“I have to be out of my place in the next couple of weeks.” I try to ignore my anxiety. “Since it’s an on-campus apartment, and I’m graduating . . .well, I gotta go.”

“If my scholarship didn’t require me to live on campus—”

“I know,” I cut in. “Don’t think twice about it. That still wouldn’t solve everything. Having a baby with no job? I was hoping to have heard from Richter about the internship by now.”

Unless vomiting on Jared ruined my chances. Couldn’t blame him for thinking twice about hiring me.

“Maybe I can work at the bookstore for a little longer,” I say.

It sounds ridiculous even to my ears. Work at the campus bookstore instead of living in luxury with Caleb when there’s nothing holding me in Atlanta? I’m in some kind of limbo until I hear back from Richter, but a hasty move could be the wrong one. It could change the course of my life, and as much as Caleb keeps pressuring me, I won’t be rushed. I know if I want to move when he does he’ll pay all my expenses, but that would feel like one more step in the direction I promised myself I’d never take.

Needing something to do, I press my phone home button. Two missed calls.

“Hmmm. I missed a call from Mama,” I murmur. “And some number I don’t know.”

“How is Aunt Priscilla?” Lo’s voice is a polite query, but I know she doesn’t enjoy discussing my mother, and her mother even less.

“She’s fine.” I sigh, my heart as weary as my body. “Of course, she wants me to ‘make the most’ of this pregnancy. Wants me to marry Caleb and do anything I can to secure my future. At least, the only future she imagines for me.”

“Hey, our futures won’t look like our mamas’ pasts,” she assures me. “Don’t you worry about that.” Lotus grips my hand, the green stone of the ring she wears glinting under the hospital’s fluorescent lights. I link our fingers so my ring, identical to hers, winks back at us, too.

“Remember when MiMi gave us these?” I ask, a tiny smile tugging at my lips as I remember one of the few times our great-grandmother visited us in New Orleans.

“Of course I do.” She scrunches her face and clears her throat, signaling she is about to do her famous MiMi imitation. “Mes filles, wear these always and have my protection.”

I giggle at Lo’s heavily accented, but spot-on, imitation. I haven’t been around MiMi much, but when I am I only ever understand half of what she says since she switches seamlessly from French to English. She blends her languages the way she blends her faiths, saying Hail Marys one minute and praying to the Great Spirits the next. She wears rosaries around her neck and scatters her potions and gris-gris throughout the house.

“These rings haven’t failed to protect us since we put them on,” Lo says, the laughter leaving her face. She lays her hand against my stomach. “It’ll protect you now.”

I barely stop my eyes from rolling. To be a college-educated, sophisticated millennial, Lo puts more stock in MiMi’s voodoo mumbo jumbo than she should. She did live with the woman for years, so some of the superstitions were bound to rub off on her, but I think it’s a load of crap that pulls the wool over people’s eyes and preys on their fears and ignorance for monetary gain. I don’t say any of that because Lo gets defensive, and I get irritated, and right now I need the harmony between us more than anything.

“You’re right.” I rub my thumb across the gold band on my ring finger before continuing quietly. “It’s just . . . there’s a part of me that wants this pregnancy to be over, Lo.”

Her eyes snap to my face. My confession might draw judgement from someone else, but Lotus’s face softens with sympathy. She understands how hard I’ve worked.

This baby is a life. I know that. I respect it, but my dreams are alive, too, and I wonder if one must die for the other to thrive.

“I get it.” She pulls one knee up under her on the bed. “We’ll know what’s going on soon and go from there.”

I nod, my stomach muscles clenching while we wait. What if the baby isn’t okay? What if the baby is okay? The two possibilities send my life spiraling in radically different directions, and my fear spirals with them. To distract myself, I tap the unknown number alert and see a voicemail. I open the voicemail and put it on speaker.

“Iris, hi,” a vaguely familiar, deep male voice says from my phone. “It’s Jared Foster.”

My eyes go wide.

“The internship,” I whisper-hiss at Lotus, who stretches her eyes wide back at me.

“I hope you’re feeling better since the last time we saw each other.” Jared’s voice holds a touch of humor. “I know you felt bad about what happened. Don’t. My dry cleaning was tax-deductible.”

Even though I’m not in the same room with Jared, embarrassment burns my cheeks. Vomit. Seriously?

“I’ll just get right to it,” Jared continues. “Richter is offering you one of the internship spots. We’d expect you in Chicago in the next month, and we’d need you ready to travel pretty much right away. There’s several deals we’re about to close, and you’d have to jump right in.”

His low chuckle interrupts the list of expectations. “You said you were ready to work, to do whatever it took,” he says. “I hope you meant it. Give me a call so we can talk details. Congratulations.”

My fingers tremble over the phone, and I immediately want to replay the message. I’ve been anxious, biting my lips all day, but now they stretch into a wide grin. In the midst of so many things going wrong, something is going so right.

“Oh, my gosh.” Lotus squeals, her eyes lit with as much joy as she’d have for her own good fortune. “This is amazing, Bo.”

“I know,” I squeal back. “He told me it would take a couple months to decide, but I had almost given up—”

The door swings open in the middle of my sentence. The doctor walks in, followed by Caleb, who lowers the phone from his ear and slides it into his pocket, obviously just finishing a call.

It all comes crashing back. I’m in the hospital, three months pregnant, and bleeding heavily. What felt like the greatest moment of my life now feels like a cruel joke—a carrot dangled in front of me and snatched away. Lotus grips my hand again, lining our rings up and giving my fingers a reassuring squeeze.

“We’ve looked at everything, Iris.” Dr. Rimmel’s eyes are kind, and her expression is serious. “You have a rather large subchorionic hematoma.”

“English, Doc,” Lotus says with a wry look. “No speak medical-ese.”

Dr. Rimmel’s lips twitch, and I’m so glad Lotus is here, or I’d be going crazy. Caleb comes to sit on the bed beside me, his concern and frustration all over his face.

“Yeah, what’s that actually mean?” he demands. “We’ve been waiting forever.”

Where Lotus’s comment lightened the atmosphere, Caleb’s injects so much weight, Dr. Rimmel’s slight smile disappears, and her shoulders square.

“To put it simply,” Dr. Rimmel says, giving Caleb a pointed look, “the placenta detaches from the uterus, which causes clots and the bleeding we’re seeing.”

“The baby?” I force myself to ask, not sure what I want to hear her say. “Is the baby okay?’

“Yes, the baby’s fine, but we need to put you on bed rest to make sure everything stays fine.”

“Bed rest?” I croak. “I . . . like full-on stuck in the bed? For how long?”

“As long as it takes, Iris,” Caleb interjects sternly. “We’ll follow instructions to the letter.”

We don’t have to lie in bed for God knows how long. I do. Of course, I’ll do whatever the doctor recommends, but Caleb has no right to be cavalier about my life, my time, my body.

I bite my tongue because this isn’t the time to assert myself. I need to understand what is required and set Caleb straight later.

“For how long?” I ask again.

“We’ll start with full home bed rest,” Dr. Rimmel says. “And assess in a few weeks.”

The word home hits me hard. I have to be out of my on-campus apartment. The university has extended as much grace as possible, and I’ve got a few prospects, but nothing in stone.

Full home bed rest?

I don’t have a home, much less a bed to rest in.

“I’ll take care of her and the baby.” Caleb glances at me. “We’ll get your things moved into my place right away.”

A sense of helplessness washes over me. I clench the hospital gown in my fists. I hate feeling out of control in my own life, like an actor on someone else’s stage, my every move directed.

“It’s not just bed rest, but pelvic rest, too.” She gives Caleb a stern look. “That means low activity and no sex.”

Caleb’s face falls, but for me it’s a little bit of a silver lining. I haven’t wanted to have sex for weeks. I chalked it up to hormones, but maybe it’s Caleb’s high-handedness that’s been turning me off. At least this baby and this damn bed rest give me a good excuse to abstain.

I hate to think this way, but when I glance at my phone and remember Jared’s voicemail about Chicago, no sex feels like the only good thing coming out of this. MiMi’s talisman ring winks at me from my lap. I don’t know if it’s working or not. For now, the baby is protected, but my plans for the future are in definite jeopardy.

8

August

Make the best of a bad situation.

That’s not completely fair or accurate. I’m living in San Diego, a city with near-perfect weather year-round. I signed a thirty-million-dollar NBA contract. You’ll find countless dead hoop dreams in every high school gym and on any neighborhood playground. I’m one lucky son of a bitch.

I get it.

But beginning on a team that probably won’t have a winning season for years sucks. I’m already thinking ahead to the end of my rookie contract and how I’ll get out of San Diego. Coach Kirby’s voice in my head calls me spoiled, ungrateful, and a pussy. He would never tolerate this kind of defeatist attitude. And there are some plusses here.