Excerpt from The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"You said you'd try."

"I said I'd take the vitamins. That's all I said." "You didn't take them."

"I took some." "How many?"

"I don't know. Unlike you, I didn't count."

Luke lowers the bottle, grips it between both hands, palm pressing down on the top, twisting, removing. He peers into the opening. "This bottle is full, Rose." He looks up at me again, head shaking left, right, his disapproval pouring over me.

Who is this man before me, this man I love, this man I married?

I can barely see a resemblance between this person and the one who used to look at me like I was the only woman in the universe, like I was the meaning of his entire existence. I loved being that for Luke. I loved being his everything. He has always been my everything, this man with the soft, thoughtful gaze, with the friendliest, most open of smiles, this man I was certain I would love for the rest of my days on this earth.

The words But I love you, Luke are trapped moths banging around inside me, unable to find their way out.

Instead of disarming the bomb between us, in one swift motion I explode, swiping the bottle from Luke's hand, my arm like a club, knocking it hard and high, the huge, oval pills becoming an arc of ugly green Skittles flung across the wood floor, scattering across the white sheets on the bed.

This action freezes both of us.

Luke's lips are slightly parted, the sharp, clean edges of his front teeth visible. His eyes follow the trail of pills that have come to represent the success or failure of this marriage, tiny buoys I was meant to ingest to keep our marriage afloat. I've spilled them, so now we are sinking. The only sound in the room is our breathing. Luke's eyes are wide. Betrayed.

He thinks I am the one to betray him, that the proof lies in that stupid bottle of vitamins.

Why doesn't he see that he is the one who betrayed me? That by changing his mind about children he's only shown me that I am not worthy enough on my own?

Luke returns to life, walks to the corner of the room where the rolling bottle came to a stop. He bends down and picks it up. He plucks one vitamin from the floor, then another, pinching them between his fingers before dropping them back inside. The pills clatter to the bottom of the bottle.

I stand there, watching as Luke bends and straightens, bends and straightens until every last prenatal vitamin is back in its rightful home, even those that went skittering under the bed. Luke has to lift the edge of the comforter to see them, has to lie down on the floor to retrieve them, arm straining.

When he's finished, he looks at me, eyes full of accusation. "Why did I have to marry the one woman in the world who doesn't want a baby?"

I inhale sharply. There.

There it is. The thing that Luke's been thinking forever, finally out in the open. Not the part about me not wanting a baby; that he's known since the very beginning. It's the clear ring of regret in his voice that makes me wince, the way he singles me out as unique and only in the worst of ways. We stare at each other. I wait for an apology that doesn't come. My heart is pounding, my mind is racing from Luke's question, piling my own on top of his. Why can't I be just like every other woman who wants a baby? Why am I not? Why was I made this way?

Will this be the summary of my life at its end? Rose Napolitano: Never a mother.

Rose Napolitano: She didn't want a baby.

Luke looks down at his feet. He picks up the bottle cap, closes it with a hard snap of the lid.

I reach for it—I reach for him.

Two

MARCH 14 , 1998

Rose, Lives 1– 9

I don't like having my picture taken. "Can you look up from your lap?"

My eyes, my head, my chin all refuse this request.

I'm the kind of person who runs from a camera, who hides behind whoever is next to me. Who puts up my hand to a lens if one shows up in my face. All the more reason I should not be here right now, having a portrait done in my cap and gown. What was I thinking?

Excerpted from The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas. Copyright © 2021 by Donna Freitas. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.