His Best Friend's Baby. Molly O'Keefe

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      He met her crystal gaze and they were suddenly knit together, not just by that morning in Germany, and not by the terrible, forbidden things he felt for her, but in their knowledge of Mitch Adams.

      The Mitch the whole town refused to believe existed.

      “I thought I married someone else,” she said. “The way he talked, I thought… Well, I thought he was a different person.”

      “I understand,” he said. An expression of gratitude spread over her features.

      “It’s been a long time since someone has said that to me.”

      The moment stretched taut and then snapped. He looked away with a cough—hot and uncomfortable with how much he still wanted his best friend’s widow.

      She laughed nervously and wiped at her eyes. “Look at me,” she said. “I arrive out of the blue to start crying on your porch.”

      “Go ahead. Cry away.”

      She turned aside and studied the stars while he studied her. Birds called and dogs barked and Jesse lifted himself from the chair and stupidly, foolishly, was about to lower himself onto the steps so he could touch her, smell her. Press his lips to the quick pulse that beat in her neck.

      “Do you know Mitch’s parents real well?”

      The air went cold, dousing the flames in him.

      “Yeah.” He sat down heavily.

      “What are they like?”

      “They hate me,” he said, getting right to the point. “They’d hate you sitting on this porch with me.”

      “Because of the accident?”

      The word shattered the serene picture they made like a pane of glass. His intentions, his desire for her, turned to ash. They weren’t two strangers engaged in warm conversation, carefully scoping out the edges of their feelings for each other.

      Mitch was between them. Mitch and his death and the accident.

      He almost laughed. Accident? People could be so stupid. Didn’t anyone realize there were no such things as accidents?

      “Among other things,” he said and shrugged.

      She must blame him, at least a little, for Mitch’s death. How could she not? Her husband was dead while Jesse was alive. In his head the math was simple.

      “Jesse?” She looked at him warily. The pressure in his chest grew unbearable. “That morning in Germany when you—”

      “Don’t.” He groaned and shook his head. The honesty in her eyes and the ache in his chest defeated him so, like a coward, he looked away. “Don’t say anything. I’m sorry. I’m… sorry.”

      “Sorry?”

      He refused to look at her, willing her to get off his porch. He had been stupid to let her stay. Drugs or no drugs.

      The silence built like a wall between them. Brick by brick, until he wasn’t even sure he could see her.

      Finally she stood, swiped her hands over her butt and took a step toward the shadows of the lawn.

      “Good night, Jesse.” She took another step, all but disappearing in the dark. “I’m so glad you’re here. I never expected a friend—”

      “We’re not friends, Julia,” he said, from his side of the wall of silence and lies. “Don’t come back.”

      JULIA DIDN’T SLEEP WELL. She was plagued by Jesse’s ravaged face and the sharp-fanged nightmares Mitch’s old room seemed to spark.

      She had to put Mitch’s prom picture facedown in the hopes that she’d stop seeing it when she shut her eyes. But it was useless, Mitch’s ghost lived in this room, lived in these quiet moments of doubt that came at night. He mocked her and reminded her of how much she’d fallen out of love with him. Of how badly she’d wished he’d been more like Jesse.

      In fact, that night in Germany with Jesse and Mitch, she’d wished he was Jesse.

      And to make it all worse, there was nothing she could do to shake loose Jesse’s words. They ran on a loop whether her eyes were closed or not.

      I’m sorry.

      She’d carried the memory of that morning in Germany with Jesse in her heart for months. She’d lived on it when food tasted like dirt. She’d breathed it through Mitch’s funeral and through all the long nights.

      And he was sorry. Sorry it ever happened.

      We’re not friends. Don’t come back.

      She flopped over on her back and stared up at the ceiling where the shadows of the maple branches danced and that morning rushed back to her in painful detail….

      “All done,” Julia whispered to Ben. She held out her hands as if to prove she wasn’t holding anymore puréed peaches. “All gone.”

      Ben mimicked her, shouting her words back to her in his gibberish.

      “Sh,” she whispered. “We have to be quiet. Daddy and Jesse are sleeping.”

      Jesse Filmore—the much-boasted-about friend of Mitch’s youth—slept in the living room, draped over the too-small couch. And Mitch slept on in the bedroom, smelling slightly of the wine he’d drank last night and the uncomfortable, lousy sex he’d attempted before dawn. He’d come to bed late, full of drunken apologies and tears. There’d been another girl. A reporter or a contractor or something. She’d meant nothing, he swore.

      None of them meant anything.

      Julia wiped Ben’s face, holding his head still so she could get the cereal from under his chin, and pulled him out of the makeshift high chair she’d rigged on the kitchen counter.

      She filled his sippy cup with juice and water and walked behind him as he toddled over to the table she’d set up next to the only window in the apartment that let in the morning light.

      She sat in her chair and Ben tried to pull himself up into her lap.

      “Up you go,” she whispered, giving him a boost.

      He repeated the tone of her voice, if not her exact words.

      She had a few toys on the table and he played while she rested her chin on his head and looked out the window to the street of duplicate houses, covered in Christmas lights and snow that made up the family housing on the barracks.

      Houses filled with women just like her. Alone. Lonely. Worried half the time. Scared the other half. They filled their time with book groups and sewing circles, coffee klatches and grief-counseling sessions.

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