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going to call him?”
    The waitress arrived with their drinks. Corrie waited until she had left, then took a sip of her wine, grateful for the pause it allowed.
    “I don’t know. Maybe. Who else was there?”
     
    Bryn returned home from lunch exhausted. She climbed the stairs to the third-floor apartment she shared with Paul, counting each step, amazed at how hard it was to make her foot reach each one. Usually she had infinite energy. Now she felt drained . . . and nauseated.
    Her drowsiness faded as a wave of nausea swept over her. She bounded up the last four steps and fumbled with the key in the door. Running down the hall and into the bathroom, she promptly threw up her lunch.
    “Shit,” she said out loud to no one. “Shit.”
    She sat down on the bathroom floor and held her head in her hands, moaning. “Why, God? Why me? Why not Corrie? She really wants a baby. Shit.”
    After a few minutes she stood, steadying herself on the sink, and walked into the bedroom. She stepped out of her shoes and dropped onto the bed, not bothering to undress or pull back the covers. Her head was spinning.
    What would she tell Paul? He didn’t want a baby. He’d never wanted a baby. He didn’t even want a wife.
    Bryn had known for almost a week, but she hadn’t yet thought of a way to break the news to Paul.
    At first she’d thought she wouldn’t tell him at all. Just get an abortion and be done with it. She’d even called a clinic in Chicago to make an appointment, an appointment that was now just eighteen days away.
    He doesn’t need to know, she said to herself. It’ll just upset him. It’s not like he’d be any help anyway.
    She rolled onto her back and stared at a crack in the ceiling, slowly put her hand on her stomach, and began rubbing it softly.
    “Stop it,” she said out loud. She sat up on the side of the bed. From here she could see down the hall to the kitchen table, where the computer screen beckoned with a half-finished job. She started to rise, felt her head begin to throb and a new wave of nausea, sat down again, and flopped back on the bed.
    Think about something else, she commanded herself. She forced her mind back over the past few days, to the reunion, to Corrie and Daniel, to lunch. She wondered, for the hundredth time, what it was that Corrie saw in Daniel. He’s such a self-absorbed jerk, Bryn thought. Nothing to recommend him . He wasn’t well built or even good-looking, with that pale skin and red mop of hair. He was judgmental and had a caustic sense of humor. In college, he had challenged Corrie about everything—her clothes, her friends, her choice of major—always pushing her to justify her choices.
    “I didn’t say it wasn’t a good idea.” Bryn could hear his voice now, after Corrie joined a gym. “I just want you to think about your choices. Because every ‘yes’ is a ‘no’ to something else.”
    It was exhausting talking to Daniel. He was self-assured and pushy and just . . . exhausting.
    Of course, Bryn had not been a huge fan of Mark’s in the beginning, either, and she’d given her friend hell when Corrie decided to marry him. Bryn thought Mark was a little too self-confident, too full of himself.
    “I know he’s good-looking and rich,” she had laughed, “but other than that, what’s he got to recommend him?”
    Over the years, however, she had come to appreciate that Mark was a good guy—boring maybe and definitely a workaholic, but basically a good guy. And he did love Corrie and was good to her. Bryn could forgive his blandness for that.
    Bryn rolled onto her stomach again, trying to ignore the persistent nausea. Why she even gives a damn about Daniel being in town is beyond me. For Christ’s sake, the guy left her ten years ago.
    She closed her eyes, willing herself to focus on Corrie and Daniel, on anything but her stomach. Corrie was nervous at lunch, no doubt about that. Bryn knew her habits well, and when she started shredding paper, it was a sure