The Blessings by Elise Juska

clambers down to the ground and scampers toward Elena, diaper sagging almost to his knees. Suddenly everything—Lauren’s gaping robe, Max’s legs across her lap, Elena picking happily through the trash—makes Kate’s eyes fill with tears. She pats the top of her head, looking for sunglasses that aren’t there.
    â€œKate?” Lauren says. She is squinting. “Are you all right?”
    â€œSorry,” Kate says, swiping a finger beneath each eye. “It’s nothing.”
    Elena looks up then, too, alert to some shift in the air, watching Kate with those big, long-lashed eyes. “Are you crying, Aunt Kate?”
    â€œA little,” Kate says. “But I’m fine, honey.”
    â€œAre you sad?”
    Sad —a word this little girl must have heard a lot of lately. Three years old. What could she possibly understand it to mean?
    â€œI’m a little bit sad,” Kate tells her, forcing a smile, feels it tremble dangerously on her face. “But don’t worry.” She looks back at Lauren. “It’s nothing, Lauren. Honestly. Just hormones—” She catches herself a second too late. The excuse has become such a reflex that she forgot who she was talking to. Kate had no intention of foisting her problems on poor Lauren. “Sorry,” she says with a short laugh. “Strike that from the record.” But her sister-in-law does not look fazed. In fact, she looks slightly energized, as if the intimation of someone else’s trouble has awakened something in her, some new tick of life.
    â€œAre you and Patrick trying?”
    Trying —the term has always made Kate cringe. But Lauren is just the type who would say it. The ones who say it are the ones who get pregnant, Kate thinks.
    â€œWell, you know. Trying is the operative word,” Kate allows. She touches the corner of each eye. “It hasn’t been going so well.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œDon’t be,” Kate says, wanting to add: You can’t feel sorry for me. Your life is so much worse!
    â€œWhat does your OB say?”
    Kate shrugs. “She doesn’t know. No one knows. There’s nothing really wrong—nothing technically wrong, I mean.” She is talking quickly now, and Lauren looks as though she’s really listening to her, as though she actually understands her, and Kate has to suppress the urge to tell her everything—the rote sex, the embarrassing seduction attempt, the sadness theory. But she can’t tell Lauren the sadness theory, not when Lauren’s life is the sadness.
    â€œAnyway,” Kate says, with another awkward laugh. “That’s the deal. But we’re not telling people, really. The family, I mean. Because, you know, once it’s out there…”
    â€œOh, I know.” Lauren smiles then, a genuine smile. “Believe me. I won’t say a word.”
    It occurs to Kate that maybe she doesn’t really know Lauren—has her sister-in-law always been so blunt? She’s always struck Kate as so upright and proper, but maybe grief has altered her, reshaped her. Maybe, in the same way Kate’s college friends have become more soft and circumspect, the profoundness of Lauren’s loss has made her more candid, brought other, truer parts of her to light.
    â€œThanks,” Kate says. She surveys the pool. The water looks cleaner, even bluer somehow. The breeze makes slight ripples in the surface. The kids are still playing in the trash pile, Elena making piles of the piles, instructing Max on where things go. Bugs. Leaves. Paper.
    â€œListen,” Kate says then, propping the pole at her side. “I want to help you, Lauren.”
    â€œYou already have.”
    â€œNo, no, not just today,” Kate says. “Not the pool. I mean, in general.”
    Lauren shakes her head quickly. “That’s okay.”
    â€œTruly, I want to— we want to. Patrick and I could