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museum?” Sara asked.
    The two of them went. The museum was empty and cool, and Sara was transfixed by the paintings. They took their time, Abby because she had to study every nuance of the paintings, Sara because it was harder to walk now that she was bigger. They were rounding the corner of one room, wandering into another, when Abby suddenly took Sara’s arm. “Let’s go this way,” Abby said firmly, guiding her in the other direction.
    “But we haven’t seen that way,” Sara protested, and Abby’s grip tightened.
    “Abby? Is that you?”
    Abby turned, smiling, and there was a woman Sara didn’t know. “It
is
you!” the woman said, and then her gaze flew down to Sara’s dress, to the swell of her belly. “Is this your daughter?” Her eyes glittered.
    “Sara, this is Margie Meuller, one of my patients.”
    Sara held out her hand and Margie shook it vigorously. “I’ve heard so much about you!” she said. “I was just on my way to the cafe. Would you like to join me?”
    “We’d love to but we’re running so late—” Abby said.
    “Ah—another time then.”
    They stood in place, watching Margie leave. “Don’t worry,” Abby said quietly to Sara. “I’ll think of something to tell her.”
    The day felt spoiled and they went home, and as soon as Sara walked into the house, Abby looked at the dress Sara had tossed on a chair that morning, picked it up, and smoothed it. “It takes so little to hang up your clothes,” Abby said. Everything in this house reminded Sara of all the wrongs she had ever done. She wanted to go to George and Eva’s, where everything reminded her of all the rights, where Eva made a point to introduce Sara, where there was happiness in every corner and she was the cause of it.
    “I think I may go out for a bit—” she started to say.
    Abby blinked at her. “Just like that? You don’t even call them first anymore?
    “They said I didn’t have to.”
    “You act like their house is yours. I can’t imagine they really like that.”
    “Yes, they do,” she insisted.
    “You act like you’re in love with them.”
    “Maybe they’re in love with me, too,” Sara said.
    Abby straightened. “We’re having an early dinner tonight,” she said lightly. “I could use some help making it, if you want.”
    She didn’t want, but she felt as if she should. So she stood side by side at the counter, thinking about how she and Eva had giggled making the bread, and here she was, working in silence with her mother, rolling out dough for pizza, cutting up green peppers and onions and shredding cheese. At dinner later, she sat at the table, dreaming she was at George and Eva’s, where everyone talked at once, and here, the major sound was the clinking of forks, which made her so crazy she couldn’t think of anything to say, either. “Mom?” she blurted, but Abby jumped up to get more soda from the kitchen. “Daddy—” she said, and Jack gave her that long, sad look that made her deflate.
    Her father was the one she always used to count on to fix things. When she was little, she came to him for everything: a doll with a missing shoe, an insect that had gotten loose in the house, a question about why the sky wasn’t green. If someone looked at her the wrong way or scolded her, he was the one she ran to. Delighted, he bought her a T-shirt that said, “That’s it! I’m calling my daddy!” and she wore it everywhere. When she was eight, and had broken a tooth playing submarine in the bathtub, Abby had immediately, purposefully, scooped the tooth from the bathwater and dunked it in milk. She had called the dentist she worked for and made him agree to come to the office and put the tooth back in. “Right away,” she urged. “We can’t waste a second.” Abby was all business but Jack was the one who had held Sara and comforted her.
    “So what, it’s a broken tooth,” Jack had said. “At least it’s not a broken heart, right?” Well, she knew all about broken hearts,