“I killed a man in Reno,” Brian says, “just to watch him die.”

“Me, too!” I say. Brian shoots me a wink, a silly, exaggerated scrunching of the entire left side of his face.

Erin, Brian’s wife, elbows him and rolls her eyes at me. “I never finished writing thank-you notes after Livi was born,” she says.

I’ve known Erin for three years, ever since we gave birth on the same cold day in November, at the same hospital, in adjacent rooms. Our shared terror brought us together. This feels like a bitch, she said to me, under her breath, when we met, pacing the hallways, in active labor.

Does this thing come with a money-back guarantee? I whispered to her from her doorway the next day, a hospital gown tied loosely around my blobby middle; pink, bald baby Daisy bundled in my arms like a precious little rat.

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