Ava held up a hand. "Stop. I asked. I got the answer." Her stomach turned again.
For nearly a year, Ryan had sat beside her in doctors' offices while they discussed timing and fertility and probabilities. He had held Ava's hand during blood draws because she hated needles. He had kissed her forehead after a negative test in June and told her they had time. In July, he had gone to Lily's apartment and created a pregnancy by accident. The cruelty of the contrast was so complete that Ava could barely breathe.
"Did you know we were trying that month?" she asked Lily. Lily looked devastated. "Yes." "You knew." "Yes."
"I sent you pictures of the stupid ovulation tests because I was making jokes about how romantic my marriage had become." Lily's crying became silent. Ava nodded as though confirming something for herself. "You knew." Ryan leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"Ava, don't do this to yourself." She stared at him. "You don't get to tell me what I'm doing to myself while your child is inside my sister." He looked stricken. The words changed the air.
Until then, everyone had talked about Lily being pregnant and Ryan being the father as facts. Ava had never said the phrase your child. Saying it made the future rush suddenly closer: appointments, a visible belly, a birth, a child who would be her niece or nephew and also her husband's son or daughter. Ava gripped the back of a chair. "What are you planning to do?" she asked Lily.
Ryan said, "That's her decision." Ava did not even turn around. "If you interrupt one more question I ask my sister, I will make you leave this house before she finishes answering it." Ryan fell silent. Lily took several breaths.
"I don't know." "Have you seen a doctor?" "Yes." "Alone?" A pause.
Ava closed her eyes. "Ryan went with you." Lily nodded. That hurt differently. Sex could be described by cowards as a mistake.
A doctor's appointment required a calendar. It required choosing a time, driving somewhere, sitting in a waiting room, signing forms, and staying together long enough to hear medical information about the life they had created. Ava looked at Ryan. "When?" "Last Thursday."
Last Thursday Ava had been at a tasting with a hotel client. Ryan texted her at four twenty saying a contractor meeting was running late and he would pick up dinner on the way home. He arrived with sushi and kissed Ava on the cheek. "You went to an appointment with her and then brought me sushi." Ryan whispered, "Yes."
"Did you hear the heartbeat?" Lily's face folded. Ryan stared at the floor. Ava knew the answer. She turned away from them and walked into the open hallway.
The front door stood twenty feet away, closed against the wet night. A console table beneath the mirror held a bowl for keys, a stack of unopened mail, and a ceramic vase Diane had given Ava when she and Ryan moved in. Ava put both hands on the table and looked at herself in the mirror. She barely recognized the woman reflected there. Her long chestnut hair was still smooth from the effort she had made before dinner.
Her makeup was intact. Her dark-green dress fit exactly as it had two hours earlier. Nothing visible had changed, and yet she felt as if someone had opened her body and replaced every organ with something heavier. Behind her, Ryan said softly, "I never wanted to hurt you." Ava met his reflection in the mirror.
"Then what did you want?" He did not answer immediately. She turned around. "That's a real question. What did you want?"