Free Every Second With You by Lauren Blakely

the brothers I never knew, and I miss the lost chance. I miss the chance to have been a family.
    I grip the branch harder, and then I sink to my knees, the grass cool against my jeans. I lean my forehead on the branch and close my eyes, flashing back to the best piece of advice Michele ever gave me. “ You can shut off and shut down, but none of those reactions are ultimately going to heal your heart. What will help you is speaking your truth. But don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t make assumptions. Say only what you know to be true. ”
    I bite my lip, as if I can hold it all in. But it’s simmering inside me, bubbling up. The ground feels uneven, like it’s swaying and ready to crumble under me. I grab harder onto the branch, trying to hold on. But it’s no use. I can’t hold on. I have to let it out. A thick giant tear that rolls down my cheek. “I’m so fucking scared,” I whisper. “I’m so scared the baby is going to join you, and I don’t know how I’m going to get through this in one piece. Because if I lose someone again, I don’t know that I can handle it.”
    A nearby car somewhere slams on its brakes, causing a chain reaction of honking horns.
    “You can.”
    Someone is speaking to me, and I stand and swivel. I see a guy leaving the park, nodding at me, tipping his cap. “You can,” he says again, and walks off into the night.
    I shake my head, because maybe I’m seeing things. Maybe I’m hearing things. But maybe this is the kindness of strangers saying what you need to hear.
    Fate. It works like that, right?
    I take out my phone and snap a picture of the tree. Then I tap out a message to Harley, speaking my truth.

Chapter Twelve
Harley
    “Let me try. Move your fat ass,” Kristen says, bumping my hip.
    I roll my eyes as I scoot over on the carpeted floor of our apartment. “Oh my god, how long are you going to make fat jokes? I’m eight weeks. I’m not even showing, beyotch.”
    She strokes her chin, adopts a contemplative look. “Hmm. Let’s see. If my calculations are correct, I’m going to make jokes for the next seven months. Now, watch what happens when a pro with the camera takes the shot.”
    Kristen is a film major, and I’m not sure that means she takes better cell phone pictures, but I’m just glad to have a partner in crime.
    Kristen centers her phone in her line of sight, and snaps a photo of one of the vintage cards. Our coffee table is littered with them.
    Kristen has been playing detective with me for a few days now. I started by Googling my father’s first name—John—and San Diego. But, big surprise, I wasn’t able to narrow it down. Then we stopped in a fancy stationery store in the Village and I showed the owner the cards, but she shrugged and said she had no clue where they were from. After that, Kristen pretended to hypnotize me into remembering my grandparents’ names.
    The added benefit of playing detective? It helps me to not think about Trey. I have a focus for my too-busy mind. This is a puzzle, this is something to be solved, this is a task that I can figure out.
    “All right, the weird owl that’s looking at me is done,” she says, pointing to the card with a raised illustration of an owl with huge eyes.
    “That’s what they do. Owls stare.”
    “Spoken like an ornithologist. Now that one.” She snaps a picture of an orange fox with a bushy tail. “And how about the hedgie?”
    I slide the chubby-hedgehog card across the wood, and she captures its likeness.
    “All righty,” she says, wiggling her fingers. “Let’s have Google do its magic.”
    She emails me the pictures. I flip open my laptop, download the images, and then upload them into Google image search.
    I cross my fingers. “Dear Google: please tell me everything.”
    But Google returns a search result for an online store that sells rubber stamps with the owl design.
    I try the others. The hedgie yields a craft shop. And the wise old owl? Nothing but related images of cartoonish