Chapter 3

ROMINA

The video makes me cry harder. By the time the nurse speaks, I’m shaking so badly the phone rattles in my hand.

And I realize, with a kind of shame, that I still love him.

He isn’t a thing I can throw away when it breaks. He isn’t a friend I can drop when he hurts me. He’s a living man, and I’ve loved him for six years. Loving him stopped being a choice a long time ago. Six years of birthdays and Sunday dinners at his mother’s table, of his coffee going cold while he read me the headlines. It’s in my bones.

Everyone says Jovan loved me to death. Didn’t I love him the same? Six years side by side, and the absolute despair of it is realizing I can’t let him go. I truly can’t.

I think of the heartbeat I heard this morning, quick and fierce. Half his, but half mine. I wipe my face and draw a shaky breath. I won't give up on my baby, and God help me, I can't bear to lose him, either.

One more chance. Maybe this child can be the thing that saves us.

I call.

He picks up on the fifth ring. His voice is hoarse and strained, like a man holding something in.

“Mina?”

“Can you come? I have something to tell you.”

“Mina, I’m tied up here. Have Marcus take you home. Whatever it is, we’ll talk when you get back.”

A muffled groan. Then the line goes dead, and there’s only the flat tone.

I sit there a long time, the phone gone dark in my hand. Then I look up at the nurse, still waiting.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”

It’s dark when I get home. Dempsey meets me at the door.

“Marcus said you went for a walk by the water. All day? Your hands are ice.” He stops. He’s seen my eyes. “Mina, what’s wrong? You’ve been crying. Did the checkup make you think of Jovan again? It’s all right. The baby is Jovan’s. In a way, he’s still with you.”

He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, the way he has a thousand times. Same hands. Same tenderness. He says it so gently I almost believe he means it.

“By the way, you said you had something to tell me?”

I could say it. Right here, in the foyer, with his hand on my arm.

I study his face. The same brow, the same eyes, full of my reflection. The same face from the video, and the same face I fell in love with behind a marble column. That’s what I can’t get past.

I look down. “It’s nothing. I was just going to tell you I’d be by the water and might be late.”

His shoulders sag with relief. “Go and rest. You’ve had a long day.”

I nod and go upstairs without another word. I’m so tired. I fall asleep the moment my head hits the pillow, and I dream of him at eighteen.

The harbor at sunset is the color of a bruise. Jovan stands outside my brother's gate in a sharply tailored suit, red to the ears, holding a rose he plucked from the garden at St. Anthony's.

“Romina Falcone. I know what our families would say, and I don’t care.” His hand actually shakes. “Will you be my girlfriend? I swear I’ll treat you right.”

He smells of sea salt and expensive cologne, and he has never looked so terrified. The sun melts into the water. Or his eyes do. I never could tell which.

I don’t know if it’s the sunset or the raw honesty in his eyes. That day, I nod like I’m bewitched. I say yes, but I have one condition. Only one. He leans in to hear it, serious as a priest, and I open my mouth—

I wake.

Bright morning. I haven’t slept this deeply since the bomb. I lie there with that sentence still on my lips. He swore he’d keep it. I wonder if he remembers.

The door opens, and Tahlia walks in. Not a trace of the invalid on her. The glow on her skin is pure health, and her face is lit with triumph.

“Do you know why I sent you that video yesterday?” She tilts her head. “Do you really think Dempsey’s Jovan’s brother? And that I’m your so-called sister-in-law?”