobby. I’m just passing through the glass doors when I hear the message.

“Dannie, it’s Aaron. We went to the doctor today, for the baby, and— Can you call me? I think you need to come down here.”

My heart plummets to my feet as I hit call back immediately with shaking hands. Something is wrong. Something is wrong with the baby. Bella had her doctor’s appointment today. They were going to hear the heartbeat for the first time. I should have protected her. I should have stopped her from buying all those clothes, making all those plans. It was too soon.

“Dannie?” Aaron’s voice is hoarse through the phone.

“Hey. Hi. Sorry. I was… where is she?”

“Here,” he says. “Dannie, it’s not good.”

“Is something wrong with the baby?”

Aaron pauses. When his voice comes through, it breaks at the onset. “There’s no baby.”

I toss my heels into my bag, pull on my slides, and get on the subway down to Tribeca. I always wondered how people who had just been delivered tragic news and had to fly on airplanes did it. Every plane must carry someone who is going to their dying mother’s bedside, their friend’s car accident, the sight of their burned home. Those minutes on the subway are the longest of my life.

Aaron answers the door. He’s wearing jeans and a button-down, half untucked. He looks stunned, his eyes red-rimmed. My heart sinks again. It’s through the floorboards, now.

“Where is she?” I ask him.

He doesn’t answer, just points. I follow his finger into the bedroom, to where Bella is crouched in the fetal position in bed, dwarfed by pillows, a hoodie up and sweatpants on. I snap my shoes off and go to her, getting right in around her.

“Bells,” I say. “Hey. I’m here.” I drop my lips down and kiss the top of her sweatshirt-covered head. She doesn’t move. I look at Aaron by the door. He stands there, his hands hanging helplessly at his sides.

“Bells,” I try again. I rub a hand down her back. “Come on. Sit up.”

She shifts. She looks up at me. She looks confused, frightened. She looks the way she did on my trundle bed decades ago when she’d wake up from a bad dream.

“Did he tell you?” she asks me.

I nod. “He said you lost the baby,” I say. I feel sick at the words. I think about her, just last week, painting, preparing. “Bells I’m so sorry. I—”

She sits up. She puts a hand over her mouth. I think she might be sick.

“No,” she says. “I was wrong. I wasn’t pregnant.”

I search her face. I look to Aaron, who is still in the doorway. “What are you talking about?”

“Dannie,” she says. She looks straight at me. Her eyes are wet, wide. I see something in them I’ve only ever seen once before, a long time ago at a door in Philadelphia. “They think I have ovarian cancer.”