She stopped, sighed, started again. “I was terrified of my feelings for you. Of rejection. Of losing our friendship. Part of me didn’t want to talk about it, but even then I knew I couldn’t let it go. So when I didn’t hear from you, I was relieved and furious. I pretended it was all your fault. For years.” She washed her hand over her face and groaned. “What a stupid, stupid waste.”

My arms were so heavy on the steering wheel, my throat so dry. I glanced in the mirror, saw Summer’s sympathetic eyebrows, her wet eyes. I realized she was listening in, providing support from the back seat. “I’m . . .” I searched for the perfect words, wanting to get it right after so many empty years without Holly. “I am so sorry.” I looked at Holly, reached to cup her face with my hand. “I’m so filled with sorrow for you and me. And I’m . . . angry. But not at you. I’m angry at young me. And young you.” I took my foot off the gas, steered the car to the shoulder, heard the car crunch onto the gravel. I put the car in park. I took my seat belt off and turned with my arms out. Holly unbuckled her belt and leaned into me. I hadn’t hugged this woman in years and years, and yet she smelled like college and cake, like vanilla and best friend. Her long arms wrapped around me. My muscles remembered, and my heart beat like the wagging of a dog’s tail. I know this woman, it said. She’s home!

“Don’t apologize. That’s not right,” she said into my hair, her breath warming my temple.

“I’m not saying I’m sorry to you. I’m saying I feel deeply sorrowful.”

“Yeah. I owe you the apology.” She pulled back, looked me in the eye. She wanted to clear the air, but I saw something else. She wanted forgiveness and to be my friend.

“Homophobic,” I said, finally understanding.

“I wanted to stay righteous,” Holly said. “My anger was really rejection, and this was more important than our friendship. Rosie tried to tell me. She tried to make me see that maybe I didn’t understand everything. I wouldn’t listen.” She removed my hand from her cheek but didn’t let it go. “Coming out doesn’t mean you have everything figured out. The phrase says it all. Coming out is a process. It’s an opening door. There should be a term for post–coming out. Maybe arrived? Like after you have your sexuality figured out in the context of this binary world. But nobody needs that phrase. Nobody has arrived. We’re all just moving through doorways with every person we meet. It’s a specific thing. Not a general thing.”

I thought of one of the many conversations Katie and I’d had over the years. We didn’t care that Holly was gay. We cared that she hadn’t told us. “Maybe it’s enough for her to come out—like is she required to send out announcements?” Katie said when we learned that Rosie and she were moving home together. Like together together. “For example, I knew I liked men, but I didn’t announce it. Why do we require people to announce the category of where their love sits if it’s not a man and woman?” Katie smiled. “I love assholes. Should I send a card to my Christmas list? Happy Holidays, everyone! I found a new jerk to date!” We’d laughed. Then I’d thought, I’m not on Holly’s Christmas list, which I knew was too whiny to say out loud.

“Katie and I speculated about what happened a lot. Neither of us had the answer because none of us had all the information.”

She let go of my hands and covered her face. “I’m so ashamed, Samantha.”

“Oh, Holly.” I felt her distress. “Don’t be. We were so young. I don’t think we should blame our younger selves for not being our older, more experienced selves.”

“I didn’t understand this back then, but I do now. Loving me like that wasn’t even in the realm of possibility for you. It never occurred to you. While with me, it was who I was. How could I have expected you to understand when I had my own troubles coming to terms with being gay. On top of that, I thought you’d read the letter and didn’t bother to respond.”

My throat closed, and I tried to clear it. I ached for the newly graduated Holly who’d left her best friend a love letter and that friend never responded. For all our lost years.

“I didn’t trust you.”

“I should have tried harder to find you. I should have fought for us. Maybe my dad was right. You get what you fight for, so you’d better learn to fight.” I rubbed her shoulder and said, “And, boy, do we know how to fight now.”

With her headphones around her neck Summer sat forward and joined our loose embrace. It was awkward, the three of us, the back of the front seat between us. We were all tearful and looking for something to say, to put this all behind us.

Summer, with a little twinkle, said, “I knew it was something like that, you guys; I just knew it.”

I dropped my head back with a laugh at the same time as Holly’s phone trilled and lit up with a FaceTime call from Rosie. Holly hit the green accept circle, and the phone screen illuminated her love, anxiety, and devotion meant only for Rosie.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE CHIEF RESIDENT

“Rosie! Baby. Hi, honey. Hi, lovey.”

I smiled. Listening to Holly talk to Rosie was like hearing old Motown tunes without the music. So much sugar, so much honey, so much love.

Rosie spoke softly into her phone. “I don’t want you to worry. They admitted me. I have preeclampsia.”

Holly’s eyes shot over to me.

“Her blood pressure is up,” I said gently. “That’s what preeclampsia means.”

“Your blood pressure?” Holly said to the screen. “Isn’t that an old-man problem? You’re not an old man.”

“It’s a pregnancy thing, too, honey.” I heard Rosie’s calm, creamy voice through the phone. I thought about her child listening to Goodnight Moon read with that voice. What a lucky baby.

“Okay. Okay. Now what?” In one graceful movement, Holly lifted Utah off her shoulder and deposited the kitten into Summer’s waiting arms. A pushing-up-her-sleeves moment, a foreshadowing that the future hours would not be for kittens.

“Holly, back up from the phone, I can only see your nostrils,” Rosie instructed. Holly extended her arm, and now both of us could see Rosie’s perfect skin and kind eyes.

“That’s better,” she said. “Now don’t go crazy. I think they’re going to give me something to speed up my labor.”

“No! I want to be there for you. I want to hold your hand.”

“It might be the safest thing,” I said, touching her wrist.

“It might be the safest thing,” Holly repeated in the quickest turnaround ever.

Rosie’s face softened with relief and then pulled tight again. “Hang on. I feel a contraction coming on.”

“Breathe, sweetie. Put the phone down.”

Rosie disappeared, and the orderly hospital room jostled into view.

I watched Holly’s face turn from loving to terrified. “She’s in the right place with experts,” I said quickly. Summer put a comforting hand on Holly’s shoulder while Holly’s eyes remained glued to the phone.

“Take a deep breath, baby. Okay, let it out,” said Holly. Except for Rosie’s breathing, a low moan, there was no other sound, and we held our own breaths and waited. Rosie repositioned the phone.

“How bad is it?” Holly’s brow knitted as if she herself was in pain. “Give me some of the pain. Pour it into the phone.”

“Oh God!” she shouted. Another moan, a pause, and then Rosie gasped. The contraction dissipating. “I’m not afraid, Hol. This baby is meant to be.”

“We are meant to be.” Holly looked as if she wanted to crawl through the phone screen to be by Rosie’s side.

“Oh, hey,” Rosie spoke to someone off-screen. “Okay, sure.” To Holly she said, “They’re going to check my progress.”

And that was when things went bananas.

Rosie said, “You’re kidding. God, Holly. The baby.”

“What’s happening?”

In the calmest voice in the car, Summer said, “Holly, the baby is coming now.”

“Start driving, Sam. Let’s get us there, right, Holly? We’ll get there soon, and you can hold the baby.” Holly nodded rapidly, and I saw she was holding her breath.

“Keep breathing, Holly. You can remind Rosie too,” said Summer.

“Right. Remember, Rosie. Breathe through.”

Peanut sat at attention. I couldn’t see Moose, but I assumed he was mimicking his best friend’s posture. I heard Peanut panting, and I knew he was feeling the charge in the air. The anticipation of new life.

There were metal clanking sounds and a chorus of mixed voices. Someone said, “I’ll take the phone.” There was a wild, swinging view of the previously empty room now populated with bodies. An unknown woman’s face appeared and said, “You’re Rosie’s wife?”

“Yes!” Holly said, her voice frantic and high pitched.

“We’ve done this hundreds of times. We’re good at this.” The phone flipped, and Rosie’s face appeared in the screen. The woman’s voice filled the speaker. “She’s doing great. She’s our focus. Just be encouraging.” Summer’s fingers clutched both of our shoulders.

Holly dropped her hand to the gearshift, where mine rested, and gripped it tightly. I moved so I could hold her hand properly.

Rosie shouted, “Can I push?”

Holly cut her eyes to me. “She’s ready to push?”

“It happens fast sometimes. Superfast. But that’s not a bad thing,” I said.