“So what did the doctor say?” Peggy asks.

The words “None of your business” race to the tip of my tongue out of pure habit. But I haul them back. “The tumours aren’t worse. I’m fourteen weeks. Some decisions to make.”

I consider telling her about Dave’s offer. About how close I was to calling him back the night of Mama’s funeral, to taking the money from Dulcie Copper and the ladies’ auxiliary and high-tailing it back to Toronto. But I don’t. Because I still might.

“Are you going to keep the baby or what?” she says, staring straight ahead, her nose turned up ever so slightly like she’s sniffing for something I’m not ready to give.

“It’s not a baby. It’s a fetus.”

“You were a fetus once.”

“Don’t dare pull a guilt trip on me, Peggy.”

“Guilt’s not what I was after,” she says. “Just sayin’.”

“Do you honestly think I can raise a child?”

“Don’t know. But you wouldn’t be alone. People will help.”

“Yeah, you with an orphanage for all the poor motherless snot monsters on the Island?” A split second later, I see that I hurt Peggy’s feelings. Not by her face or her voice of course, but by the little red-oozing cuts in the foreground of her otherwise pale purple head cloud. I wonder if my words looked like tiny silver daggers as they left my mouth.

“There are worse things in the world than babies raised by other mothers.” The little seeping slices in her aura zip shut.

“There are worse things in the world than abortions, too.” I shrug.

“Indeed, there are.” Peggy’s eyes drift to the rear-view mirror, scanning the line of peacefully snoozing passengers in the back seat. The car fishtails just enough to yank her eyes back to the reality of the road.

“Becky Chickenshit’s pregnant too, eh?” she says. A dose of gossip to take the edge off. “And Sarah Spenser just dropped the asking price on the property.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Right from the horse’s mouth.”

“When?”

“Today. Me and Charlotte and the baby paid her a little visit.”

“Ol’ biddy was right bloody gobsmacked to see us!” Char erupts in Britishness from the back seat, making me wonder how long she has been faking sleep and exactly how many personalities live in that mixed up little head of hers.

Peggy and Char’s faces are plastered with nearly identical shit-eating grins. Which makes me nervous as hell.

“This better not be something I read about on the front page of the paper tomorrow.” I cross my arms and stare out the window as Peggy guides the car onto the faintly compacted tire tracks between the snowy ditches that are now the Middle Rear Road.

“Don’t jump to convulsions,” Char says, all cool and shady.

“You want Mossy to stay with you tonight?” Peggy says when we reach home. “Put him to work. He can at least shovel you out.”

“No, that’s okay. I need some time by myself. To think.”