It had taken Susan all of the twenty-three years since that moment to know her mother’s turning point. There she was, lonely to herself, growing another life inside her, her body dedicated to the cause of wife and motherhood; trying to create abundance out of scarcity, as if it involved magic that she had yet to learn. Was she living some version of her mother’s life? A victim of a man that would go to any length to make his needs and wants the center of the world? Was this the source of her mother’s misfortune: loving a man who could not or would not love her back? She didn’t want to be like that. She didn’t want to be an unwanted responsibility of a man; waiting and wondering whether or not he was coming home that night; and if he did, if his contempt would be the death of her. No. She would be different. She would not be confined to the rarefied world of dreams. For surely there was as much magic in the pull of gravity.