“This is privately,” Ava said. “This is my mother’s house. This is my sister. This is my husband. Who else did you want in the audience?”
Lily flinched at audience, because she heard the truth in it. They had made her sister a spectator in her own life.
“I love you,” Ryan said to Ava, and the sentence was so misplaced it almost seemed indecent.
Ava’s head tipped, a small courteous motion, as if he had offered her a dish she would not be taking. “You loved me so much you went to bed with the girl who used to steal my mascara.”
“I was lonely,” Lily said, and then shook her head hard, hating her own excuse as it left her. “No. That’s not fair. I knew. I knew every time. I knew when I put this dress on tonight.”
Ava looked at the burgundy fabric, at the careful hair, at the nude mouth now ruined by salt. “You dressed for the truth. I’ll give you that.”
“I dressed because I thought if I looked like a woman you wouldn’t see a child.” Lily’s voice cracked on child. “I thought I could say it and still be your sister.”
“You are my sister,” Ava said, and the present tense was its own knife. “That’s the problem.”
Ryan tried again, because men like Ryan believe that a sentence exists somewhere which, if found, will put the furniture back. “There are options. There are conversations with doctors. There are ways we don’t have to blow up the whole—”
Ava turned on him with such force that the candles seemed to lean away. “If you finish that sentence as if my sister’s pregnancy is a scheduling conflict, I will throw your glass at the wall and I will not miss.”
He stopped.
Lily sobbed once, a hitching animal sound, then pressed her knuckles to her lips. “I didn’t come here to take him. I came here because I couldn’t carry it alone anymore. I wake up sick. I drive past this house and I feel like a thief. I needed you to know before I started showing and you thought I was just getting soft.”
“How far along?” Ava asked.