Chosen Read Free Page B

anything, and to have it be so difficult to attain—”
    John comes back into the dining room and doesn’t sit down. He clears his throat like he is about to make an announcement, then changes his mind, and sits. He picks up his orange napkin, shakes it out, crumbs flying. Francie has dropped her hands and, to Paul’s relief, stopped emoting.
    “Well?” she pounces.
    “That was Chloe, Chloe Pinter. From the agency.”
    “Ah, the famous Chloe Pinter,” Paul says, full of warm expectation.
    “Is it time?” Francie’s words tumble out on top of one another. “But the baby’s not due for two weeks! What? John, is it good news? Is it time?”
    “It’s not news.” John’s words march out, scrubbed clean, careful. “Penny is not in labor. Chloe just wanted to let us know that, tonight,when she went to take Thanksgiving dinner to them, at the apartment, there were some baby items.”
    “Wh-what do you mean? What kind of baby items? Did she say?”
    “She wasn’t very specific, but she did mention a crib.”
    As much as he dislikes the McAdoos, Paul feels in his gut where this news hits them.
    “She did say,” John continues dully, “that they had an explanation, but—”
    “What?” Francie’s head snaps up. “What did they say?”
    “They said Jason, the birth father,” John explains, “that Jason’s brother and his girlfriend have moved into the apartment as well, and that they aren’t aware of the adoption plan.”
    “Oh my god,” Francie whispers. “Oh my god.”
    “It could be nothing, Francie.” Eva lays her hand on Francie’s forearm, thin as a cashmere-wrapped golf club. “It could be exactly what she says.”
    “It’s a classic red flag. I should never have gotten my hopes up.”
    From the kitchen behind him, Paul can hear one of the McAdoos’ two whisper-quiet Whirlpool dishwashers change cycle.
     
    S EVEN EXCRUCIATING MINUTES LATER , the evening has limped to a close and Paul is warming up the car as Francie and Eva stand in the doorway of the McAdoos’ looming Tudor. Eva leans in to hug Francie, her enormous belly an intrusion between them. She walks slowly, backlit by the golden glow of the replica 1800s gas lamp in their breezeway. She settles beside him in the brand-new Volvo Cross Country, a splurge for the safety of the baby, and snuffles as she strains to buckle her seat belt.
    “Well, let’s put that on our calendar for next year,” Paul says.
    “Oh my god, it was brutal. Poor Francie.”
    “Yeah.” Paul drives out between the stone pillars with more replica gas lamps. They are made of copper, oversize. He could probably get them for $1,200 each, wholesale. Retail, they’d run about twogrand, and the McAdoos have four of them sprinkled on the pillars, all the way down here by the street, like it’s nothing.
    “And you! Honey, you could have made more of an effort with John.”
    “What?” Paul has just remembered that they abandoned Eva’s fabulous pumpkin cheesecake, the one potential bright spot in this miserable evening, in the McAdoos’ Sub-Zero.
    “Come on, honey.”
    They drive the few blocks in silence, winding through Portland Heights. Against his better judgment, Paul lets the thoughts in his head tumble out into the charged air of the car, unfiltered.
    “I can’t wait for this to be over.”
    “Pardon?”
    “Nothing.”
    “No, I’m sorry, you can’t wait? I weigh ten pounds more than you, I can’t breathe, I look like an elephant, I’m never comfortable, I have to pee every five freaking minutes, I am about to have hemorrhoids hanging out of my ass, and you can’t wait?”
    “I meant, I can’t wait for us to have our baby, cross the finish line, and be out of this psychotic parallel universe.”
    Eva is silent, the car filled with the sound of her breathing. She yawns open her mouth and wiggles her lower jaw back and forth like an anxious mare, and while Paul knows she is so congested she is trying to clear her ears, he feels a deep stab