"I want you to tell me how someone becomes capable of this." "I don't know." "Then think." Ryan stood again, slower this time. "This isn't helping."
Ava turned toward him. "Nothing you do for the rest of tonight gets to be described as helping." He stopped beside his chair. "She's pregnant and upset." The protective tone in his voice hit Ava with such force that her hands went cold.
She looked from him to Lily and understood another dimension of what had happened. Ryan was worried about Lily. Not abstractly. Not merely because she was Ava's sister. He was watching Lily cry with the attention of a man who believed he had some right, however guilty, to care for her.
Ava's expression changed. Ryan saw it and immediately stepped backward. "I didn't mean—" "You are defending her from me." "I'm not." "You just did."
"I was saying she's under stress." "Whose child is causing the stress?" He looked away. Ava turned to Lily. "How far along are you?"
"Eleven weeks on Saturday." Eleven weeks. Ava counted backward automatically. Mid-July. Ryan had said the affair ended in July.
Lily had said four nights. The numbers suddenly felt like a forensic problem Ava could solve if she kept asking enough questions. "Do you know which time?" she asked. Lily's face flushed. "Ava."
"Do you know?" "Probably the last time." "Where?" Ryan said, "You don't need to hear every detail." Ava swung toward him.
"You don't get to decide what I need anymore." His mouth tightened. Lily whispered, "My apartment." Ava nodded slowly. "The apartment I helped you find."
Lily lowered her head. Ava remembered the Saturday in July when she and Diane had spent six hours helping Lily choose furniture. Ryan arrived near the end carrying pizza and a tool bag because Lily had bought a shelf that required assembly. Ava left around nine because she had an early client walkthrough the next morning. Ryan had said he would finish the shelf and come home.
He returned after midnight. At the time, Ava had been asleep. She woke when he entered the bedroom and asked whether the shelf had really taken three hours. Ryan laughed and said the instructions might have been written by someone who hated humanity. Ava smiled into the pillow and went back to sleep.
She stared at him now. "The shelf." Ryan's eyes closed briefly. "You stayed to build the shelf." "I did build it."
Ava gave him a disbelieving look. "That is your answer?" "I'm not saying it excuses anything." "You keep giving me facts nobody asked for because you want one of them to accidentally make you less guilty." He sank back into his chair.
Ava paced once around the end of the table. She was too angry to sit and too shocked to stand still. Her bare feet made almost no sound against the hardwood, and the quietness of her movement made the scene feel even more unreal. "Did you ever use protection?" she asked. Lily whispered, "Most of the time."
Ava stopped. Ryan's face changed. "Most," Ava repeated. "The last time, we..." Lily could not finish.