44.

I took my new green-and-purple-squared bikini with me to the moms’ group I’d read an ad for on Craigslist, thinking it would facilitate hanging back, not getting caught in the fray.

Ian and I were the first to arrive at the restaurant, which somehow confirmed that I had no friends. I sat down in the middle of a long, narrow farm table as Ann and Hilary, the preexisting friends who’d started the group, came in together with their babies. They saw me and parked their strollers by the door.

“Are you Thea?” Hilary shook my hand overly hard, jutting out her Sigourney Weaver jaw.

I nodded, getting up. Ian was in the sack, his head nestled against my chest.

“Don’t, you’re in kangaroo mode.” She smiled, nodding at Ian.

“Thea, this is Ann. Leah and Kate should be here any minute.”

“Hi, Thea,” Ann said in a nasal voice. She grabbed the menu. “Eggs, I want eggs,” she said. Her baby reached for the brown sugar packets.

“If I have another coffee, my head’s going to explode,” Hilary explained. Her baby stood on the floor in a jean jacket, leaning on her, swatting her legs. “He’s just standing, as of yesterday.”

Hilary was an associate at a law firm and had taken a year off, but she’d just hired a nanny because she was “going back.” She was having trouble relinquishing control to the nanny.

“I feel like she can’t do it I like I can,” she said, banging her empty latte cup on the table. She glanced at me crocheting away. I tried to catch her eye every so often to not seem rude. “We’re working on it.”

“You know what will make your life so much easier when you’re working?” Ann asked urgently, licking her thumb and sticking it on the table to sop up the spilled sugar from the packet.

Hilary and Ann started in about a meal delivery service. I watched them, wondering, How did I used to make friends? How did I make friends with Chris Fontana from Staten Island, who I had nothing in common with other than pre-calc? We laughed about Mr. Kushman’s shoes and made fun of the way he rolled his l’s, as in l-l-l-evel. We’d write notes back and forth—“What did you do last night?” “Went to the mall with my mother, she picked out something for her date with the butt doctor.” And then all of a sudden you knew each other, you could ask specific questions—“How was the date with the butt doctor?” “Sucky, poor Mom,” and so on. It was easier then, I thought, watching as Kate, too pretty for me, arrived in boho-chic perfection, a binky-sucking boy slung on her hip.

“Thea, you’re the new girl,” she said, holding her free hand away from me. “I won’t shake,” she said apologetically. “He’s got something.”

“No problem,” I said, nodding earnestly, then smiling at the baby. He turned his head as far away from me as it would go, and I decided I hated making small talk with other people’s children. My knees bumped up against the table as I watched her saunter around to the other side, to a seat next to Hilary. Kate had a nice, direct way about her, and she was wearing a cute embroidered-leather belt. But there were pots of jam and menus, nestled between hunks of bread, blocking our way, and I just felt too tired.

I loitered at the table after they all left, pulling my hook and yarn out of the bag, annoying the waiters seating lunch customers. I ordered another coffee and crocheted until my fingers were white-knuckled and sore, my arms aching from holding the whole thing over Ian’s sleeping body. I slipped the last loop off the hook just as someone placed my check squarely in front of me. It was Friday—exactly two weeks since I’d started. I was done and ready to haul my new stash to Stash.

My phone rang as we got outside.

“Hi,” Will said.

I leaned my shoulder against the traffic-light post on the corner, the ticking noise from inside it reverberating through me. I couldn’t speak. It had been almost three weeks since I’d left Florence’s. Cars clunked over a manhole in the street. I wished I could sit down someplace quiet where I could hear him better.

“How are you? How’s Ian?” He sounded distant. All business.

“He’s fine.” Everything I looked at took on a surreal quality. I had no idea how I felt or how to “be” with him.

“Thea, I’m sorry I haven’t called. I needed to think.”

“About what?” I mumbled.

“Listen, I want to talk to you about something and I want you to really think about it. Do you want to meet someplace?”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Maybe we should meet.”

“Just tell me, Will,” I said. “I don’t want to wait.”

“I talked to someone at an adoption agency. They were incredibly understanding and …”

The light had turned green, but I stayed put. “No,” I said.

“You can’t just say no without talking about it first.”

“Yes, I can.”

“Well, I want to talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. If you don’t want to be a part of it, that’s fine,” I said. “There’s nothing to talk about beyond that.”

“Thea, please …”

I hung up the phone and crossed the street. The first thought that went through my head was that I was going to have to change my cell phone number. I caught our reflections in the window of a sushi place, my puffy black down jacket, Ian in his checked hat, broadcasting whited-out loneliness in the flat winter sun.

After that, Will became the enemy. I wondered how far he was willing to go. Would he plant drugs on me? Would he lie about me? What was he capable of? I walked around to the front of the stroller. It was almost as if Ian’s whole body broke into a smile as he looked at me. If anyone took you away from me, I don’t know how I could keep living, I thought. How could Will even consider it? How could he know me and know how I felt about Ian, even when it was tough and I was in a bad mood—how could Will even begin to think about doing what he was doing?

“Just go on with your life,” Vanessa said when I called her right afterward. “He’s powerless and he knows it.”

“I’m so scared, Vanessa,” I said. I’d gone one block while I was on the phone with her, staring the whole way at the whirly pattern of Ian’s knit hat. When I got to the next corner, it hit me how quickly things changed. How sharply and unwaveringly betrayal could sink in.