Free First Comes Love by Emily Giffin Page A

dead. A professor who noticed my alarming loss of weight and slipping grades insisted that I see a university shrink. Therapy and drugs barely kept me afloat.
    The only bright spot came that spring when my acceptance letters rolled in from law schools, including one from Columbia. It wasn’t Harvard or Yale, and law school was a far cry from neurosurgery, but it was still the Ivy League, and I knew my news made my parents proud. This, in turn, filled
me
with pride, which was better than being completely empty.
    A few months later, I got the hell out of Syracuse, moved to New York City, and threw myself into my first year of law school, doing my best to avoid the theater, plays, or any other cultural offerings.
Maybe Lewis was right,
I thought, when I learned that he and Poppy were living in the Village and had joined the same theater company. Maybe I was a spineless sellout. Then again, maybe I was doing something noble and selfless, putting my parents first. I convinced myself that this was the case, and became determined to be their stable, successful child, the salve on their still-open wounds.
    Of course, I think they hoped I would one day have a family, too, preferably in Atlanta. But if that didn’t pan out for me, Josie would have that covered. At the time she was dating a generically handsome boy named Will, who hailed from a “good family” (my mother’s phrase) in Macon, had impeccable manners, and wore seersucker and white bucks on special occasions. The two quickly became serious, giddy in love, the kind of couple who laid claim to baby names before they’re even engaged. She was doing her part to make my parents happy, and we forged a tacit agreement, an unspoken pact: I would accomplish and achieve from afar, and she would marry, become a mother, and provide the beautiful, local grandchildren. Maybe it would make Dad stop drinking. Maybe it would bring our parents back together. At the very least, we would both help them move on in our so-called
new normal,
a term I despised.
    At my law school graduation, my parents presented me with my brother’s briefcase, the same one they had given him on his twenty-fifth birthday. It was a moment that was more bitter than sweet, and I remember feeling intensely jealous of my sister’s end of the bargain. I had a law degree and a briefcase. She had real happiness. Her life as a teacher seemed easy, punctuated by one happy hour and road trip after another. Most important, she had someone to love.
    Lest I become bitter, I reassured myself that her choices might actually free me in the long run.
Maybe someday,
I kept telling myself as I passed the bar and went to practice litigation at a top Manhattan firm and billed seventy or eighty hours every week.
Maybe someday
after Josie married Will and popped out a baby, I would follow my heart, too.
Maybe
someday
I would be happy.
    —
    B UT THEN, BEFORE I could cast off my legal bowlines, Josie fucked everything up in grand Josie style. She called me in the middle of the night (though I was still at work, finishing a brief), bawling, telling me she had screwed up and that Will had dumped her. I asked her what happened, trying to sort out the facts so that I could offer her appropriate counsel.
    “It’s a long story,” she said, her line whenever something was her fault or she didn’t want to get into it. “Just trust me. It’s over.”
    “Well, then. You’ll get over him—and find someone else,” I said. “You’re not even thirty. You have plenty of time.”
    “Do you promise?” she asked so quickly that I couldn’t help questioning whether she truly loved Will or she just wanted to get married. Maybe
any
cute boy in seersucker would do.
    I obviously couldn’t assure her fate, any more than I had Daniel’s, but I still told her yes, it’s all going to be okay. After all, I thought, the universe owed us both a little mercy.
    A week later, I flew back to Atlanta at Josie’s pleading, filled with the usual