“Of course. What now?”

“You’re snipped.”

“I’m what? Oh, snipped. The hell I am. But so?”

“And I’m pregnant.”

He froze for a moment. Then he pushed her out to arm’s length and looked into her face.

“Are you?”

She had no idea what she would say until her voice came out and she heard herself spackling over the truth. “Harley, it’s a perfect rumor. Don’t you see how it works? You don’t want more kids because the ones we have already are so bad. Meanwhile, Sheriff Mommy is a fraud and a whore, having an affair with her handsome Latino deputy. Launch that from a barstool and it travels at the speed of light around the gossip universe. You and I are the last to know, of course. But guess where I heard it.”

His chin dropped.

“Mom, right? I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” she said. “And as always, she has only the best sources.”

“Heidi, I’m sorry. She’s protective. That’s why she believes crap like that.”

“Yeah,” she said, letting go of what had steamed inside her since yesterday, “but let’s not pretend this is not emotional violence by the people spreading the rumors. Let’s not imagine that it doesn’t trickle down to the kids. Play it through the mind of an anxious little boy. Your daddy is sorry that he had you. And your mommy wants a different one of you, and a different Daddy, both. Meanwhile, your beloved sister is off becoming a bigger boy than you will ever be—imagine those rumors, Harley—and all this time everybody keeps saying blah-blah-blah how much they love you.”

She had pushed herself to tears. She had nothing else to say. Harley wrapped her in his arms. Then he turned her body surely and gently, her perfectly practiced lover, until they were shoulder to shoulder, and in that embrace her husband walked her around the corner of the house, where by the light from the family room window Dylan and Taylor played in their plastic kiddie pool. Father and mother stopped beyond the boys’ sphere of awareness and watched. She wondered if every parent of identical twins saw what she did: completely different people.

“We’re going to be OK,” Harley said.

“I think I need a bite to eat,” she answered him.

“Mom made macaroni salad. You can pick out the green onions, I guess.”

“Then I’m going to drive Taylor to Rickreiner’s place and drop off his apology.”

Harley pulled away and looked at her.

She answered the look. “I know it’s late. I know it’s bedtime. But then he’s clear to go on the field trip tomorrow.”

“Heidi—”

“I have business with Rickreiner anyway.”

“Why don’t you just deliver it?”

“Because it’s from Taylor. It’s his all the way. No shortcuts.”