Blue neon at the shadow end of a block—Blue Moon Café.

By day, neon is cheap, sleazy. You don’t give neon a second glance by day.

But it’s dusk now. Dingy blue neon in a café window competing with cruder neon signs advertising beer is a hook in the heart.

“Oh, God.”

Her mouth has gone dry, she feels such yearning. She realizes, she has been so lonely.

Living with Patrick, who is so good to Juliana, who has no idea who she is, so lonely.

What has she done?—she has driven around the block.

She has not driven past the Blue Moon Café, she has circled the block to approach the Blue Moon Café a second time.

But no, better not, wait to celebrate with the baby’s father. That is the sensible thing to do, and Juliana is a sensible young woman.

Front Street is a part of the city still new to her. She and Patrick had moved into an old redbrick row house on Mill Street, on a partially gentrified block, just one month before.

Derelict waterfront area on the Delaware River. Warehouses, small, shuttered factories, mills. Abandoned freight cars covered in graffiti, like filigree. Yet on South Main and Front Street there are refurbished brick row houses—millworkers’ homes back in the early twentieth century. There are antique shops, secondhand furniture stores, clothing consignment shops, Goodwill, a framing shop, art galleries.

Juliana is more adventurous than Patrick. Roaming through secondhand furniture stores, fabric shops. Even among the castoffs of Goodwill, her taste is exquisite, Patrick marvels at the bargains she has discovered and brought home in triumph to sand, repaint.

A small upstairs room adjacent to their bedroom. They will paint it rosy-pink (if a girl), robin’s egg blue (if a boy).

Stars on the ceiling Juliana will paint. Maybe a few sparkly sequins embedded in the stars, like the sequins on her tote bag.

How good Juliana is at small, tender, caring tasks: she vows.

She’d suspected that she was pregnant of course. Has known, the drugstore test twice taken in secret, positive. But needing a confirmation, a proper examination, and a due date: July 11.

Until she tells Patrick, it is not quite real to her. Guess when it is—our due date!

Something with which to surprise others.

Juliana is feeling dry-mouthed, edgy. Can it be—already her clothes feel too tight? Beside her on the passenger’s seat is a bottle of Evian water, but it isn’t water she craves. Nooo.

Startled eyes in the rearview mirror. Juliana is surprising herself now, as (she thinks with satisfaction) she will surprise her mother and sisters, who’d predicted unhappiness for her, unable to be faithful to a man, unable not to lapse into her bad habits …

Astonishing to her, the birth date has been established. An actual date noted by the nurse-practitioner at the clinic. The child-to-be is the size of a comma …