15

Liza

Her head. It was a million jackhammers. A blinding light that wouldn’t stop shining. A siren that wouldn’t go quiet. Until recently, she hadn’t had a migraine since she’d started practicing yoga and meditation seriously. Not until the IVF, this push for a baby, to start a family. It was something Mako wanted very badly. Apparently everyone did IVF these days—a new norm. Not okay to just try for a while and let it happen naturally. Of course, they had been trying for over a year. Too long, according to Mako. They needed help.

And they got it. Just not the way either of them thought.

She lay very still, knowing that any sudden movement now would result in waves of pain, a terrible bout of nausea. She’d tried to will it all away.

She could still smell the smoke from the grill, the meat. It turned her stomach; she covered her nose with the bedsheets. She never complained about it, even forced herself to eat a bit of meat or fish on occasion because she knew it made Mako happy, but the smell of charred flesh revolted her. The weird chef, his terrible stories. Did anyone else notice that sculpture made from bones? It was all—just awful.

Downstairs they were all laughing and shouting, the volume coming up slowly as the evening wound on.

They were loud people—Mako and Cricket. Hannah and Bruce less so.

The hot tub was right below the master bedroom window. How long would it be before they were all in there? Probably getting high?

She should try to rally again.

This looked bad. She was the hostess after all.

But the pain, the nausea. It kept her rooted and still, wanting to be a part of the fun but stuck in the darkness. Though, of course, she was never really a part of it. Not with those three. Everyone else was on the outside of that group, even Bruce. But it was fine, really. They had all that history. And Liza knew she held herself apart a little, even if in her heart she didn’t want to.

She’d planned to do a special morning class from the deck with the stunning view and the sun rising. But she doubted she’d been in any shape to do that. Maybe Hannah would step in as a guest instructor; she had a beautiful practice.

Liza tried to rouse, to push herself to a seated position, but the pain made the room spin and she wound up back where she started.

Earlier, when Mako followed her up from the table, he’d lain beside her for a while, holding a cold compress to her head.

“I hate seeing you like this,” he’d whispered.

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. What can I do?”

“Just go enjoy yourself,” she’d assured him. “This will pass. I’ll be fine by morning. Once the meds kick in.”

She hadn’t taken them. She couldn’t, but she couldn’t tell him why. Not yet.

She’d looked over at him and he’d been watching her with that intense searching stare he had, as if he could see right through all her layers, straight to her core. It had turned her into a puddle of herself the night they met, and never failed to move her even years later. But there was something else there lately—a sadness, a heaviness.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He took her hand and pressed his lips against it, averting his eyes.

“What is it?”

He hadn’t been himself. Not for a while. Does he know? she wondered. On some level does he know? Or did he find something on her phone, her computer. She was careful. But the digital realm was his natural habitat. He knew all its back alleys and secret doorways.

“Remember those tests?”

“Tests?” There was the battery of tests they both took for the fertility doctor. Mako had recently had a full physical where the doctor got on him about his weight, his cholesterol. She felt her heart stutter. Was something wrong with him?

“The DNA kits we got from Secret Santa.”

“Oh,” she said. “Right.”

She’d thrown hers away only for Mako to later reveal that he’d fished it out of the trash. He’d wanted her to do it; but she’d refused. She didn’t want some random company to have that much access to her genetic information. Who knew how it could be used in the future—by the government, by insurance companies, by corporations trying to sell this or that? If there was something dark coded into her DNA, she’d find out about it soon enough. She wasn’t going to go looking for trouble. But Mako had spit in the vial and sent it in.

“Did you get your results?”

Statistically speaking, she understood from the research she did after Mako insisted on sending in his kit, you’d find out something surprising. Something that made you question who you are. And whether that was a good thing, or a bad thing you couldn’t know until it was too late.

He still held her hand, didn’t meet her eyes. She waited for him to answer and when he didn’t she pressed.

“What did it say, Mickey?” Sometimes she called him that, in their most intimate moments. He hated it when his family called him that, but he liked it from Liza.

He shook his head. “It was weird. I’ve been doing some research.”

“What kind of research?”

Her head was pounding, but the pain suddenly took a back seat to her worry for him. He’d asked for the full suite of information from family history, medical data, other potential relatives out there looking for connections.

“It’s just that, you know, how my dad is from Italy—like his whole lineage is pure Italian.”

“Right...”

“According to this test, I’m not Italian. Like, not at all. Zero percent.”

“Oh,” she said, relieved. “It could be a mistake, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought at first. But this is not the first time I’ve taken one of these. I took one a couple of years ago when a buddy of my mine was investing big in this technology. It was a different company, the science was still evolving, so when the results were not what I expected I didn’t really think anything of it.”

“Did you talk to your parents?”

He laughed. “I tried after the first time. But—you know Mom—it didn’t really go that well. They acted like I was trying to hurt them or something. I just dropped it. She said something weird—” He did his best Sophia impression, complete with fluttering eyelids and a hand at his throat. “‘Family is not about biology, Michael, it’s about actions.’”

“Okay,” said Liza.

“That was a while ago,” he said. “I kind of forgot about it. Or buried it, or whatever. And then the Origins test at Christmas opened up the issue for me again.”

She put a hand on the worried furrows in his brow. His head felt warm to the touch.

“What about Hannah’s results?”

“I haven’t asked,” he rolled on his back and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t even know if she did it. I guess I don’t really want to know. I thought maybe we’d have time to talk this weekend.”

That was classic Mako—ignore, deflect, bury until you couldn’t.

“Do you think that’s true?” he asked. “That family is about actions, not just about biology.”

She considered it. “I think it’s true in a way. I mean, if you think about it, all family is about choice. You choose who you love; you choose to have children from that love. You choose to be a good parent, take care of your children. You could be biologically related but not really a family. You can be family—like spouses—but not be biologically related.”

He nodded, seemed about to say something else, when Cricket’s laughter rang up from downstairs.

“I should get back to the table.”

He shifted away, but she reached for him, pulling him back.

“Mako.”

The darkness had left him. He was just Mako again, bright and looking for a good time. “It’s probably nothing. I shouldn’t have brought this up now. We’ll talk it all through later.”

“Are you sure?”

“Totally,” he said, kissing her head. “You just try to feel better.”

“Okay,” she said. She was just relieved it wasn’t something like he had the genetic coding for some disease or disorder. Lots of people were wrong about their heritage, weren’t they? And how reliable even were these tests?

Then he was gone; she heard him thundering down the stairs. And she was alone in the dark, with the pain in her head that was getting worse instead of better.

Now she heard him laughing downstairs.

He’d get drunk and forget all about her. That was his way. He could only focus on what was in front of him; it drew all of him. All of his attention, all of his energy. It was like he slipped into a trance when he was coding, when he was partying, when he was doing whatever it was he was doing. And the world around him disappeared completely. When you were in the high beam of his vision, there was nothing else. When you were not, you didn’t even exist. Or so it seemed. She envied him that focus.

It’s not focus, her lesser self whispered. It’s selfishness. He doesn’t think or care about anything that’s not feeding his ego in that moment.

Footsteps on the stairs, slow and measured, the wood creaking.

Occasionally, he surprised her, remembering a date she was sure he’d forgotten. An act of consideration or kindness she didn’t expect. Coming home early with takeout for a movie night, or sweeping her away on a romantic weekend.

Yes. That small voice again. Occasionally, he steps out of himself and remembers he has a wife. A wife who had her second miscarriage three months ago. A wife who is having a migraine for the first time in a decade.

A wife who has made a horrible mistake she deeply regrets. Sort of.

The pain. It pulsated behind her eyes. When she closed them she saw a field of too-bright stars, one that swirled like a galaxy.

Those footsteps were moving down the hall toward the door.

It was probably Hannah, coming to check on her. She wished they were closer. But Hannah seemed to hold her at arm’s length—always kind, always polite, just never crossing that line to real friendship. Or maybe it was Liza. Maybe Liza held Hannah away because—well, because maybe she didn’t know how to be close to women. That was the truth, wasn’t it? Her mother was gone; she didn’t have any sisters. The few women she’d thought were true friends had turned out not to be.

It was quiet again. She heard Mako laughing again downstairs, voice booming through the floorboards. Whatever had been bothering him earlier forgotten, or locked away. She thought she heard Hannah, too. But maybe that was Cricket. Maybe there hadn’t been anyone on the stairs, after all.

She closed her eyes again, focused on her breath, allowed the tension to leave her shoulders, her forehead. The edges of the migraine were starting to soften. Maybe she’d be fine by morning.

Liza almost didn’t even hear it at first as the door to the room softly creaked open. When she opened her eyes, there was the shadow of a figure there.

“Hi?” she said, squinting through the darkness, through the pain. “Who’s there?”

Was she dreaming? Sometimes her headaches played tricks—vivid dreams and strange imaginings.

When she opened her eyes, there wasn’t anyone there but the door stood slightly ajar. It had been closed before, hadn’t it?

Beside her, the phone buzzed. She reached for it.

The words in the bubble on the screen made her heart stop:

The number was unknown to her, no name attached. Different from the number of the text yesterday. She’d blocked that one.

Who is this? she typed, hands shaking. The pain in her head ratcheted tighter.

What? Was that even fucking possible? She forced herself to stand, and moved unsteadily toward the window. The guest cottage. She’d told the host that they probably wouldn’t even need to use it. He’d pointed it out to her when he’d carried the luggage upstairs for her. She looked at the window through the darkness.

There.

A light was glowing in the window. Oh my god. Her whole body was shaking now.

She felt a lash of anger, a boldness. She didn’t deserve this. Not for one mistake. What she had did not belong to him. It belonged to her.

Nausea was a roil in her gut, rising up her throat.

Or what? she texted.

The dots pulsed; she watched, eyes aching, laughter carrying up from downstairs. She stared at the screen. That’s when she felt it, the now too-familiar pain in her abdomen. It was like a mean, angry finger poking into her mercilessly.

No. No!

She doubled over with it when the phone started pinging and pinging, message after message.