Chapter 3
When I arrive at Dr. Mantillard’s office for my twenty--week ultrasound, Jesse is already there. He jumps up the moment he sees me.
“Hi,” I say, giving him a quick hug. “Sorry I’m late. Crazy day.”
We walk up to the receptionist’s desk. I’d thought about her when my screening came back without any issues, how I’d freaked out for nothing. Before I can even give her my name to check in, she passes Jesse a dollar bill.
“What’s that about?” I ask, turning to him.
He smiles and passes the bill back, saying, “I can’t take payment for a bet I knew I’d win.” He turns to me. “I told Georgia here that you’d be late. She insisted that no first--time mom is late to the second trimester ultrasound, because it’s too exciting.” He grins. “Do I know you or what?”
I punch him lightly on the arm.
Georgia laughs. “The good news, I guess, is that Dr. Mantillard is also running late. We’ll get you into the exam room.”
In the room, Jesse and I are talking about baby names when Dr. Mantillard flusters in, apologizing for her lateness and booting up the ultrasound machine. She pushes my leggings down and squirts warm gel onto my abdomen. Then she starts moving the wand around my belly, pressing down gently.
Immediately a wha--wha--wha--wha sound fills the room.
“That’s the heartbeat,” the doctor says.
On the screen, a grainy black field is cut by a shifting white amoeba, one that morphs and moves as the wand shifts.
The wand stills, and the image on the screen fixes into a profile—-tiny nose, stubborn jaw, bent knee. “There you are,” Dr. Mantillard says.
All the breath punches out of me.
Until this moment, the baby wasn’t real. But here she is, in black and white, the pearls of her spine and her little fists, boxing at shadows.
“She’s moving,” I gasp.
“He’s perfect,” Jesse murmurs.
While we stare, enraptured, the doctor clicks a mouse to take measurements. “The baby is indeed pretty perfect, scientifically speaking,” she says. “Am I right in understanding that you’d prefer to not know the sex until you deliver?”
We could have found out from the NIPT blood test but had chosen to be surprised. But now, seeing this tiny baby in black and white, boxing at shadows, I can’t wait anymore. I raise my eyebrows at Jesse, who grins and nods.
“We’ve changed our minds,” I breathe.
The doctor shifts the ultrasound wand again, pushing a little deeper, trying to get the fetus to shift. “It’s a girl,” she confirms. “We’ll get some of the pictures printed out. Congratulations, Mom and Dad.”
Mom.
The word washes over me, and I think of my own mom, at her own prenatal appointments.
When Dr. Mantillard slips out of the room, Jesse brushes his lips against mine. “We made a human being.” He covers my abdomen with his palm. “You can be as late as you want for the rest of your life. I’ll wait.”
I cup my hand over his. I am smiling so hard my cheeks ache. “How about Anna Eloise,” I suggest.
He grins back. “Eloise Anna.”
Normally, we negotiate family holidays with the delicacy of a UN resolution.
This year, my parents will be traveling to Hawaii with my dad’s airline points over Thanksgiving, and Jesse’s parents are doing a Christmas cruise.
So we will spend December 25 with my dad and Evie, and Thanksgiving at Kate’s with Jesse’s family.
Jesse and I bring wine and nonalcoholic sparkling cider.
Kate’s spent most of the day in the kitchen, basting and mashing and whisking, and every time I offer to help she makes the sign of the cross like I’m a vampire and shoos me out.
Jesse’s playing a spirited game of Go Fish with Anna, and Gary is using all his engineering skills to safety--proof the deep--frying vat where the turkey will be cooked.
That’s how I wind up on the couch between Jesse’s parents, Brian and Sara, watching a Netflix movie.
It’s about a kid with cancer whose illness is tearing her family apart.
This would be depressing enough on Thanksgiving . . . but for the life of me, I cannot imagine why the Fitzgeralds, who experienced this situation, don’t just watch The Great British Bake Off.
It’s nearly the end of the movie, and the girl has dark circles under her eyes and an IV line snaked into her thin arm. Her mother is sitting on the edge of her hospital bed.
I glance surreptitiously at Brian. He still has the build of a fireman, broad and strong, and his arms are crossed tight across his chest. “That’s bullshit,” he says. “She’d have a port--a--cath. I hate when they fuck up the details.”
I turn toward Sara, and then back to the television. How do you do it? How do you let a child into a world where terrible things happen?
I lurch up from the couch and push through the first doorway I can find: the kitchen.
Fortunately, Kate’s not there—-she and Gary are visible through the window, peering down into the vat of oil.
I use a dish towel to mop my face as Sara walks in.
“They had a pizza party!” she explodes. “The kid is dying, and they had a pizza party. We read the novel in book club, but the movie is nothing like the book. I can’t even watch the rest of it.
” She stops, noticing my tears. “Molly?”
“Onions,” I snuffle.
“I might believe you . . . if you were actually chopping onions.” Sara touches my arm. “You all right?”
“I can’t watch kids dying.” I choke on a laugh. “Hormones.”
She looks at me with sympathy. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Before I know it I am spewing out every panicked thought in my head.
“Am I a terrible mother if I bottle--feed? Is it cruel to sleep--train when it means letting the baby cry? And why would anyone do baby--led weaning if it means that the baby chokes on food at the start? Jesus, how do I know what I’m doing is right? ”
Sara puts her arms around me. “First,” she says, taking the dish towel gently out of my hands, “you need to stop doomscrolling. Second . . . you don’t know what you’re doing is right.”
I’ve forgotten that she has her own cross to bear about bad parenting decisions.
“You can make all the informed choices; you can convince yourself that you’re putting your child’s welfare first. But,” she says, “sometimes the world just decides for you . . . and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Sara folds me into her arms, gently rubbing circles on my back. She smells like vanilla and although she’s small and slight, she is strong. “What if,” I whisper into her neck, “she grows up to hate me?”
For a moment, her hand stops moving. “Then at least,” she muses, “she grew up.”
A few weeks later, Jesse gets a call that his services are needed in California.
Even as Jesse insists that he shouldn’t be leaving me alone, he’s tossing clothes into an overnight bag and his eyes are bright with anticipation.
“Ninety percent of wildfires are caused by human activities,” he says.
“Brush burning, campfires, cars without mufflers.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re intentional,” I point out.
“Nope,” Jesse agrees. “But it also doesn’t mean they’re not.”
The call came from a contact at the U.S.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who had chased down over two hundred leads, reviewed a hundred hours of video, and interviewed sixty people of interest. After narrowing their theory about how the fires had started, the L.A.
fire chief told them about a polygraph guy in Rhode Island whose expertise included arson.
Because of his success, Jesse had been certified in several states, including California.
“Maybe you should stay at Kate’s,” Jesse says, tossing his toothbrush and deodorant into his suitcase.
“I’m a grown adult,” I reply. “Plus, Kate and Gary left today for New York, remember? They’re taking Anna to see the Rockettes.”
“I don’t like the idea of you being alone.”
I touch my belly. “I’ve got company.” Rising on tiptoe, I kiss his jaw. “Go, already.”
Jesse zips the suitcase. He slips a carry--on over the handle, the protective briefcase into which the polygraph machine is carefully packed. I follow him to the front door. “Don’t forget to lock this behind me,” he tells me.
“Yes, Detective Sergeant.” I sigh.
“And don’t drive over the speed limit.”
“Tell you what,” I say. “I’ll even stay off the booze while you’re gone.”
My eyes soften when I see the war playing out on his features, the reluctance to leave me despite the thrill of the intellectual challenge ahead of him. “You are literally heading into a raging wildfire, Jesse,” I say. “I’m not the one we need to worry about.”
The irony does not escape me: hours after Jesse’s transcontinental flight takes him into the heart of a fire, Rhode Island is blanketed in snow and ice.
Mid--December is early for a blizzard, but not unexpected.
My team is mobilized to react, because in situations like this, an emergency is practically guaranteed.
Toby and I have been in constant contact, revisiting what happened in 2013 during Blizzard Nemo.
Feet of snow and biting wind are devastating enough, but they inevitably lead to power outages.
It’s late afternoon, and I am stationed in front of the television, watching the breaking news reports with updates about the storm, when Jesse calls. It’s only been a day, but his absence feels like a punch. “Hey!” I greet. “How is it going?”
“It’s so much devastation, Mol. And the air quality is so bad I’m masked up. I literally watched the fire cross the highway today—-just whipped over the asphalt, three cars ahead of my Uber.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. ATF took me to the place they think the fire started.”
“And do you? Think that’s where it started?”
“Unclear. In about three hours, their main suspect is coming in for his polygraph. Dude had a vehicle that went off the road. They think he revved his car to get it free, and that ignited an engine fire, but he’s denying it. Anyway, I wanted to let you know my cell will be off for a while.”