“Just leave me alone,” this phrase repeated twice and then a third time as Dottie’s hand pulled gently on her sister’s shoulder and Evelyn at last allowed herself to be turned from the hospital bed. From behind them a nurse entered the room, her bright voice announcing her presence even before she appeared in the doorway, and Evelyn spun to that sound, her mood changing all at once to match. “Why yes that is good news.”

Helen continued to snivel quietly from her attitude of recline upon the heap of rubbery pillows, as fragile and insubstantial as a bundle of twigs.

“BUT YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND,” Mrs. Wilson was saying, “that I thought I was doing what was best for my family. You have to understand that.”

“Mrs. Wilson.”

“She was just a little girl. Seventeen years old. She didn’t know what she was doing, not really, and it was her whole future out ahead of her.”

“Mrs. Wilson.”

“What would you have done had it been one of your own daughters? What would you have—”

“Evelyn.”

My eyes had been bouncing back and forth between them as if I were watching a tennis match but now Mrs. Wilson stopped speaking, the flow of words clipped off and the living room ringing with silence.

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” Mrs. ­Takahashi said.

“Why, I’m trying—I’m trying to tell you about the baby.” Her eyes flashed around the room, bright and wet.

“Helen’s baby.”

“Yes, Helen’s, but also . . . oh God, Kim. Oh God how can I say it?”