What Alice Forgot

Chapter 16

A lice was alone.

There had been a lot of intense debate about the wisdom of leaving her alone after lunch. Barb and Roger had their Saturday-afternoon advanced salsa-dancing class. They said they could easily miss it just this once, although, of course, it was an especially important class because they were rehearsing for the Family Talent Night at Frannie’s retirement village, but really and truly, it would be no problem to miss it if Alice needed them there. Frannie had an important meeting at the retirement village—something to do with Christmas. She was chairing the meeting but she could easily call and ask Bev or maybe Dora to do it, although they were both nervy public speakers, and it was likely they’d be railroaded by this rather domineering new resident, but that would hardly be the end of the world; her granddaughter came first.

“I’ll be fine,” Alice had repeated over and over. “I’m nearly forty years old!” she’d added flippantly, but there must have been something strange about the way she’d said it because they’d all stared at her for a moment, and then a whole new round of offers to stay began.

“Elisabeth will be back any minute,” she’d told them, shooing them out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and out the door. “Off you go! I’ll be fine!”

And within minutes, they were packed into Roger’s big shiny car, shadowy figures waving at her behind tinted windows, and the car was disappearing down the driveway, gravel flying.

“I’ll be fine,” Alice repeated quietly to herself.

She saw old Mrs. Bergen coming out of the house next door wearing a big Mexican hat and carrying a pair of gardening shears. She liked Mrs. Bergen. She was teaching her how to garden. She’d given Alice lots of advice about the problems with her lemon tree (she suggested Nick should give it the occasional “tinkle,” which he had, with rather revolting enthusiasm) and was always bringing over cuttings from her own garden for Alice and gently pointing out what needed watering or pruning or weeding. Mrs. Bergen didn’t like cooking much, so in return Alice took over Tupperware containers with leftover casseroles and pieces of quiche and carrot cake. Mrs. Bergen had already crocheted three sets of bootees for the baby and was starting on a matinee jacket and bonnet.

But that was all ten years ago.

So were those tiny items now faded and dusty in a cupboard somewhere?

Alice lifted her hand in affectionate greeting. Mrs. Bergen lowered her head and turned pointedly in the direction of her azaleas.

Oh.

There was no mistaking it. Mrs. Bergen had snubbed her.

Would sweet, chubby Mrs. Bergen yell and swear at her, as Nick had, if Alice went over to say hello? That would be like when the little girl’s head spun around in The Exorcist .

Alice went back inside quickly and closed the door behind her, feeling an absurd desire to cry.

Maybe Mrs. Bergen was going senile and didn’t recognize Alice anymore. That was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Yes, that would do. For now. Once she got back her memory, everything would fall neatly into place. “Oh,” she’d say. “Of course!”

Well. What next?

She wondered exactly what she did on these weekends when “Nick had the children.” Did she like the break? Was she lonely? Did she long for the children to come back?

The sensible thing to do would be to explore the house for clues about her life. That way she’d be ready for when Nick came back tomorrow night. She should have a persuasive presentation prepared: Ten reasons why we should not be getting this divorce.

Maybe she would find something about Gina. Love letters to Nick? But presumably he would have taken those with him when he moved out.

Or perhaps she should be doing something for this party tonight? But what? The party seemed strangely irrelevant.

Actually, she didn’t want to be in the house at all. Her stomach felt uncomfortably full from all that custard tart she’d eaten. “You want a second piece?” her mother had said with pleased surprise and Alice guessed that this was unusual for her.

She would go for a walk. That would clear her mind. It was a beautiful day. Why spend it indoors?

She went upstairs and then stopped in the hallway, looking at the other three bedroom doors. That must be where the children slept now. She and Nick had left them empty, except for the one they were going to use for the baby’s nursery. They’d spent a lot of time in there, sitting cross-legged on the floor, planning and imagining. They’d picked the paint color: Ocean Azure . It would work even if the baby surprised them by being a girl (which she had—a girl!).

Alice tentatively pushed open the nursery door.

Well. What did she expect? Of course there was no white crib or change table, no rocking chair. It wasn’t a nursery anymore.

Instead there was a single unmade bed, strewn with clothes and a bookshelf crammed with books, old empty bottles of perfume, and glass jars. The walls were almost entirely plastered with moody black-and-white pictures of European cities. Alice saw a tiny square of blue in between two posters. She went over and put her finger to it. Ocean Azure.

There was a desk against one wall. She saw a ring binder labeled Madison Love . The handwriting was familiar. It looked like Alice’s own writing when she was in primary school. She noticed an open recipe book face down on the desk and picked it up. A recipe for lasagne. Wasn’t Madison too little to be cooking ? And for posters of European cities? Alice was still playing with dolls at that age. Her own daughter was making her nine-year-old self feel inferior.

She carefully placed the recipe book back down and tiptoed out of the room.

The next bedroom door was closed and there was a note pinned to it.

KEEP OUT. DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT PERMISSION. NO GIRLS ALLOWED. THE CONSEQUENCES WILL BE DEATH.

Goodness. Alice let go of the door handle and backed away. She was a girl, after all. This must be Tom’s room. Maybe he had it booby-trapped. Little boys. How terrifying.

The next room was more welcoming. She had to push through beads hanging from the doorway. The bed was a little girl’s dream: four-poster, with a purple gauze canopy. Fairy wings hung from a hook on the wall. There were tiny glass ornaments shaped like cupcakes, dozens of stuffed animals, a makeup mirror with lights around it, hair clips and ribbons, a music box, glittery bangles and long beads, a pink portable stereo, a dress-up box filled with clothes. Alice sat down and rifled through the dress-up box. She pulled out a familiar green summer dress and held it up in front of her. She’d bought it especially for her honeymoon. It was one of the most expensive dresses she’d ever owned. Dry-clean only. Now it had a brown stain on the neckline and a jagged hemline where someone had taken to it with a pair of scissors. Alice dropped the dress, her head swimming. There was a sickly-sweet scent in the room like strawberry lip gloss. Fresh air. She definitely needed air.

She went to her own bedroom and quickly found shorts and a T-shirt in the chest of drawers, and her sneakers and sunglasses still in the rucksack she’d brought back from the hospital. She hurried back downstairs and pulled off one of the baseball caps from the hat stand. It said PHILADELPHIA on the brim.

She left the house, locking the door behind her and noting with relief that Mrs. Bergen had gone back inside.

Which way? She turned to the left and took off at a brisk pace. A woman was approaching from the other direction, wheeling a stroller with a sternfaced baby who was sitting very straight-backed and solemn. As Alice got closer, the baby frowned up at her, while the woman smiled and said, “Not running today?”

“Not today.” Alice smiled back and kept walking.

Running? Good heavens. She hated running. She remembered the way she and her friend Sophie used to shuffle around the oval in the high school, moaning and clutching their sides, while Mr. Gillespie called out, “Oh for God’s sakes, you girls!”

Sophie! She would give Sophie a call when she got home. If she hadn’t been confiding in Elisabeth, maybe Sophie knew more about what was going on with her and Nick.

She kept walking, seeing houses that had doubled in size, like cakes in the oven. Red-brick cottages had been transformed into smooth mushroom colored mansions with pillars and turrets.

Actually, it was interesting, because she was walking quicker and quicker, sort of bouncing along the pavement, and the idea of running didn’t seem that stupid at all. It seemed sort of . . . pleasant.

Was it a bad idea with a head injury? Probably a very bad idea. But maybe it would jar all those memories back into place.

She began to run.

Her arms and legs fell into a smooth rhythm; she began to breathe deep, slow breaths, in through the nostrils and out through the mouth. Oh, this felt good. It felt right. It felt like something she did.

At Rawson Street she turned left and picked up her pace. The fat red leaves of the liquid ambers trembled in the sunlight. A white car packed with teenagers screeched by, thudding with music. She passed a driveway where a group of kids were shrieking and brandishing water guns. Someone started up a lawn mower.

Up ahead, the white car with the teenagers pulled up at the corner.

A momentous feeling of panic exploded in her chest. It was happening again, just like in the car with Elisabeth. Her legs quivered so ridiculously she actually had to crouch down on the footpath, waiting for whatever it was to pass. A scream of horror was lodged in her throat. If she let it out, it would be very embarrassing.

She looked around, her hands on the ground to balance herself, her chest heaving, and saw that the children with the water pistols were still running back and forth, as if the world hadn’t turned black and evil. She looked back at the end of the street where the white car was waiting for a break in the traffic.

It was something to do with a car pulling up at that corner.

She closed her eyes and saw the brake lights of a green four-wheel-drive. The number plate said: GINA 333.

Nothing else. She felt simultaneously hot and cold, as if she had the flu. For God’s sake . Was she about to be sick again? All that custard tart. The children could clean it up with their water pistols.

A horn tooted. “Alice?”

Alice opened her eyes.

A car had pulled up on the other side of the road and a man was leaning out the window. He opened the car door and quickly crossed the street toward her.

“What happened?”

He stood in front of her and blocked out the sun. Alice squinted mutely up at him. She couldn’t make out the features of his face. He seemed extremely tall.

He bent down beside her and touched her arm.

“Did you faint?”

She could see his face now. It was an ordinary, kind, thin, middle-aged sort of face, the unassuming face of a friendly newsagent who chatted to you about the weather.

“Come on. Up you get,” he said, and lifted her by both elbows so she rose straight to her feet. “We’ll get you home.”

He led her across the street to the car and deposited her in the passenger seat. Alice couldn’t decide what to say, so she didn’t say anything. A voice from the back of the car said, “Did you fall over and hurt yourself?”

Alice turned and saw a little boy with liquid brown eyes staring at her anxiously.

She said, “I just felt a bit funny.”

The man got back in the car and started the engine. “We were on our way over to your place and then Jasper spotted you. Were you going for a run?”

“Yes,” said Alice. They stopped at the corner of Rawson and King. She thought of the car with the GINA number plate and felt nothing.

“I saw Neil Morris at the IGA this morning,” said the man. “He said he saw you being carried out of the gym on a stretcher yesterday! I left a few messages for you, but I didn’t . . .”

His voice drifted away.

“I fell over and hit my head during my ‘spin class,’” said Alice. “I’m fine today, but I shouldn’t have been running. It was stupid of me.”

The little boy called Jasper giggled in the backseat. “You’re not stupid! Sometimes my dad is stupid. Like today, he forgot three things and we had to keep stopping the car and he’d say, ‘Boofhead!’ It was pretty funny. Okay, first thing was his wallet. Second thing was his mobile phone. Third thing—ummm, okay, third thing—Dad, what was the third thing you forgot?”

They were pulling into Alice’s driveway. They stopped the car and the little boy gave up on the third thing and threw open his car door and ran toward the veranda.

The man pulled on the handbrake and then turned to look at Alice with gentle concern. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Well, I think you’d better put your feet up while Jasper and I take care of those balloons.”

Balloons. For the party, presumably.

“This is a bit awkward,” began Alice.

The man smiled. He had a lovely smile. He said, “What is?”

Alice said, “I have absolutely no idea who you are.”

(Although, in truth, there was something about the way he smiled and the feeling of his hand on her shoulder that was giving her an idea.)

The man’s hand sprang back like an elastic band.

He said, “Alice! It’s me. Dominick.”

Frannie’s Letter to Phil

Me again, Phil.

Barb and Roger took me for lunch at Alice’s place today.

Physically she seems fine, but she is definitely not herself. She didn’t remember Gina! It was disconcerting. Gina played such a big part in Alice’s life. Almost too big a part.

Barb talked about it all the way home. “Sometimes I wish Alice had never met Gina,” she fretted. “You can’t change the past,” pronounced Roger, and we were all quite overcome by his wisdom. He’s a philosopher, that fellow.

It’s not relevant now but I always thought that Gina did dominate Alice. (Alice does have a slight tendency toward hero worship.) I remember her making some comment about Alice’s outfit at Olivia’s birthday party last year. It was something along the lines of “Your such-and-such blouse looks nicer with that skirt.” Alice went straight back upstairs and changed. I noticed Nick was watching the whole incident and didn’t look too happy about it.

After Barb and Roger dropped me off, we had yet another Social Committee meeting. This time we were discussing plans for this year’s Christmas party. Mr. Mustache suggested a “Casino Night.” People loved the idea! Can you think of anything less Christmassy, Phil?

He’s the most aggravating man.

I will admit, however, that he did make a point of asking me whether Alice liked the talcum powder.

Elisabeth’s Homework for Dr. Hodges

A funny thing happened when I got home from lunch with the Infertiles. Not exactly ha-ha funny. Just stupid ironic funny.

Driving home after lunch, I kept thinking about “Giving Up.” The idea grew stronger and stronger in my head. It suddenly seems quite obvious to me. I can’t go through another miscarriage. I can’t. The thought of it happening again gives me the feeling of a block of concrete dropping on my chest. I have had enough. I didn’t know I’d had enough, but it turns out I have.

We used to keep setting those deadlines. No more after my fortieth birthday. No more after Christmas. But then each time we’d think, well, but what else is there to do? We’d traveled, we’d been to lots of parties, lots of movies and concerts, we’d slept in. We’d done all those things that people with children seem to miss so passionately. We didn’t want those things anymore. We wanted a baby.

I remember thinking about how mothers were prepared to run into burning buildings to save their children’s lives. I thought I should be able to go through a bit more suffering, a bit more inconvenience to give my children life. It made me feel noble. But now I realize I’m a crazy woman running into a burning house for children who don’t exist. My children were never going to exist. They were always in my mind. That’s what’s so embarrassing about all this. Each time I sobbed for a lost baby, it was like sobbing over the end of a relationship when I’d never even gone out with the guy. My babies weren’t babies. They were just microscopic clusters of cells that weren’t ever going to be anything else. They were just my own desperate hopes. Dream babies.

And people have to give up on dreams. Aspiring ballet dancers have to accept that their bodies aren’t right for ballet. Nobody even feels that sorry for them. Oh, well, think of another job. My body isn’t right for babies. Bad luck.

At the pedestrian crossing I saw a pregnant woman, a woman pushing a pram, a woman holding a child’s hand. And I actually felt nothing, Dr. Hodges. Nothing! That’s a big thing for an Infertile—to see a pregnant woman and feel nothing. No knife-in-the-stomach feeling of bitterness. No ugly envy twisting my mouth.

So here’s the funny thing.

I got home, and for once, Ben wasn’t in the garage working on his car. He was sitting at the kitchen table with paperwork spread out all around him, and I noticed his eyes were a bit red and puffy.

He said, “I’ve been thinking.”

I told him so had I, but he could go first.

He said he’d been thinking about what Alice had said last week and he’d decided she was one hundred percent right.

Oh, Alice .

Alice sat on the couch and watched Dominick using a helium tank to blow up blue and silver balloons. He and Jasper had finally got sick of breathing in the helium and talking in chipmunk voices. Jasper had laughed so hard at his dad squeakily singing “Over the Rainbow” that Alice had worried he might stop breathing. Now he was outside in the backyard, using a remote control to expertly operate a miniature helicopter.

“He’s very cute,” said Alice, watching him. She’d gathered that Jasper was in the same class as Olivia. Her daughter. The one with the fat blond pigtails.

“When he’s not being a psychotic monster,” said Dominick.

Alice laughed. Perhaps too much. She didn’t really get parent humor. Maybe he really was a psychotic monster and that wasn’t funny.

“So,” she said. “How long have you and I been, ummm, seeing each other for?”

Dominick glanced quickly at her and away again. He tied the end of the balloon and watched it float straight up to the ceiling with the others.

Without looking at her, he said, “About a month.”

Alice had told Dominick that the doctors had said her memory loss was only temporary. He looked terrified and seemed to be talking to her gently and carefully, as if she had a mild intellectual disability. Unless that was the way he always talked to her, of course.

“And it’s, ah, going well?” asked Alice recklessly. It was bizarre. Had she kissed him? Slept with him? He was very tall. Not unattractive. Just a stranger. She felt both repelled and mildly titillated by the idea. It reminded her of gurgly, giggly teenage conversations. Oh my God, imagine having sex with him .

“Yup,” said Dominick. He was doing something funny and nervous with his mouth. He was one of those awkward, geeky types.

He picked up another balloon and hooked it over the nozzle of the helium tank. He looked at her properly, full in the face, and said, almost sternly, “Well, I think so, anyway.” Actually, he was not unattractive.

“Oh.” Alice felt flustered and exposed. “Well, good. I guess.”

She longed for Nick to be sitting next to her. His hand warm on her leg. Claiming her. So she could enjoy talking, maybe even flirting, with this perfectly nice man in an appropriate, safe way.

“You seem different,” said Dominick.

“In what way?”

“I don’t know how to explain it.”

He didn’t say anything else. Apparently he wasn’t a talker, like Nick. She wondered what she saw in him. Did she even like him that much? He seemed sort of dull.

“What do you do for a living?” she asked. The standard dating question. Trying to unfairly slot him into a personality type.

“I’m an accountant,” he said.

Fabulous. “Oh, right.”

He grinned and said, “Just testing to see if you really had lost your memory. I’m a grocer. A fruit and veg man.”

“Really?” She was imagining free mangoes and pineapples.

“Nah!”

Oh, God, this man was a nerd.

“I’m a school principal.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m being serious now. I’m principal at the school.”

“What school?”

“Where your kids go. That’s how we met.”

The school principal. Straight to the principal’s office!

“So you’ll be there tonight? At this party?”

“Yes. I’m sort of wearing two hats, because Jasper is in kindergarten, and this party is for parents of kindergarten kids. So I’ll be . . .”

He had a habit of not completely finishing his sentences. His voice just drifted away, as if he thought it was so obvious how the sentence finished there was no point saying it out loud.

“And why am I hosting it?” asked Alice. It seemed extraordinary. Why would she even think of doing such a thing?

Dominick raised his eyebrows. “Well, because you and your friend Kate Harper are Class Mums.”

“Like classy mothers?”

He smiled uncertainly. “The Class Mums arrange social events for all the other mothers, and communicate with the teachers, organize the reading roster, and, ah, that sort of . . .”

Oh Lord. It sounded horrendous. She’d become one of those volunteering, involved type of people. She was probably really proud and smug; she’d always known she had a tendency toward smugness. She could just imagine herself swanning about in her beautiful clothes.

“You do a lot for the school,” said Dominick. “We’re very lucky to have you. Speaking of which, it’s the big day coming up! Wow! I hope you’re going to be well enough for it!”

That man on the treadmill at the gym had mentioned a “big day,” too. “What do you mean?” asked Alice with a sense of foreboding.

“You’re getting us into the Guinness Book of Records.”

She smiled, ready to laugh at his next joke.

“No, really. You don’t remember at all? You’re baking the world’s biggest lemon meringue pie on Mother’s Day. It’s a big event. All the money raised is going to breast cancer research.”

Alice remembered her dream about the giant rolling pin. Ah. The rolling pin wasn’t a symbol at all. It was just a giant rolling pin. Her dreams were always so disappointingly obvious.

“I’m baking it?” she said in a panic. “This huge lemon meringue pie?”

“No, no. You’ve got one hundred mums baking it,” said Dominick. “It’s going to be amazing.” He knotted the end of another balloon together. Alice looked up and saw that the ceiling was now covered with blue and silver balloons.

Tonight she was hosting a party and next weekend she was planning to break a world record. Good Lord. What had she become?

She looked back down and saw that Dominick was staring at her.

“I’ve worked it out,” he said. “What’s different about you.”

He sat down beside her. Much too close. Alice tried to move unobtrusively away from him, but it was too hard on the squishy leather sofa without making a production of it. So she sat passively with her hands in her lap, schoolgirl style; surely he wasn’t going to do anything, with his son just a few feet away.

He was so close, she could see tiny black whiskers on his chin and smell him: toothpaste, washing powder. (Nick smelled of coffee, aftershave, last night’s garlic.)

Up close, his eyes were the same liquid chocolate as his son’s. (Nick’s were either hazel or green, depending on the light, the irises were rimmed with gold, and his eyelashes were so fair, they looked white in the sun.)

Dominick leaned in closer. Oh sweet heavens above, the school principal was going to kiss her, and it would be wrong to slap his face because she might have already kissed him before.

No. He pressed his thumb in between her eyebrows. What was he doing ? Was it some sort of weird middle-aged-people ritual? Was she meant to do it back to him?

“You’ve lost your frown,” he said. “You always have this little frown right here, as if you’re concentrating, or worrying about something, even when you’re happy. Now it’s . . .”

He took his thumb away. Alice exhaled with relief. She said, “I don’t know if you’re meant to tell a woman she has a permanent frown.” It came out sounding flirtatious.

“Either way, you’re still gorgeous,” he said, and put his hand to the back of her head and kissed her.

It was not unpleasant.

“I saw that!”

Jasper stood in front of them, his helicopter dangling by a rotor from one hand. His eyes were wide and delighted.

Alice put her fingers to her mouth. She’d kissed another man. She hadn’t just let him kiss her; she’d kissed him back. Out of nothing more than interest really. Politeness. (Maybe the teeniest flicker of attraction.) Guilt blossomed like heartburn across her chest.

Jasper chortled. “I’m going to tell Olivia that my dad kissed her mum!” He danced on the spot, punching his fists in the air, his face screwed up in an ecstasy of pleasure and disgust. “My dad kissed her mum! My dad kissed her mum!”

Goodness. Were Alice’s own children like this? Sort of . . . demented?

Dominick touched Alice gently and respectfully on her arm, and stood up. He grabbed Jasper and held him upside down by his ankles. Jasper shrieked with gasps of laughter and dropped his helicopter.

Alice watched them and felt a weird sense of dissociation. Did she really just kiss that man? That shy school principal? That jolly dad?

Maybe it was her head injury that made her do it. Yes, she had a medical reason. She was not herself.

Then she remembered there was no need to feel guilty, because of Nick’s affair with that Gina girl. Right. Now they were even.

Jasper noticed that a part of his helicopter had broken off and he yelled and squirmed as though in terrible agony. Dominick said, “What? What is it, mate?” and turned him upright.

Alice’s head began to ache again.

When was Elisabeth coming back? She needed Elisabeth.

Elisabeth’s Homework for Dr. Hodges

As I was driving back over to Alice’s place, I thought about Gina. I often think about her now. She has acquired an aura of mystery. Once upon a time I just found her irritating.

I’m not sure why I disliked her so much from the beginning. Maybe it was just because it was clear that she and Michael and Alice and Nick had formed such a cozy foursome. They used to be in and out of each other’s places all the time. No need to knock. Lots of private jokes. Feeding each other’s kids. Gina would walk straight over from her house in her swimming costume—no T-shirt, no towel wrapped under her armpits—just entirely unselfconscious, like a child. She had a softish, round, mocha-colored body. Beautiful jiggly breasts that dragged the men’s eyes along with them. I think I remember some story about them all getting drunk and swimming naked in the pool one summer’s night. So very seventies of them.

She and Alice were all bright and giggly and swilling champagne, and I was a stiff cardboard cutout. My laugh was forced. It seemed to happen so quickly that she knew my sister better than me.

Gina’s kids were IVF pregnancies. She asked lots of expertly interested questions. She would sympathetically rub my hand (very touchy-feely type, soft, sweet-smelling kisses on each cheek every time you saw her; I once heard Roger say to her, “Oh, I do like the way you European ladies kiss hello!”). Gina said she understood exactly what I was going through. And quite probably she did, except that it was all behind her now. I could tell her memories were rose-colored because of the happy ending. You’d think I would have been inspired by her—she was a success story. She’d traveled across the infertility minefield and got safely to the other side. But I found her patronizing. It’s easy to think the minefield wasn’t that bad once you’re safely watching other people get blown up. She couldn’t imagine her children not existing. They were too real, filling up her mind. I felt like I couldn’t complain to Alice because Gina was probably in her ear, telling her, with the benefit of experience, that it wasn’t that bad and I was just whinging and being melodramatic.

One night I called Alice to tell her that we’d lost another baby.

I had terrible nausea with that pregnancy. I gagged every time I cleaned my teeth. I had to run out of a cinema because the smell of the woman’s perfume sitting next to me (Opium) combined with her popcorn made me retch. I’d thought for sure it must be a sign that this one was going to be the lucky one. Ha-ha. It meant nothing.

When I rang Alice, she answered the phone laughing. Gina was in the background, yelling out something about pineapple. They were inventing cocktails for some school function. Of course Alice stopped laughing when I told her the news and put on her sad voice, but she couldn’t quite stamp out the leftover laughter. I felt like the boring sister with yet another boring miscarriage, ruining the good times for everybody with her slightly disgusting gynecological bad news. Alice must have signaled to Gina, because her laughter stopped like a switch had been turned off.

I told her not to worry, that we could talk later, and hung up fast. Then I threw the phone across the room and it smashed a beautiful vase that I’d bought in Italy when I was twenty, and I lay on the couch and screamed into a cushion. I still grieve for the vase.

Alice didn’t call me the next day. And the day after that was when Madison ran through the French doors. So we were distracted and busy at the hospital worrying about her. My miscarriage got forgotten in between cocktails with Gina and Madison. Alice never even mentioned it. I wondered if she forgot.

I think that’s when the coldness started between us.

Yes, I know. Petty and childish, but there you have it.