When You Least Expect It Read Free Page B

excitable flock of seagulls.
    “Come on, let’s go join them,” I said, standing and brushing the sand off my bare legs.
    Jeremy got to his feet a bit more slowly. “Okay, but I’m not doing a cartwheel,” he said. “I’d probably throw out my back.”
    I laughed and brushed my wind-blown hair out of my face.
    “Come on, old man,” I said, and held my hand out to him. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”
    But later that evening, as I cleaned up the kitchen, putting away the picnic supplies, I found it harder to escape the whirlwind of my thoughts.
    It had been two weeks since we’d learned that the last round of in vitro fertilization had failed. Jeremy and I had discussed whether we should try again, but hadn’t yet come to a final decision. No small part of our indecision was the cost. At twenty thousand dollars per cycle, IVF wasn’t cheap.
    When Jeremy and I first married, we’d bought a cozy bungalow that we’d fallen in love with at first sight. It needed a ton of work, but had the benefit of being located in West Palm Beach’s historic Flamingo Park neighborhood. It also came with a tiny guesthouse in the back that Jeremy, a science fiction writer, immediately claimed as his office. Between our sweat equity and an unexpected upswing in the housing market, our little house had doubled in value in the seven years since we bought it, which had allowed us to take out a home equity loan to finance three rounds of IVF.
    But I wasn’t sure if the bank would approve another, larger loan. And even if they did approve it, what were the odds that another round of IVF would be successful? Or another after that? I could spend years letting them shoot foreign fertilized eggs up into my uterus, only to have my body spit them back out two weeks later.
    Rose’s words suddenly came back to me.
Why don’t you adopt?
She made it sound so simple, so obvious. Taking someone else’s unwanted baby into our desperate-for-a-baby home. The theory had a nice ballast to it. Of course, it meant that the child wouldn’t look like either of us—even with the borrowed-eggs scenario, any successful pregnancy would have resulted in a baby that inherited half of its DNA from Jeremy. Did this matter to me? Would it matter to Jeremy?
    I thought about it, trying to imagine a baby as unlike Jeremy and me as possible. A baby with a fluff of dark hair and serious eyes. A little girl who danced with the natural grace I’d never known. A boy who loved to run until his legs tired and his breath came in gasps. A child who would be mine, even if he or she didn’t come from me. A child who would call me Mama. I would hold him in my arms, and he’d wrap his chubby arms around my neck. I’d blow kisses on a soft, round stomach. I’d inhale that sweet baby smell, until it swamped all of my senses….
    A longing washed over me that was so intense I had to put a hand on the countertop to steady myself.
    The back door opened, and Jeremy came into the kitchen, Otis panting at his heels. I was right—he
did
smell like a fish.
    “Are the troops all tucked in?” I asked.
    “They’re in their sleeping bags, but no one’s gone to sleep yet. They’re asking for cocoa. Which they apparently want served in a thermos,” Jeremy said.
    At the children’s insistence, Jeremy had pitched a borrowed tent in our backyard, and the three of them were sleeping out there.
    “Isn’t it a little hot out for cocoa?” I asked.
    “You would think. I already had to talk them down from building a campfire, which I’m pretty sure is against the city code,” Jeremy said.
    I poured some milk in a pan and turned the burner onunderneath. “I don’t think I have a thermos. Will they accept their cocoa served in regular old mugs?”
    “I’m sure. Are there any marshmallows left?” Jeremy asked. “Or did Otis eat all of them?”
    I reached into the cupboard and pulled out a new bag of marshmallows. “Ta-da.”
    “Excellent. What else are you hiding in