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it’s all right. I’ll go,” I interrupted hastily, glad for the excuse to get away.
    When I reached down into the wicker bassinet, Sophie stopped whimpering and grinned up, her toothless mouth a single gummy squiggle, her fists banging into the mattress as if her body could not hold all of her delight at seeing me. Her back, as I lifted her, was damp with sweat.
    I held her against my chest tighter than usual, bending down to sniff her scalp, and in the rolls behind her neck, in the three creases of her thighs, trying to memorize the woodsy odor, imprint it on my lungs. Finally I rested her back in my arms and watched as she clasped the bottle greedily.
    Perhaps I had always known Jack would find me.
    Years ago, when I first left, I was waiting for him, waiting with every corner I turned, every bus I boarded. And then when he didn’t find me (was it possible that he never even looked, that none of them had?), I began slowly to relax, unknotting one muscle at a time, stretching out—but warily, always warily. It is not always so simple to tell when something is over, after all—love, for instance, or grievance, is sometimes only hiding no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that it is gone.
    My skin burned where his fingertips had pressed into me under the street lamp.
    Sophie closed her mouth tightly, stubbornly refusing the last ounce of liquid. I looked down at her face, her eyes closed now, myriad expressions playing across it, flickering contortions of worry and of pleasure. Sometimes when I return to bed, I feel my own face unconsciously mimicking hers. I watched a few moments longer and then put her back in her bassinet, anglingher around the black-and-white geometric mobile and tucking the white blanket firmly about her.
    And then I went out and drank champagne with David.
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    L ATER , I LAY beside him, trying to fit my body to his, my breath to his breath, so steady and so regular and so oblivious.
    But each inhalation caught in my throat as my heart beat out its wild staccato adrenaline-laced rhythms.
    I moved my hand gradually down my stomach and wriggled it between my legs, working slowly, and then faster.
    In the last months of pregnancy, there was a frantic immediacy to my desire for sex that riled me, gnarled me. I would bring myself to orgasm three, four times a day. It only took a minute, sometimes less. Once or twice, I sat behind the desk in my office, the lights and the conversations of the newsroom moving busily just outside my door, as I worked my hand recklessly between my legs, biting my lip into a relieved silence. I told myself it was the pressure of the baby, so low and so heavy, and maybe it was that.
    David murmured something deep inside his dreams. I stopped, lay completely still. He was grinding his teeth in his sleep, gnawing at tensions he rarely admits to in waking hours.
    And then I started again.
    I shut my eyes and felt my body seize up and then ease.
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    I DREAMT THAT night of the tropics, of being trapped in the thick wet Florida heat, always the same heat, the same dream, the gnats that filled my eyes, my mouth, my nostrils, my lungs, the noose of arms tightening and tightening about my throat as I tried desperately to breathe, to scream, to escape…
    A large hand spread across my back.
    Terrified, I slapped and clawed at it, my arms flailing.
    â€œLaura. Laura, wake up.”
    Gradually, I became aware of David kneeling beside me on the floor. “It’s okay,” he said gently. “It was just a nightmare.”
    I ran my hands over my neck as I struggled out of the darkest recesses.
    â€œSshhh. It’s okay. Come back to bed now.”
    I nodded, my heart still thrashing in my chest.
    David helped me up and led me back to bed. He smoothed the damp hair from my forehead and picked up the sheets from where I had wrangled them to the ground.
    â€œYou’re still shaking,” he said. “Come here.” He wrapped his