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Sometimes people say things, often inadvertently, that make up your mind for you. The moment after Eamon said he didn’t want to be a father, it clicked in my mind that I did want to be the father to Ava’s child—more than anything else in the world. It was as simple as that. I loved her and yearned to be her partner for the rest of my life if she’d have me. I didn’t care if her child was Eamon’s and I didn’t care if there was a curse. Most important, I didn’t even care if Ava Malcolm was as crazy as a fly in a jar. I wanted to be with her and would do anything to make that happen.

When I told Eamon that, he raised one arm and crossed the air with it, as if he were a priest giving me a blessing. “I don’t know if you’re an idiot, a masochist, or the greatest guy on earth. You know people don’t get better as we get older—we just get more of who we are. If Ava’s crazy now, she’s only going to get crazier.”

“I know. But maybe she’s not.”

“True, maybe she’s not. But the alternative to her being crazy is that there really is a curse and you’re going to have to face a whole different bunch of crap. Either way, you’re in the hot seat.”

“Maybe but maybe not. You know she’s going to the hospital today to get the results of the DNA test.”

Eamon, took a deep breath and let it out in one hard hush. “Call me and let me know the results, will you?”

“I will.” I put out my right hand and we shook for a long time.

He smiled. “You’re a good guy, you really are. Sticking by Ava like that, no matter what? That’s stand-up stuff.”

“Eamon, before I go, tell me about these frozen animals you mentioned before.”

“No, you don’t need to hear about that now. Maybe it was just a thing she did to me. Forget I even told you.” He patted me on the shoulder again and walked out of the bar.

When I got back to Ava’s apartment, she wasn’t there, so I let myself in. On a table in the hallway, impossible to miss, was a sheaf of papers with a yellow note on top. In large black letters it said PLEASE READ. I picked up the papers and saw there was more written in smaller letters on the note.

“This is the DNA report. It says that neither you nor Eamon are the father of my child. I’m a coward and don’t have the nerve to be here when you learn that. I’m going to spend the afternoon with my sister and will be back later. Please be here then so we can at least talk about it. I’m so sorry that I lied to you about not being with other men. There have been others since you and I got together.

“Whether it makes any difference to you or not now, I wasn’t lying about Lamiya and the curse. I don’t know who the father is, although until today I was certain it was either you or Eamon. But Lamiya was real. The curse is real. My deepest love and affection for you is real. Please be here later. I don’t deserve that, but I can ask.”

Stunned, I tried to look at the other papers in the sheaf but everything was numbers and graphs and at the end a summary I couldn’t understand because my brain was flying south fast and had no more room in it.

Still in my coat, I walked into the living room with the papers in hand and sat down on the couch. The couch where we’d had so many good talks and sex and silent, contented times sitting together and reading or just being. I tried to look at the papers again but it was not possible, so I leaned forward to toss them on the coffee table in front of the couch.

A large-format book of photographs I had never seen before was there. The title of the book was Freeze Frame, and every picture inside it was a striking rendering of dead animals, fish, and reptiles…the whole animal kingdom, frozen. Every single picture was of dead frozen creatures—on their backs, their sides, on ice in markets, on empty snowy roads where they’d obviously been hit and killed by passing cars. The book was gorgeous, poignant, and macabre all at the same time. As I leafed through it, I kept thinking of Eamon’s question about whether I had encountered Ava’s frozen animals yet. Was this what he was talking about, this book? Or was there more?

I’d looked at perhaps ten of the photos before I came to the marked page. A green Post-it note was at the top, bent over onto the page by constant use. The photograph was unlike any of the others in the book. It was of a woman dressed in black holding an infant in her arms. It is snowing—the world around her is white. She and the child are the only color there. But the child, or what little we can see of it because the woman is holding it so that it looks like she is hiding it from the photographer, looks dead and so white in her arms that it could be frozen too, like all of the other subjects in the book.

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