“One of the best ways to help the world is to never be a burden to it. Give money, give time, give love, and make sure you give yourself a little to spare so you’re not the one in need.”

 “You are so wise,” she said.

 “Poor boys work harder to be wise,” he said. “I’m very grateful not to be a poor boy anymore. And I’m really grateful for this spaghetti. And to know you have no real reason to be sad.”

 They talked late into the night. They kicked back and forth many ideas of what it meant to really live well, to live in the moment, to be present and aware and to be grateful. What was plenty, really? Emma had been up and down the financial spectrum so many times—she should know. She’d been one of the well-off girls in school, struggled in college and almost didn’t have enough money to join a sorority. Her first years in New York were awfully tight, but also filled with like creatures and great fun. Then there were the years with Richard during which she often felt like a visitor in her own life. And here she was in the arms of a good, honest man and everything seemed so real to her. So rich.

 In the morning she began to stir when she heard him moving around. He got up, started the coffee, got in the shower. When she heard the shower shut off she went to the kitchen for coffee and the second her feet hit the floor she felt strange. Her stomach was upset. Her knees were a little weak.

 She got to the kitchen and was overtaken by instant and powerful nausea and she dashed for the sink to be sick. She retched and choked, not that there was much there. She felt Adam come up behind her, take hold of her hair and gently rub her back. She ran the water, rinsed her mouth, reached for a paper towel and slowly, shakily, turned to face him.

 He lifted one brow. “That spaghetti worked fine for me,” he said.

 “I have no idea what’s wrong,” she said. She sniffed. “I feel completely fine now. That coffee even smells good.”

 “Emma,” he asked. “When did you last have a period?”

  “Oh, shit,” she said.

 * * *

 It was next to impossible to get an immediate appointment with an OB, especially if you were a woman about four weeks pregnant. What they routinely did was give you vitamins and see you for the first time at a couple of months, maybe three months. But Adam taught with a man whose wife was an OB and called in a favor because Emma was worried. She was afraid she’d gotten a positive pregnancy test because something was terribly wrong. After all, she’d been through a little over a year of infertility tests and treatments.

 “I can’t see that anything is wrong,” Dr. Winnet said. “And you are definitely pregnant. Due in the fall.”

 “But I was told my only hope was in vitro!”

 “I’ll request the records from your specialist and do a little blood work, but if you were infertile, you’re not anymore. And you appear to be in excellent health.”

 Her records were electronic and therefore transferred from Dr. Grimaldi in New York within a couple of days. Dr. Winnet called her. “I’m a little confused. You say he did a fertility workup? Because all I find in your chart is regular exams, birth control medication, one cyst removal.”

 “No, no, not birth control pills. I was taking hormones to stimulate ovulation. I was x-rayed for blocked fallopian tubes. We were getting ready to harvest eggs for in vitro when...” She stopped. When Richard said, “I don’t have time to deal with this while I’m consumed with the investigation. They’re demanding records constantly. Just let me get through this and we’ll give it a go.”

 “Maybe I can find better records at the hospital or surgical center where the procedures were performed.”

 Emma took a deep breath and tried to think clearly. It couldn’t be that it had all been a lie. “Dr. Grimaldi had his own surgi-center.” And she had gone with Richard after-hours because of Richard’s impossible schedule.

 “I’ll call them, ask if they have records for your procedures.”

 But there were none.

 “Could the records have been lost?” Emma asked.

 “Possible, but unlikely,” Dr. Winnet said. “It has happened, though it’s rare. But all that aside, your blood work is good, your physical was excellent and you have no reason to worry.”

 Emma would never know for sure, but she strongly suspected she’d been pulled into the web of Richard’s many lies yet again. When she first suggested a baby, he didn’t like the idea because of his age. When she pestered him, he made an appointment with Dr. Grimaldi—early evening when there was only one nurse present and no other patients. Emma had felt, as she often did, that she was given special treatment because of Richard. She was flattered to be seen by such an important doctor after the office was closed. Dr. Grimaldi had seemed thrilled to help Richard with this little problem. And now she thought Dr. Grimaldi had probably been very well paid for his fraud.

  “I’d bet my life on it,” Emma told Adam. “He pulled off things I never could have dreamed of.”

 “Well, the only thing I want to pull off with you is a child. I didn’t think I’d ever be a father.”

 “You don’t have much choice now, do you?” she said.

 “You’re going to have to come clean with Riley,” he said. “We can do it together, you can do it your own way, you can enlist June to help, but it has to be done. Like it or not, we’re all family now.”

 “I’m sorry for the surprise, for the shock,” Emma said.

 “I’m not,” he said. “I wasn’t sure how I’d ever convince you to give me a chance. I couldn’t be happier about it. And all I want to do is make you happy. Think you can live with that?”