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thick. “I haven’t told anyone. Not even my husband.”
    “I’ve got almost four of my own. I know what pregnant looks like,” she said.
    My eyes must have widened like a crazy person’s.
    “And you looked like you might vomit when you handed me that coffee cake,” she said, laughing. “I’d offer you a slice, but I have a feeling you’d say no. Am I right?”
    I nodded. I felt panicky. I had just come over to deliver a coffee cake, but suddenly I felt exposed. Vulnerable. Frankie could not find out about the baby. It would kill him. And here I’d told a perfect stranger. Why hadn’t I just denied it? This was none of her business. Suddenly, I just wanted to go home, to be back inside my own house where my private life was private. This was exactly why I usually kept my distance from my neighbors.
    “I’m just a couple of months along.” I looked toward the kitchen doorway, mapping my escape. “I’ve had some . . . um . . . bad luck, I guess you’d say. I’m waiting before I get everyone’s hopes up.”
    “Of course,” she said. “And I bet it’s a boy. That’s why you’re so sick. I threw up every single day until Johnny was born. Boys are like poison.”
    I forced a smile and tried not to think about the poison inside of me. And then, upon hearing his name, Johnny materialized in the doorway, drawing his pistol from his holster and holding his mother at gunpoint. “Bam!” he screamed.
    I felt like I might jump out of my skin; my heart pounded hard in my chest.
    Eva’s face flushed. “Johnny Wilson, you’ve got five seconds to hand over that cap gun. One . . .” And with that, cowboy Johnny ran off, out the door to the backyard, where I could see him mount that massive rocking horse, yelling “Yee-haw!”
    “I’m sorry, I really should go. I’ve got a load of laundry in,” I said.
    “I’m glad you came over,” she said, the color still in her otherwise pale face. “I don’t know a single grown-up person in this town besides Teddy. I really could use a friend.”
    I grimaced.
    “And don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell anybody. Your secret’s safe with me.”

    When I told Frankie about the visit with Eva Wilson, I carefully omitted our discussion about due dates and morning sickness and babies. “They have a little boy,” I said. “He’s a holy goddamned terror. And her husband works for John Hancock. Some sort of salesman, she says.”
    Frankie snickered. “That must be why he’s got that showy car. Sales . Humph .”
    He and Ted Wilson had pulled into our respective driveways at the same time that night. I’d watched Frankie looking at that car, which made our Studebaker look like a shabby brown shoe.
    Frankie smacked the table. “We should invite them over for drinks. A barbeque. He drinks, doesn’t he?”
    “I would imagine,” I said. (It turned out that drinking was one of two things Frankie and Ted had in common. The other was the Red Sox: both of them afflicted by that crazy, futile love for a team that would always, always let them down.)
    But despite Frankie’s interest in the Wilsons, I was not so keen on the idea of a barbeque. After that first visit with Eva, I had no desire to go back to their house. I’d left that first morning feeling like a dissected frog: splayed open, prodded, and studied. And the idea of having them over seemed downright dangerous. What if Eva slipped up? Frankie would be furious I’d kept the pregnancy from him, and even angrier that I had shared it with a total stranger. And so I made excuses and studied the Wilsons from the safety of our kitchen window. I still hadn’t even met Ted Wilson yet, though I had watched as he disappeared out the front door every morning, straightening his hat and tie and getting into his car. I also heard him when he pulled in each night; he always honked three times and the children would come running from their respective perches: in bedroom windows, on the porch swing, and, for little