Abject Naturalism + Sarah Braunstein

The baby's father left before the Cesarean incision had fully healed, when it was still a raised red line, tender to the touch, glistening with Vitamin E oil. Perfidy!

This from a man who'd once said he'd die without her, who'd written her piles of letters after she'd rejected him, back in graduate school-though graduate school makes it sound more serious than it was.

They'd gone to a university to become fiction writers. The degree took two years.

During this time, Toni slept with several of her peers but not with the man who eventually became her child's father. He left letters in her mailbox about how much this pained him. But he was too odd, she thought, terribly intense, with a work ethic that made her ashamed of her own and a burrowing gaze that at once flattered and repelled. He was skinny and had a ponytail. He carried a briefcase. He didn't die for lack of her, despite what his letter warned.

It wasn't until a decade had passed, when she was working as a waitress in a small New England city and had just broken up with a bartender named Dusty, when she had given up writing, all early sense of specialness evaporated, that she decided to reach out to him. He was happy to hear from her, her old suitor said, thought about her sometimes, wondered how she was. Was she still writing fiction? Now and then, she lied. He'd always loved her prose style, he told her.

He himself had two novel drafts and was finishing a Ph.D. in a city a few hours away. The next weekend, she took a train.