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she waited it out it would pass. She hadn’t yet thrown up during this pregnancy. “I just need to be still and quiet. For a second or two.”
    “Amazing,” he said. “You can deliver a baby without flinching, but a cup of tea in your aunt’s sitting room has you green at the gills.”
    “Shh,” she said, patting her tummy gently and closing her eyes. Pass, she commanded the feeling. Pass.
    “Just so long as you swear it isn’t the thought of marrying me that’s making you nauseous,” he gibed.
    “You’re looking for trouble,” she said through gritted teeth.
    “Okay,” he chuckled. He sipped his champagneand tapped his fingers on his knee. He looked around the ornate, overcrowded antique room while June took deep, slow breaths in through her nose, out through her mouth. He smiled at her, though she couldn’t see. Even as she struggled with pregnancy-induced stomach upset, he found her compellingly beautiful.
    The sound of Myrna’s heels on the floor announced her return. “Here it is!” she said cheerfully. Myrna stood before them, holding a dress hanger high above her head. Flowing down to the floor, sheathed in thick, clear plastic, was a wedding gown. “I’ve saved this for you all these years, dear,” she said. “Now you can get married in your mother’s dress!”
    An odd, strangled sound came from June. She turned away from her aunt and Jim and promptly threw up on the rug.
     
    Over the years June had had patients tell her that with morning sickness, unlike food poisoning, the flu or any other nausea-producing condition, the second it was over, it was completely over. Just a few moments before she had struggled with a biting, churning illness that caused her to pinch her eyes closed, grit her teeth and pray. But once released, she took a couple of deep breaths and voilà, she felt like jogging. Jogging to the kitchen to make something to eat, in fact. It was nothing short of miraculous. Under no other circumstances but pregnancy did stomach upset resolve itself so efficiently.
    Except for the humiliation of it. “Oh, God! Auntie, I’m so-o sorry!”
    “Well, I’m sure you didn’t do it on purpose,” Myrna said weakly.
    Endeara first peeked, then rushed from the kitchen with a cool, damp cloth. June rejected it. “Seriously, I feel absolutely fine now. As if I never felt ill. Except, of course, I’m mortified. That’s never happened to me before.”
    Amelia came running with a pail and rags. “Pregnancy is the strangest thing,” she was saying.
    “Oh, please, Amelia, you must let me!” June insisted.
    “Never mind,” Myrna said, draping the wedding gown over the back of a chair. “I think we’ll find the scenery in the sunroom more to our liking.” Myrna tsked and said quietly, “I do hope your mother wasn’t watching.”
    June bit her lip. It was all a coincidence. Jim’s mention of marriage and the appearance of the wedding gown had not made her throw up.
    “I should help clean up,” June said, but the twins would have none of it.
    “You’ve tended enough sick people in your time,” Endeara said.
    “You’ve earned some tending,” said Amelia.
    The sunroom was next to Myrna’s office, across the hall from the kitchen. It was here that she retired from her writing every day at five to have her martini—a celebration of a good day’s work. Theroom was bright and airy and overlooked the Hudson House grounds which, under normal circumstances, boasted gardens, trees, vines and lawn, not to mention a view of the valley all the way to the coast. But at the moment it was a mess of compromised landscaping, holes and torn-up shrubs. Myrna sighed audibly as she entered the sunroom, then chose a seat that put her back to the yard.
    “We’ll discuss the wedding another time,” Myrna said, more softly than was typical for her. “I’m very fond of this particular rug.”
    “Aunt Myrna, the two things had nothing— ”
    “Of course, my darling. You just relax and take