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for her hand, lifting it to his knee. “We’d do DIDA till we keeled over of old age. The cool thing about you…about both of us…is that we’ve always been able to roll with the punches, no matter what’s happening around us. We’re survivors. That’s why DIDA suits us.” He leaned over to kiss her. “I love you, Rebecca. Don’t you get that?”
    She nodded, and he wrapped his arms around her. Resting her forehead against his shoulder, she suddenly pictured herself holding Maya’s healthy, full-term baby, pressing the infant close to her chest, and she felt a loss so sharp and deep it made her gasp.
    She jerked away from Brent.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    She stood up, rubbing her arms. The room was cold, the sound from the TV too loud. “I don’t know what’s with me tonight,” she said. “Sorry I’m being weird. I’m going out on the balcony to smoke.”
    “Want me to pause the movie?” Brent asked as she slid the glass door open.
    She shook her head. “I can’t concentrate. Just let it run.”
    She carried her cigarettes and lighter out to the balcony and sat on the chair overlooking the harbor, trying to shake off the unexpected sensation of losing something precious. Above her, the sky was filled with stars, and below her, lights flickered in the boats lining the piers. She couldn’t blame Brent for being irked by her tonight, she thought as she lit a cigarette. She wasn’t usually like this. It was as though Maya had crawled under the surface of her skin and she couldn’t simply brush her off.
    Maybe Maya and Adam would get serious about adoption now. Maya would eagerly adopt, but Adam desperately wanted his own biological child. He’d be such a joyful father, either way. He’d cook for his kids. Make pancakes in the shape of animals, with Maya watching him, smiling, totally in love with her husband and their brood. Adam was equally smitten with Maya. You only needed to be with them for two seconds to know he adored her. Why did Maya get to be loved like that and she didn’t? The thought made her feelsmall and churlish. She’d felt that way ever since they were kids, when Maya’d received their father’s attention at every turn. Maya had been so much like him—bookish and studious—while Rebecca had their mother’s vitality and spunk. Rebecca’d always been certain of her mother’s love, but it was her father’s she’d craved, and that seemed out of reach. “I have a scholar and an athlete,” he’d say of his two daughters, as though he valued them equally, but everyone knew which daughter he favored. Rebecca was smart, but Maya was smarter. Maya could sit still for hours, with a focus that was uncanny for a child. Their father would read to them in bed, and although Rebecca would try her best to pay attention, she could never make it to the end of a story. “You have ants in your pants?” he’d ask her with a resigned smile, and she’d nod, hopping out of the bed to play with her trucks or run around the house with her arms outstretched, pretending she was an airplane, leaving her younger sister behind to bask in their father’s love.
    Rebecca blew a stream of pale smoke into the darkness, resting her head against the back of the seat. She hated when she relived the past as though it mattered, nursing an ancient jealousy over her sister’s treatment when they were kids. The truth was, they’d both suffered the same loss. If Maya was lucky enough to find a guy like Adam, Rebecca wanted to be happy for her.
    That was part of the problem with her and Brent, wasn’t it? If she was ever going to get married, she should feel about a man the way Maya felt about Adam. So she and Brent were disaster junkies. Big deal. That didn’t feel like enough.
    She stubbed out her cigarette on the concrete balcony, then turned to look through the sliding glass door. She could see Brent, the changing colors of the TV screen altering his features second by second. His eyes were wide,