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weeks old, that it had no head, and no heart, Greg said he must have been wrong.
    In two weeks, my baby, the mass of cells, would be analyzed and we would be told it was tetraploidy. The doctor wrote something on her rectangular pad, then handed it to me. The paper read, “Tetraploidy. 92, XX, YY.”
    “Any questions?” asked the doctor.
    I knew that to Greg, these symbols would mean something, bloom into a narrative. To me, they were cruel and unfathomable. “But why?” I said. “What did I do?”
    She sighed, and said, “Nothing, Kimberly. It had absolutely nothing to do with you. It's just … the way things work out sometimes.” She scribbled again, handing me a prescription for Prozac. When I got back to our apartment, I put both sheets of paper in my underwear drawer.
    Outside the Houston airport, Greg waited, holding our bags. He stood, broad shoulders a little slumped, and watched me. I remembered the sweet shock I'd felt when I'd first seen him, in the audience of my graduation fashion show. Most of my classmates, like Greg's sister, presented glamorous gowns, but I designed coats for little girls, swinging cape-style coats made of wool and fastened with vintage toggles. I knitted matching scarves and mittens. I'd worn only plastic parkas growing up—my designs came from my imagination, and a picture I'd seen once of a Parisian schoolgirl, standing in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Though the SCAD store had wanted to buy my whole collection, I saved one red coat, one scarf, one set of mittens.
    “Have a safe trip home,” said Sally.
    “Okay,” I said. I walked to my husband, and he folded me inside his arms. I wanted to say something, to fix something. He looked so young, and so bewildered.
    “I can't believe it,” I said. “It happened so fast.”
    “There will be another,” he said.
    We looked at each other. There would be another, there would. But I wanted the one that was gone.

On Messalonskee Lake
    ONE
    A woman had drowned in the lake, but that did not make it any less picturesque. We hadn't known her, after all; I had never met her, and my husband, Bill, was a boy when she died. She was Bill's aunt Renee, married to his father's brother, Gerry. She played the violin. This was all I could get out of my husband during our drive up 1-95.
    “So she fell out of the boat?” I said, waddling into the cabin, which smelled of either pine, Pine-Sol, or both.
    “Yeah,” said Bill.
    “When was this?”
    “A while ago,” said Bill. “I told you, I was just a kid.”
    “Jesus,” I said.
    “We need some air,” said Bill. He was wandering around, opening doors and windows.
    “Who falls out of a boat?” I said. “It's very sad.”
    My husband approached. He tried to take me in his arms, but I barely fit. “Here,” I said, pressing his palm to my stomach. His fingers were warm, and I leaned into him.
    “What?” he said, into my hair. He moved his thumb along my neck softly; I kissed him.
    “I think it's hiccuping,” I said. There was a bubbling sensation inside me, not the kicks I had come to know, but something lighter.
    “Maybe it's laughing,” said my husband.
    When we realized we would never be alone again, Bill and I had decided on a romantic week at his family's Maine cabin. He had spent his childhood at Camp Snow Island, and I knew he wanted to move back and run it someday. Unless I was hit by a bus or got trigger toe, I wasn't leaving the Boston Ballet, but I was happy to spend a week in the wilderness.
    I asked for an economy car when I called Thrifty Rental, but when we took our key into the parking lot, there was a PT Cruiser in Slot A-8. “No,” said Bill, when he saw it.
    “I think it's cute,” I said.
    “You cannot drive a PT Cruiser to Belgrade Lakes,” said my husband. “You can't step out of that car and buy bait.”
    “I'll buy the bait,” I said.
    “Lord help us all,” said my husband. I began putting away the groceries we'd bought on the way: jam, bread,