She misses Hannah. She wants to talk to Hannah.

“Here,” says Ina, moving around Sarah’s body. “We need to wrap the fingers, to take off her rings. The fingers will swell and then we can’t.”

Lissa watches as Ina wraps Sarah’s fingers with cotton thread, massaging in oil, moving the fluid gently down towards her mother’s wrist so the rings might ease off. She does the same for the rings on her mother’s left hand. “That’s it,” says Ina approvingly. Then, under Ina’s instruction, they place Sarah’s hands gently on her chest. “It’s better that way, so the blood doesn’t pool.” She is like a midwife, thinks Lissa, in her gentle, certain ministrations; a midwife for death.

“Can I have a moment?” she asks Ina.

When Ina steps outside, Lissa takes her mother’s hands. She lifts her mother’s fingers to her face, as though her mother might read her—read the braille of her daughter’s features, even now, even beyond death. Then she slowly places the hands back down on the sheet.

Hannah

CATE IS WAITING FOR HER OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL. HANNAH sees her scanning the parking lot, watching for her.

“They’ll think we’re together,” says Cate as Hannah approaches, and she laughs. Her hands move like birds, unsure where to land.

“Well,” says Hannah, threading her arm through hers, “that’s all right.”

They are the first couple there and they do not have to wait to be seen. A sonographer in jeans and a T-shirt calls them into a small, dark room.

Hannah gets up onto the table. The monitor faces away from her. Her heart. Her breath coming quickly.

The sonographer glances at Hannah’s file, then turns to Cate. “And you’re the partner?”

“No,” says Cate. “I’m just a friend.”

“Well,” says the woman gently, “why don’t you go and sit down there.” She gestures to a chair at the head of the table.

The woman puts cold gel onto Hannah’s stomach. She catches her breath as the sensor rolls over the tautness of her skin. She looks at the woman’s face. The woman is silent, staring at the screen, at the dark places inside her—her face impassive. She is a seer, a diviner of meaning, a reader of the runes. But why is she so silent?

A wave of fear and nausea breaks over Hannah. “Is everything all right?”

The woman looks up. “So far,” she says.

Hannah clenches her thumbs into her hands.

“Just taking measurements,” the woman says.

The woman rolls a ball, the keyboard clicks, and then, “Here,” says the woman, turning the monitor around to face them, “here’s your baby. Everything looks fine.”

A creature is projected there, waving its limbs. A heart flickering, flickering, beating faster than Hannah’s own.

Lissa