“Given that up?” Is she joking? Across from us, Perfect Third Trimester turns a noisy page. I feel like spitting on the floor. “He had a magnetic pull on you. It surpassed everything else.”

“You don’t know it all, Alex. Despite what you may think, I have actually turned my life around.”

I lower my voice, but my whisper sounds hoarse. “Then why did you leave Pittsburgh?”

She hesitates. “My … the father of my baby. He wasn’t able to turn his life around.”

“Who is he, Ruth?”

She opens her mouth to speak, but just then, a nurse enters the waiting room and calls her name. Ruth stands and looks down at me, her eyebrows raised.

“You want us to go in there together?” I ask. Last time, all those years ago in Horizon, we separated in the waiting room. And we never came back to each other the same.

“Of course I do.” Then she exhales as if I’m unsupportive. “Just stay with me, will you?”

The doctor’s office is as white and blank as the rest of the clinic. A diagram of human anatomy above the oak desk shows sections of a body with the skin stripped back. I know it’s scientific, but the sight of the muscles and bones is alarming, like a warning of what lurks beneath. The doctor himself is white-haired and stout—a roll of fat at the back of his neck folds above his collar like an extra pair of lips.

“Hello,” he says to me. “I’m Dr. Richard Trevalley. Which one of you is Ruth?”

“She is.” I nod at my sister, who stands in the middle of the room. “She’s the one you need to chat with.”

“Oh.” He readjusts his gaze. “Then you. The real patient! Have a seat up here on the bed. And for you—” he gestures for me to sit in an antique chair beside his desk. “I’m sorry it’s not very padded.”

“It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” Doctors unsettle me, too. It’s their ability to find the worst things, things you didn’t know, and point them out to you.

“Are you a friend, here for moral support?” His jowls droop.

“I’m Ruth’s sister.”

“Oh, great. That’s lovely. Solid family network and such. So we’re here for a checkup? Are we in the first trimester?” He seems to be speaking as if Ruth and I are one entity.

“I’m eighteen weeks,” Ruth says as she sits on the bed. “Twenty maybe.”

“Oh, far along. And this is your first prenatal care appointment?”

“Yes,” she says defensively. “I was getting to it.”

He writes notes with an expensive pen, the hairs in his nose whistling. “No, it’s very good that you’ve come in. Prenatal care is paramount, especially with first pregnancies.”

I glance at Ruth, but she won’t catch my eye.