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come here for a few days?” she said. “You could just watch the leaves fall and not think about anything.”
    I had to admit that was the first thing she had said that sounded tempting.
    “I’ll think about it, Mom,” I said. “I promise I will.”
    “You could bring Katie. It could be just us girls. We could send Stu and Matt on a dig in Tibet.”
    I couldn’t help smiling. She was joking, of course, but the funny part was that both Stuart and Matt would’ve jumped at the invitation. My brother, Matthew, had taken to Stu like a duck to water. He had always loved looking at Stu’s artifacts and digging around in the buried remains of a four-thousand-year-old hut. He didn’t remember our father at all, and by the time my mom met Stu, Matt was fifteen and starving for a father figure. Matt was now a professor of ancient cultures at the University of Michigan, the same place where Stuart taught budding archaeologists. To be truthful, I was probably a little jealous of their close relationship. Matt called Stu “Dad,” and I still just called him “Stu,” even though he was never anything but kind and gracious to me.
    “Let me think about it, okay?” I said.
    “You’re not back at school, are you?” she suddenly asked.
    “No, I’m still on leave. And I will talk to Dan about Kate and me coming out.”
    “All right,” she replied and then felt the urge to add: “Claire, you should just take a break from teaching this year. You really should. You’ve been through so much.”
    “I might do that. Dan and I talked about it today.”
    “Well, there you go,” she said. “I think that’s wise. Well, I better be off. Matt is coming over for supper, and I don’t have a thing in the house.”
    “Not even a date for him?” I said, sitting up on the bed and feeling content that I could share this long-standing joke that my mom was a persistent, though unsuccessful, matchmaker for my thirty-four-year-old single brother.
    “Oh, Claire, that’s not funny,” she said, but I knew she was grinning. “If I could just bury an intelligent girl in the sand, and he could dig her up, all my dreams would come true.”
    We both giggled.
    “So you do remember little things like that, Claire?” she asked. “You haven’t forgotten our special family jokes?”
    “It’s just stuff from the last couple of months that I can’t remember,” I reassured her.
    “And you...you still don’t remember anything about...what happened?” she asked carefully.
    “No, I don’t.”
    “But something else is bothering you, Claire. Are you sure you’re all right?”
    For a second her intuitiveness tested my resolve. I almost let it all spill out. I probably should have. But then the moment passed.
    “Yeah, I’m all right,” I said, rubbing my forehead.
    “I’ll call you this weekend.”
    “Sounds good,” I replied. “Bye, Mom. I love you.”
    “I love you too.”
    Hours later when the kids were in bed, I was exhausted. Becky called about nine thirty, and I told her that Dan and I decided to just keep our news to ourselves for the time being. I knew I could trust her and Nick to do the same.
    “So what exactly did the doctor tell you?” she asked.
    “He told me what I already know—that I’m pregnant. He said I’m due in June.”
    “So when’s your next doctor’s appointment?” she asked.
    “I didn’t make another appointment,” I said.
    “You didn’t?”
    “I don’t want to go back to that clinic.”
    “Why not?”
    I chose to make a little joke, hoping Becky would get it and not think I was having an irrational, post trauma moment. “Dr. Chapman wouldn’t call me by my first name.”
    “Claire, c’mon. What’s up?”
    “Too many memories,” I said after a moment’s pause. “Good ones and bad ones. I don’t want to be in a place I’m familiar with.”
    “Do you want to try my doctor, Claire?” she said. “He’s a great guy. Very personable.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “I don’t want to