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whole brave new world.”
    “Our daughter’s not an experiment.”
    “I like the idea,” Sara interrupted, and everyone turned to her, as if they had just noticed she was in the room. “Well, I do,” she said.
    “Well,” Abby said. She stood up. She held out a hand to shake Eva’s, and then George’s. “We should get going. Thank you for the coffee.”
    As soon as they were outside, Abby’s shoulders unsquared. “Choose anyone else,” Jack told Sara when they got to the car, but it was too late, because in her mind, Sara already had chosen, and the more her parents objected, the more certain she became.
    Eva and George began calling the house, just to talk. They called because they were on their way to a new Van Gogh exhibit at the museum and thought, hey, would Sara like to come? They were going miniature-golfing or to the park. “Come over, I’m making bread from scratch,” Eva said one day, and Sara had, taking a cab Eva paid for. Eva’s kitchen was bright and sunny, and the two of them wore big red aprons, their hair pinned up with Eva’s barrettes, and they kneaded dough. “Like putty!” Sara giggled. She held up her sticky hands and then pushed her elbows into the floury dough to knead it more.
    “Now that’s an unusual method,” Eva said.
    “Whatever works, right?” Sara said, and the two of them laughed.
    Afterward, while the bread baked, they sat on blue chaises in the leafybackyard. George came out to join them, carrying a camera. “You just glow,” Eva told Sara. “I could look at you forever.” She turned to George. “Isn’t she beautiful?” she demanded and George pointed the camera at Sara. “Say Gruyere,” he ordered. “Say smoked Gouda!” When the next-door neighbor opened her back door to let her collie out, Eva waved happily. “This is
the
Sara!” Eva called. “Isn’t she fabulous?”
    “You told her about me?” Sara asked, surprised.
    “Of course I did,” Eva said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
    They fit her into their future. When Eva started talking about going to Maine to a lake, she turned to Sara and asked, “You like lakes, right?” When Eva and George talked about fixing up the spare room, George mused, “We could fit an extra bed in there,” and Sara knew they meant it for her. The one Saturday she couldn’t make it, Eva and George surprised her the next day with a green paper cone of jonquils, with a ring with a tiny yellow stone. “What can I say? We missed you,” Eva said. “And we wanted to show it.”
    “They’re trying to buy you,” Abby said, when she saw the gifts, but Sara knew different. “There’s nothing to buy,” she said.
    Eva and George wanted her there as much as Jack and Abby didn’t, and as soon as school was out, Sara was there all the time. Sara knew her parents wouldn’t stop her from going there, knew they were more afraid that at this late date she’d change her mind about Eva and George, and they’d have to start finding an adoptive couple all over again, or worse, that she’d suddenly refuse to consider adoption at all.
    One day, Sara woke up to find Abby in her room. Already she could feel the shiny heat pouring in from the window. The mowers from next door were going, a loud, angry buzz, and when she sat up, for the first time, her stomach seemed to be in her way. Astonished, she put her hands on her belly. Abby was bustling about the room, drawing Sara’s curtains open, plucking up Sara’s laundry. “It’s such a gorgeous day, why don’t you and I do something fun together?” Abby said.
    Sara had planned on spending the whole day in Eva and George’s backyard. “Mom—” she said, and then Abby sat on the edge of the bed and Sara saw the look on her mother’s face, the way her mouth had gone all soft, like she was waiting to be disappointed, and Sara suddenly knew that if she left, she’d see that look all day and she didn’t think she could bear it.
    “Could we go to the Van Gogh exhibit at the