Free Sleepless Nights by Sarah Bilston Page A

swayed home, warm and together, Tom and Q, a couple again.
    “He’s a good kid really,” Tom said, chuckling, picking up on our earlier conversation as we wound our way slowly along the dark driveway. Tall pines reared up all around us, black and still; beneath them, in the red earth, lay pine cones sticky with sap. Before us, at the end of the winding dirt path, surrounded by maples, the house glowed like a giant pearl in the moonlight. “And he seems so much more alert than he used to be—”
    “Did you notice how his eyes swiveled when you came into the room this evening?” I asked proudly, resting my head briefly on Tom’s shoulder.
    “Yes. And I really think he heard that gull on the deck this morning. Did you see how his eyes turned?”
    After sharing a few more moments of equally dizzying brilliance from Samuel’s short life, we fell into contented silence. Sometimes it is easier to see your infant’s perfections when he is not right in front of you.
    “Have you thought about what you want to do after Crimpson?” I asked suddenly.
    “N-no,” Tom replied slowly. “That is—no.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means—it means I can’t make any decisions until I know what you’re going to do.” His face was hard to read in the darkness.
    I blinked. “Come again?”
    Tom stopped, and looked down; I could just see the gleam of the white part of his eyes. His breath was warm on my face. “Just what I said. Are you going back to Schuster? Or—not?”
    There is such a noise and a jostle in the forest on a summer night; when you stand still it seems as though every leaf, every patch of undergrowth, is bursting with life. There was a rustling somewhere behind me, and I turned a little nervously to look; a skunk ambled unhurriedly from between two trees, stopped and gazed at us for amoment, then resumed his course, his white stripe sharply defined in the moonlight. Other, smaller animals scurried as mere shadows beneath the lowest boughs of the pines. High above, we heard an owl’s jubilant call, then the desperate squawk of some little animal. An acre away, a dog clinked his chain, and someone’s screen door opened and closed.
    “You think I’m not going back?” I countered at last.
    Tom shrugged. (I heard the fabric stretch and move across his shoulders.) “I can’t see it, quite frankly, Q. You’ve been losing interest in corporate law for months, if not years. You hate half the people you work with. You can’t bear to leave Samuel for twenty-five minutes. Why on earth would you go back?”
    “Because—because—they’ve paid my maternity leave,” I returned helplessly. “Because it’s my job. Because jobs are hard to find these days. Because I don’t know what else I would do.”
    Tom half-laughed, and put his lips to my hair. “I’m the one whose job’s on the line, but you’re the one who most needs to quit, Q. Least, that’s how it looks to me. When you were on bed rest I was frightened by how quickly you forgot your working life. The moment you walked out of the office it was as if the whole place slipped straight out of your mind.”
    “That’s not quite true—” I was defensive.
    “No, but almost. What do you want to do? If you could do anything in the world, I mean? If we weren’t in a recession? Save gorillas? Teach high school? What?”
    We had begun walking along the driveway again, and at this moment we rounded the final corner to see…an unknown car parked in the driveway. I’d opened my mouth to answer Tom, but as soon as I saw the car I forgot everything: for about three minutes, as I charged breathlessly up to the door, heart thumping, hands shaking, I thought of nothing but our son: was this a doctor? But no, no, of course not; it was only Paul, who had arrived a few hours early from New York. As soon as he walked into the sitting room, he waslike a refreshing spirit from another life, his thoughts full of work and gossip, of boats and sailing, of sports