“I can’t get married anymore.”

Emma had been ruminating over it through her many hours of half sleep, going in and out of consciousness, in and out of dreams with no shape and days with no time. There was something she and Jamie had been trying to protect, trying desperately to hold on to, but she couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t even remember what it was.

She’d told Jamie not to come over, and he waited a few days. He sent groceries from Fresh Direct. He sent a giant box of fruit from Dean & Deluca. Then finally he sent himself. He held her on the couch in the living room of the house on Carroll Street.

“We don’t have to think about that,” he said to her.

“I don’t want to see you for a while. I just want to stay home and lie in my bed.”

“Okay. I understand.”

“I don’t want to think about the future or anyone in it.”

“Okay.”

He was holding her closer than ever and it felt good. But it also felt confusing and forward-leaning and reminded her of things she didn’t want to have to think about.

“That means you untangling from me and leaving,” she said.

“Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I come tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Next week?”

“No. I don’t know. I can’t think about it. I don’t want to make any decisions. I just know I need a break and I need you to listen to me.”

“Okay.” He put his forehead against her cheek. “I don’t want to but I will.”

“Thanks.”

“The thing that’s hard is that my mind is here with you all the time. I want to help.”

“I know, but you can’t right now.”

He sighed. “Okay. I’ll stay away until you’re ready for me to come back.”

“That’s good.”

“In the meantime will you promise to call if there’s anything you need? If there’s anything I can do? Anything at all, no matter how big or small.”

“I promise I will.”

“Okay.”

“So now you have to take your arms away,” she said. She was crying again and so was he.

“All right. I will.” He did. “Em?”

“What?” she asked. He wasn’t moving.

“You have to take your arms from around me too.”

—

In and out of her long hours and days of dreaming, Emma thought about the tiny apple tree given to her father by her mother on the last birthday he had while they were still married. It was late October, so they left it in its box in the shed for the winter, to plant in the spring.

But sometime after that was when things started coming apart between her parents. Spring and summer came and went and nobody opened the box. It just sat month after month. “Well, it’s long dead by now,” her father said when another winter passed, but she noticed he didn’t throw it away.

Emma was probably five or six at the time. She imagined how her mother felt each time she went for a rake or shovel and saw the tall skinny brown box unopened. It was another bitter stalemate between her parents with another innocent victim languishing inside.

Quinn was the one who finally dragged the box out of the shed. Emma helped her open it. They both shut their eyes, scared to see the sad remains. The sapling did look scraggly and hopeless, but Quinn wouldn’t let them throw it away. She got Adam to help dig a hole at the edge of the woods. They undid the roots very carefully and put it in the ground, even though they knew it was dead.

Are we planting or burying? she remembered asking Quinn.

Same thing, Quinn said, and she sat with the little scrap of tree for hours and talked to it.

Maybe it was then that Quinn embarked on her peculiar belief system about growing. Every day they ran out to check on the small tree first thing and last thing.

Within six days two tiny green tendrils pushed out of the ends of two skinny brown twigs. She remembered the damp quiet of the morning air, the sound of their breathing, hers and Quinn’s, the wonder. The next day there were more. By the end of the second week pale green leaves sprouted from every dry brown stick.

After a month they brought their father out, each holding a hand. “That’s not the old bare root apple tree,” he said.

They nodded solemnly.

“Can’t be.”

“It is.”

He walked away from it shaking his head, chalking it up to some childhood vagueness.

At the end of the summer Lila saw it too. “Your father finally planted it?”

Emma looked at Quinn, half frozen, and Quinn nodded faintly. It was the only wisp of a lie she’d ever known Quinn to tell.

—

Several times a day for several days in a row Emma walked down the dark hall and listened attentively at her mother’s door. Sometimes the sobs scared her away. Sometimes the silence scared her more. Today she heard a sigh, and it sounded like an invitation.

“Mom?” She pushed the door open a little of the way.

“Emma?”

“Yes.”

“Come in.”

Her mother sat up in bed. The shades were pulled down, but not the whole way down today. Lila wore a faded T-shirt and yoga pants. Her blond hair was going in the direction of dreadlocks.

Emma got in bed next to her. “Can I rub your back?” It was what Lila always said to them—when they slept late and she crawled in, when they stayed home sick from school.

“Okay,” Lila said, and turned onto her stomach, her arms pinned under her.

Emma glided her hand back and forth, using her mother’s most comforting technique.

“What’s it like out in the world?” her mom asked faintly.

“Same as it was. Mostly. For other people. Less than it was for us.”

Lila nodded into her pillow. “It will always be less. But will it be something?”

“It will be something.”

“She was so easy to love. I took her for granted.”

“We all did.” Emma began to cry.

“She was the reason I became a midwife, you know.”

“I know,” Emma said.

“She was born in my bed. In this very bed. Can you believe that?”

Emma knew these stories, but she could sense it gave her mother solace to tell them again.

“There was an amazing, beautiful snowstorm the night she was born. Your father was desperately trying to shovel out the car. He wanted to call an ambulance, but I told him no. What could be less conducive to labor than an ambulance?”

Emma didn’t know.

“So instead he found Monica, who lived on Union Street at the time.”

Emma knew this was the Monica who also delivered Mattie and Ray, and became Lila’s mentor and eventually her partner.

“Quinn was born in her caul. It was like a shimmering veil over her head and face. Monica had never seen a caulbearer with her own eyes before. She said it was a sign.”

“Of what?”

“Of a special destiny.”

“It was.”

“It was.”

Lila’s breathing got slower. They lay together for a long time in silence until she thought her mother might be sleeping.

“How is Jamie?” Lila asked softly. She wasn’t sleeping.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Because of me?”

“Because of everything.”

Lila turned back over so she could face her. “You really love him, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I can tell.”

“I wish you’d noticed that before.”

“Let me tell you, so do I.” Lila closed her eyes. Tears spilled out of them, onto the sheets.

Emma propped her head up on her elbow. “Yesterday I said to Mattie, ‘I like myself better when I’m with him.’ And you know what Mattie said?”

Lila shook her head.

“She said, ‘I like you better when you’re with him too.’ ”

Lila smiled the ghost of a smile.

“It’s true. I admit I am a softer, calmer person when he’s around.”

“You should tell him that. You need to be with him.”

Emma sighed. “That’s a little funny, coming from you.”

Lila propped her head up too. “God, I know.” The tears resumed. “I recant. I regret. So many things. Day after day I lie here and that’s what I do.”

There was so much in those words, feelings just laid bare, that Emma started to cry too. Her mother wasn’t even trying to protect herself anymore. “Oh, Mom.”

“I know, sweetheart. I know.” Lila patted Emma’s hair, smoothed it back from her face.

It was what Emma wanted, for her mother to finally lay down arms, but in another way, it was scarier still.