Standing next to a dumpster that stank even worse than the bathroom, she looked at the plastic stick and discovered God’s answer. She couldn’t remember walking back to the party, but suddenly she was there, looking around, and when she saw him, she—

“Crying,” Sebastian said. His mouth was dry, his voice hoarse, hollow sounding. “I found you, and you were crying, and you said that you wanted to go home. That you weren’t feeling well.”

Ava nodded, her eyes down, Sebastian thinking how maybe their lives would have turned out differently if she’d told him at the party. How maybe he wouldn’t have walked her back home and that car wouldn’t have pulled up in front of her house.

“I knew something was wrong that night,” Sebastian said, still feeling separated from his feelings, a wall there. “You were upset, and you wouldn’t tell me.”

“I was trying to—I wanted to. Saying it out loud . . . it would make it real. Force me to acknowledge that every breath I took, cells were dividing and multiplying, forming limbs and a head. A heart.” She swallowed, eyes still downcast. “And then the car came and, well, we know the rest.”

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

“What do you mean?”

“You could have told me.”

“When? After the fight?” Her voice was sad now. “Cops were there in minutes, and they separated us, remember? They took you to the side and they—”

“You had plenty of opportunities to tell me afterwards.”

Ava took in a deep breath and held it for a moment. Then she said, “You’re right. I realized that later. I’m not making excuses, but at the time I was nineteen and scared out of my mind—terrified because I was pregnant, and terrified because they arrested you and the judge refused bail.”

“You tell my mother? That you were pregnant?”

“Of course not. Why would I do that to her?”

It was a valid question. But he wondered if knowing she’d be a grandmother would have kept his mother around for a while. Maybe if she’d known about her grandchild, she would have fought harder, instead of so willingly surrendering her fate to God.

The pieces from that time of his life—the things that troubled him, the ones he had no explanation for—were coming together. “That’s why you stopped visiting my mother, why you stopped visiting me in prison. Because you were showing.”

Ava nodded. “I didn’t want you to . . . Seeing me pregnant, me telling you it was yours—I couldn’t do that to you, what you were facing. Having you go away for life and knowing I was pregnant—”

“I would have found a way to help you.”

“You were nineteen.”

“So you kept it all to yourself. Shut me out, my mother—and Frank.”

“I thought that was for the best.”

“A clean slate.” Then he added, bitterly: “For you.”

“At the time, telling you . . . it seemed wrong. Cruel.”

No, Sebastian thought. It would have given me hope. A purpose.