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opened his little black book. “You’re on my call list. I’ll have your plans ready by the first of the week.” He flipped several pages, darting glances at each. “How does a week from today sound? Say, four?”
    “Perfect. Next Tuesday at four. See you then.”
    Graham barely ended the call when the phone rang again. Again, his heart began to pound, but it wasn’t Amanda this time, either. It was his brother Joe.
    “Any news?”
    Graham let out a breath. “Nah. I’m headed home.”
    “Mom was asking.”
    “I’ll bet she was. I have to tell you, there are times when I wish I hadn’t said anything to anyone.”
    “We asked.”
    So they had. The questions had started one month into his marriage, and they hadn’t stopped. In hindsight, he should have said that he and Amanda didn’t want children, and would they please bug off . Having his entire family know what they were going through was nearly as humiliating as jerking off into a jar. O’Leary men didn’t have to do things like that. Hell, Joe had recently had his fifth child, and Graham suspected he and Christine weren’t done yet.
    “She’s beginning to despair,” Joe said now of their mother, Dorothy. “Says she wants to see your kids before she dies.”
    “She’s only seventy-seven.”
    “She says she’s growing frail.”
    Graham felt a cursed helplessness. “What more does she think I should do?”
    “She says this is her last wish.”
    “ Joe. Come on. This isn’t what I need right now.”
    “I know. I’m just putting you on notice. She keeps saying it should have been Megan.”
    That was nothing new. “Well, it isn’t Megan—it can’t possibly be Megan—I don’t want it to be Megan,” Graham declared. “Help me out here, Joe,” he pleaded. “Remind her I’m married to Amanda. If I’m going to have a baby, it’ll be Amanda’s. Hey, there’s my call waiting,” he lied, but he couldn’t keep this particular conversation going. “I’ll get back to you later.”
    He disconnected without another word and drove on in brooding silence. This damned day was nearly done. He didn’t know why Amanda was keeping him in the dark. Even if she didn’t know anything yet, she could have called and told him that. She knew he was waiting.
    Turning off the highway, he drove along roads that he knew now like the back of his hand, and there was some solace in that. Heloved Woodley, loved the way the town roads twisted and climbed through forested hills. A map of the town was like a tree—a trunk that rose from the highway and forked way up at the crest of the hill, spilling off in two directions with limbs bearing town buildings, offices, and stores, branches off those limbs for houses, and, farther down the branches, neat cul-de-sacs like the one he and Amanda lived on.
    No road in the town was barren. Each was bounded by white pine, beech, and hemlock, or maples, or birches, or oaks. Climbing into a curve now, he passed a meadow of red trillium. Farther on, he saw yellow trout lily, and beyond that, a dense stand of mountain laurel with its perfect white blossoms. A less-knowing passerby wouldn’t have picked out the jack-in-the-pulpit with its maroon hood from the shade at the side of the road, but Graham did. Likewise, at a glance, he could differentiate maidenhair fern from oak fern or bracken, or lichen from moss.
    These woods had them all. Graham took pride in that. His own hometown, where much of his family still lived, lay only fifty minutes to the east, but the two towns were worlds apart. That one was a working-class enclave filled with good folk who dreamed of living here. For Graham, the dream had come true.
    At least, one part of it had. They were still working on the other part, and if the news was good today, he would be doubly thankful he lived here. When it came to hospitable environments in which to raise kids, Woodley took the cake.
    The town center was nestled around the fork in the road at the top of the hill. The