The Things I Do For You by Mary Carter Page A

in life after death, Bailey?” Greg asked her. It was as if he knew she’d been trying to change the subject, but he preferred to stir things up.
    “We’ve always considered ourselves agnostics,” Bailey said with a quick glance at Brad. “We just don’t know what’s out there.” A collage of memories rose to Bailey’s mind, conversations she and young Brad had with all the religious folks they’d met during their travels over the years. Always someone, somewhere shoving a brochure at them with pictures of people’s faces contorted in rapture or hell, sometimes it was hard to tell which. Acting as if they had all of life’s answers, as if everyone else were doomed. Brad and Bailey always listened politely, but held firm in the knowledge that when it came to the existential questions like where did we come from and what happens after we die, they took comfort in the fact that they just didn’t know.
    “I do,” Brad said. “I know.”
    Bailey wanted to kick him under the table. Her husband was like a rescued kidnapped victim still being loyal to his captors. But fighting at the dinner table in front of their new friends was definitely not kosher. Bailey turned to Greg. “And you?” she asked. “What do you believe?”
    Greg also glanced at Brad before answering. “Nothing,” he said, throwing out his arms and sloshing a bit of champagne. “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.”
    Allissa threw both hands over her ears and shook her head. “No, no, no, no, no,” she said.
    Brad leaned forward and put his hand on her knee. “It’s not the end,” he told her. Bailey suddenly wished it was the end. She wouldn’t mind if the building they were in tumbled into the river. She only hoped there would be a few seconds of something before the big nothing just so she could take one last look at Brad and say, “I told you so.” She was feeling so stubborn that she’d actually rather eternity be an endless sea of nothing than listen to his sudden assurances of something. He looked like her husband, he smelled like her husband, and he smiled like her husband. But sometimes, when he opened his mouth and spoke, he just wasn’t her husband.
    And it left Bailey feeling like she had a tiny hole inside her, slowly ripping her apart, or maybe they had a tiny hole between them, the identity you create when you’re a couple, there was a tiny hole in them, and it was slowly ripping them apart. In less dramatic terms, it felt like she was back in gym class and he wasn’t picking her for his team anymore. They used to roll their eyes at each other or play footsies under the table whenever someone started remotely preaching. But his foot was nowhere near hers, she could tell from how he was sitting, leaning away from her, and she longed for it. She longed for his foot to play with hers under the table in solidarity. Since it wasn’t, it made her want to take her foot and give him a good kick in the shins. A waiter arrived and Greg ordered for all of them. Bailey didn’t care, as long as they kept the champagne coming.
    “Tell them your news,” Bailey said.
    “Our news,” Brad said. A tiny bit of relief flooded Bailey. He’d said “our.” Maybe their “them” was still intact after all.
    “Oh my God,” Allissa said. “Are you preggers?” Bailey felt her heart catch. Brad put his hands up.
    “Definitely not,” he said with a laugh. “Can you imagine?” Bailey focused on the breadbasket. She wanted to throw it at Brad’s head. She bit the side of her mouth. She couldn’t believe he’d just said it. That tone. As if it would be the worst thing in the world, as if it would ruin his new zest for life. Definitely not. Can you imagine? For the first time in her life, Bailey understood why monkeys threw their feces.
    “Not yet,” Bailey said. “But we’re working on it.” There. Take that. “But first we have a little lighthouse to deal with.” From the look on Brad’s face, the word “little” definitely