He wanted to work with his dad. He wanted to be like his dad . . . a good dentist, and a great father.

I was on board.

My future was his family, people who had a little more energy, activity, and opportunity than I’d been raised with. My mom and dad were homebodies. Dr. and Mrs. Morris were active on the Scottsdale social scene; their large home host to numerous parties and high-profile events. It seemed like the ideal life to me. Dry desert winters and blistering summers where you worked in an adobe-tiled building and then cooled off after work and on weekends in your backyard swimming pool.

I didn’t need more. Didn’t want more. Work, home, family, that was enough for me. I am apparently too easily entertained and I’ve always found something to engage my mind . . . something to focus on.

School, studies, exams, career. Whatever I do, I do well and there is satisfaction in excellence. Success. I naturally assumed I’d be a good wife, a devoted mother. I didn’t see problems with the plan.

The plan.

The plan is gone.

• • •

I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and stare at nothing, heart pounding, skin clammy.

What is the plan now?

What do I do now?

I don’t know.

It’s been over a year since Andrew died and I still don’t know.

Will I ever know again?

• • •

It takes me forever to fall back asleep and I sleep heavily, waking to sunlight and the twittering of birds in the oak tree not far from the master bedroom.

I don’t get up right away. Everything is heavy inside me. Wet cement. A future I can’t see—

Not true. I can see it. Work, work, work. Possibly being promoted to Dr. Morris’ partner. Morris & McAdams Dentistry.

But suddenly I’m resistant. Suddenly the idea of sitting so still, mask firmly in place, staring down into open mouths for the rest of my life horrifies me.

Is this what Andrew had thought?

That he’d rather die than sit on that stool and gaze down into open mouths day after day after day?

Dentistry is a science, and an art.