Then

Josh's mom dies the same November night I give birth to Annaleigh.

When the nurse calls to tell us, Josh weeps in the recovery room. I try to show some emotion, but I'm exhausted by the sixteen hours of labor and can barely keep my eyes open.

The nurses here have been watching me with interest, peppering little questions here and there. "So they didn't program you to avoid labor pain?" says one nurse in surprise, adding in a conspiratorial whisper, "Assholes."

I laughed, but it did hurt a little to imagine Andy programming this into me. To be reminded that this wasn't exactly a "natural" birth. Synthetic skin and organs don't hurt on their own.

But I sweep this thought aside because of the miraculous bundle in my arms. A thatch of dark hair on her sweet head. The squintiest little alien eyes. She looks at me with wisdom and patience, and I'm convinced that she's saying, Don't worry. We'll teach each other how to do this. And I don't feel worried right now. Exhausted, yes, but also ebullient. It's intoxicating to think that this was the little person in my belly. All along, it was her.

I do try to eke out a tear for Rita as Josh sits in the chair by my bed with his head in his hands, sniffing under his hospital-issued N95 mask, but if I'm brutally honest, what I feel is relief. Now, when we go back home with our new baby, it will be a fresh start. Annaleigh won't have to breathe that toxicity into her innocent, new lungs. She deserves a house full of light and love. Still, I try to show Josh the compassion he needs.

"I'm sorry, baby," I say, reaching out to touch him.

Josh leaves me and the baby, to handle the logistics of his mother's body. By the time I come home from the hospital two days later, Rita is gone. I walk around slowly, feeling her absence. Peek into the room where she died, which I'm already planning on repurposing into a playroom.

The first days with my baby are brutal, wonderful, difficult, and also the best work I've ever done. My fifth day home, I'm finally walking semi-normally again, I've found a potential babysitter just down the street, we're getting the hang of nursing, and this is good, because WHAT'S UP magazine is scheduled to do an exclusive interview and photo shoot with us, and it's nice to feel like I have things a little more together before their arrival. I'm still not looking forward to strangers and cameras in the house, but with Josh fired and the funeral bills coming up, we need the money more than ever.

As Josh and I get ready in the bathroom before WHAT'S UP arrives, I smile at his reflection.

"I have a surprise for us," I say.

"Yeah?"

"I found a babysitter. I can't be away from Annaleigh for long, but I was thinking we could drive over to the Starbucks and grab some hot chocolates or something, just you and me."

He perks up. "That sounds great."

I've just finished putting on my mascara when WHAT'S UP arrives. There's the photographer, her assistant, and the journalist who's interviewing us. They all gush over Annaleigh for a few seconds, and then get to work setting up lighting and a white backdrop, moving Rita's tchotchkes, and repositioning the furniture.

We pose in the living room. I'm wearing a loose, white dress that floats gracefully over my postpartum body. Josh wears a simple white shirt, unbuttoned at the top, and jeans. We're all barefoot, and the photographer brought little crowns of flowers for me and the baby. "Ethereal," she gushes. We are the perfect family. The interview is painless. I tell my birth story. Josh talks about grieving his mother. And for a couple hours, until they leave, I can pretend that this is the real us. God, how far I've fallen, that this fantasy is now a refuge. What happened to my ideals? Facing reality...embracing reality...but how can you embrace a nightmare? Maybe, like Cam said, I've shifted to being aspirational. That's it. I'm not pretending to be the family who just got photographed. I'm aspiring.

We wait in the living room for the sitter, a girl named Eden. It's quarter to seven. She isn't due for another fifteen minutes, but Annaleigh is asleep upstairs in the bassinet, and Josh and I are both eager to get out. Josh is on the couch, hands behind his head, hips slung forward, tapping his foot. I'm in the small paisley-print armchair opposite him. It's dark outside, and the low lamplight is intimate. The house never feels peaceful, exactly, but at least right now it feels at rest, like whatever malevolent presence Rita has imprinted into the space is asleep, for now. Maybe this is a good time to talk about some practicalities, like Rita's funeral, which we should probably choose a date for. Maybe after the funeral the space won't feel so watchful, like her eyes are looking at me from the wallpaper, from the shadows in the room where she died, from her photograph above the fireplace.

"I'm starting to feel more normal," I say, tucking my legs under me. "If you'd like me to jump in and help with planning the funeral service—"

"Don't," says Josh, rolling his head back on the edge of the couch and looking at the ceiling instead of me. "Just don't."

"Don't what?" I say, feeling a little hurt.

"I'm too raw to talk logistics, okay?"

Part of me wants to snap, I'm trying my best here, okay? But it's better to be the bigger person. "I'm sorry. I understand."

"No, you fucking don't!" Josh shoots up from the couch so fast, he seems spring-loaded. Like his entire body was preparing to do this even when he was in a resting position. I press my back into the chair and grip the narrow armrests.

"You haven't even been alive for a year!" Josh shouts, and it feels too sudden, too disproportionate, too wrong. "Don't pretend, Julia. Your little empathy game isn't working tonight. It's gross, okay? It's fucking gross right now." His chest is heaving, his face red as he stands above me.

"Empathy game?" I whisper with a breathy laugh. What is happening? We had the photo shoot—the interviews—a light dinner—we're about to get a sitter for the first time—go to Starbucks—

"Yeah." There's an ugly expression on his face. "Yeah, that thing you do where you pretend to identify with me. Be real, for once. Why do you always have to pretend to be so fucking perfect?"

My immediate impulse is to say something soothing. But, whether it's exhaustion or the emotional whiplash of life and death we've been through over the past week, something snags inside me. Unfair.

This isn't a new feeling. Everything about my time in Eauverte has felt unfair, from the hate mail to Rita's cold rejection to the sheriff's utter disregard for the laws that are supposed to protect us. But if there's one thing I've learned from being a Synth in a human world, it's that I don't get to make the rules. My best defense? To smile and look pretty and try to be what everyone expects normal to be. To play by the rules the hardest, even the ones I hate, the unspoken ones, the arbitrary ones. The cruel ones.

And most days, I can make that leap for the world.

But right now, I can't make it for Josh.

He is the one person who's supposed to be one hundred percent on my side. He's supposed to be part of my us, not part of my them.

"That hurts," I say. "Do you think that just because I haven't had more than a year awake, I'm somehow less than you? Or...can't feel as much as you? I just got out of sixteen hours of labor and delivery. Trust me, I can feel pain, Josh."

"Fuck," he says with a wild-edged laugh. "Do you hear yourself? I'm sorry, Julia, but you have no idea what I'm going through. Sorry about your sixteen hours of discomfort, but I've been ‘awake' for three fucking decades. I went through my parents' divorce, my mom's cancer, and then her fucking death. By the way, in case you forgot, she died disapproving of one of my biggest life choices. Do you get how much that fucks with a guy? The answer is no! You don't. You don't have parents, you haven't been through real pain, and you sure as hell don't understand death. Stop pretending you're a human. Stop pretending you understand me. You're a Synth! At least be honest about it! That's all I ask! Okay?"

"A Synth you love," I say, gripping the arms of the chair even harder. What is happening to him? What is happening to us? "A Synth you chose to marry."

"In a moment of fucking lunacy," he spits. "We will never truly understand each other, okay? It's just not possible. What the fuck was I thinking?"

My heart is pounding with pain.

He's lashing out because he's hurt, a desperate voice cries inside me. He's lashing out because his mom is dead and he got fired and we have neighbors spying on us and we wake up to a hateful billboard every damn morning. He's a cornered animal. Of course his claws are out.

It'll be fine.

I'll be fine.

"I'm sorry—" I begin.

"Stop!" he booms, gripping at his hair like he's trying to tear it out. "Stop saying you're sorry!"

"I just mean—"

He's on me in a second, grabbing my neck. The blunt force cutting into my windpipe is so surprising, I don't react at all. His weight crashes into the top of the chair, and, in slow motion, I feel the armchair fall backward, with me in it. I hit the floor. Pain rockets up my spine. My legs are in the air, like a dead bug's, and now Josh is at my side, on his knees, gasping.

"Julia! I didn't mean to—" His hands paw at me.

"Ow," I moan, closing my eyes. My tailbone hurts. My throat hurts. But more than that, it's my heart that hurts, with a pain I didn't even know was possible.

I'm suddenly aware that we're surrounded by windows, and who knows who might be looking in right now. This may be my reality, but I don't want it to be anyone else's show.

"Close the curtains," I gasp.

Josh moves to the window, yanks the curtains closed. He's back at my side.

"Julia, I had no idea how strong I was, I just—" His hands brush my shoulders, touch my hair, stroke my arm, like I'm a pile of scattered dust he's desperately trying to sweep back together.

I'm crying now, eyes still squeezed shut, tears oozing out. I can't even look at Josh. I don't want this to have happened. I want to go back to a life in which this hasn't happened.

"It was an accident." His voice is pleading. "Julia, it was an accident. I'm sorry. Please just look at me. Please be okay. I didn't mean to—it was an accident, I swear."

Opening my eyes is the hardest thing I've done in my life. Harder than giving birth.

Josh's face is pale, his eyes devastated.

I remember Cam's words. Power in no. Do I have a choice, though? If I leave Josh, I could lose not just the only purpose I've ever had, but my new baby, who's sleeping upstairs, helpless and trusting.

The next words I say will make or break us.

"I know," I lie, reaching forward, grasping Josh's forearm even as the tears course down my cheeks and I pray my spine hasn't somehow snapped. It feels like it has. "I know it was an accident, Josh."

I say this not because I'm afraid of him right now.

I'm not.

I say it because it has to be the truth. I need to pour this honey in the gaping cut he's opened, so it doesn't infect and kill me. Doesn't kill our family, the only thing I have in this world.

Fuck fantasy, reality, choice, and all my vague philosophical musings. I had no idea. No idea at all. There's a raw need inside me, opening like a hungry wound, strong and furious. Right now, I need this lie, and it will only hold us together if I choose to believe it.

Just like the moment during the proposal, there's a millisecond. Where I've been and where I could go, spooling between the ticks of Josh's watch. Two paths diverging, my feet poised at the crux. And then—

Yes, I say, with all the ragged desire in my heart. I believe.