Page 115 of Maybe in Another Life

“But Ineverhad it. About him. He never had it about me. And maybe he has it now. It makes me feel a little better,” she says. “To think that he left me because he met the one.”

“Why does that make you feel better?” I cannot possibly conceive of how that could make her feel better.

“Because if I’m not his soul mate, then that means he’s not mine. There’s someone else out there for me. If he found his, maybe I’ll find my own.”

“And that makes you feel better?”

She holds her index finger and thumb together to form the smallest gap. “Ever so slightly,” she says. “So much it’s almost nonexistent.”

“Invisible to the naked eye,” I add.

“But it’s there.”

I rub her back some more as she digests all of this.

“You know who I thought of yesterday? When you were talking about that feeling? The only one I think I might have felt that with?”

“Who?”

“Jesse Flint.”

“From high school?”

She nods. “Yeah,” she says. “He ended up marrying that girl Jessica Campos. But I—I don’t know, until then, I always figured we would have something.”

“They got divorced,” I tell her. “A few years ago, I think. I saw it on Facebook.”

“Well, there you go,” she says. “Just that little piece of information gives me hope that there’s somebody out there who makes me feel the way Henry makes you feel.”

I smile at her. “I can promise you, there is someone better out there. I’d write it in stone.”

“You have to find Henry,” she says. “Don’t you think? How do we do it? How are you going to find Henry?”

I tell her about the letter and then I shrug. “I might not find him,” I say. “And that’s OK. If you’d told me a month ago that I was going to get hit by a car and Mark was going to leave you, you’d never have been able to convince me that things would be OK. But I got hit by a car, and Mark left you, and... we’re still standing. Well, you can stand. I’m sitting. But we’re still alive. Right? We’re still OK.”

“I mean, things are pretty crappy, Hannah,” she says.

“But they are OK, aren’t they? Aren’t we OK? Don’t we both still have hope for the future?”

“Yeah.” She nods somberly. “We do.”

“So I’m not going to go around worrying too much,” I tell her. “I’m just going to do my best and live under the assumption that if there are things in this life that we are supposed to do, if there are people in this world we are supposed to love, we’ll find them. In time. The future is so incredibly unpredictable that trying to plan for it is like studying for a test you’ll never take. I’m OK in this moment. To be with you. Here. In Los Angeles. If we’re both quiet, we can hear birds chirping outside. If we take a moment, we can smell the onions from the Mexican place on the corner. This moment, we’re OK. So I’m just going to focus on what I want and needright nowand trust that the future will take care of itself.”

“So what is it, then?” Gabby asks.

“What is what?”

“What is it you want out of liferight now?”

I look at her and smile. “A cinnamon roll.”

THREE WEEKS LATER

Iam now firmly in my second trimester. I’ve gained enough weight that I look big but not enough that it’s clear I’m pregnant. I’m just big enough to look like I have a beer belly. I’m sure I’ll be complaining when I’m the size of a house, but I’m inclined to think this part is worse, at least for my ego. Some days, I feel good. Other days, I have a backache and eat three sandwiches for lunch. I’m convinced that I have a double chin. Gabby says I don’t, but I do. I can see it when I look in the mirror. There’s my chin and then a second chin right there below the first one.

Gabby comes to a lot of my doctor’s appointments and birthing classes. Not all of them but most of them. She has also been reading the books with me and talking things through. Will I have a natural birth? Will I use cloth diapers? (My instinct tells me no and no.) It’s nice to have someone in my corner. It makes me more confident that I can do this.

And I am finally finding my confidence. Sure, this is all very scary, and sometimes I want to crawl under the blankets and never come out. But I’m a woman who has been desperately looking for purpose and family, and I found both. Never has it been more clear to me that I have family around me in unconventional places, that I have always had more purpose than I have ever known.

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