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because she seemed to have broken his. When she had told Jack about the baby, he hadn’t said a word, and when she was finished, he quietly stood up. He looked at her as if he didn’t quite know her anymore, and he stumbled out the back door, letting it slap behind him, and when she dared to look outside, she saw her father crouched in the garden, pulling up the jonquils he loved.
    * * *
    By nine, the hospital began to quiet. Visitors were gone, doctors left. Sara shifted in bed, plucking at the sheets, trying to get comfortable, and then she drifted into sleep.
    She was dreaming. She was standing in Boston Garden watching the swan boats floating across the river. And then, she smelled her mother’s perfume. Lily of the valley. She couldn’t seem to open her eyes, and she waited, wondering what would happen next. She heard the soft pad of her mother’s shoes tiptoeing into the room. She felt Abby standing over her, and then Abby touched Sara’s face, quietly left, and as soon as she did, Sara’s eyes opened. She yearned to have her mother back in the room. She wanted the hand back against her skin, like the brush of a curtain against a breeze.
    And then, with a jolt, Sara woke completely and sat up in bed. Her roommate was sleeping, but her friends and her baby were gone. Sara’s baby was gone, too.
    Sara drew the sheets around her. If you asked Sara, she couldn’t tell you how she felt about this baby now. She was all confused, maybe even more than she had ever been. It had been different when she was pregnant. Then, she had focused on the externals, on the way her body kept betraying her. She had been so used to being flat-chested, slim as a swizzle straw. Pregnant, Sara’s breasts were full and lush, her stomach so swollen her belly button jutted out. The only big thing about her was her belly, and from the back, no one could even tell she was pregnant, which was how she was able to hide it so well in school for so long. But she knew, under her baggy clothes, she was all baby. She first felt the baby kick when she was in precalculus class and it had terrified her so much, she had clapped one hand over her mouth. And in honors history, she had a sudden bout of morning sickness. She had to get up and leave, gagging, barely making it to the girls’ room where she threw up into the toilet, and when she got back, slinking into her seat, everyone bored holes through her with their staring. The girl behind her had tapped her on the shoulder and handed her a small white pill. “For stress,” the girl said conspiratorially. “I got it out of my father’s medicine chest. I couldn’t do this class without them.” She winked at Sara. “Everybody’s on them. You want more, I’ll give you the standard deal.”
    The larger Sara got, the more confused she became. Sometimes she actually agreed with Abby. She thought the baby was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, that she had been so stupid not to have had better birth control, not to have taken care of it the first week she had found out she was pregnant, not to have been so dumb she thought things might work themselves out. “Be thankful you don’t have to go to a home,” Abby said, and then she told Sara another Girls in Trouble story with an unsettling ending. A girl who wasn’t given any pain medication because the nuns felt she should suffer for her sins. A girl who came back to her parents’ home to find the locks changed. “How do you know this?” Sara whispered. “How do you know this is true?”
    “I know,” said Abby. “I just know.”
    Sometimes, though, Sara had loved the baby inside of her, had watched it in wonder when it rippled across her belly, when parts of it bumped and stretched up against her skin. “Elbow,” she thought, touching a curve. “Knee.” If the baby was on the left side of her, and she tapped her right side, the baby would surf its way toward her hands. As if it knew her. As if it wanted her comfort. Or maybe