“I've got to call home,” she said. “Let Teresa know.” Teresa, one year older than Ruth, had gone off to marry God the same year Ruth left with Del. She moved to the convent, changed her name to Sister Agnes Mary. Ruth saw Teresa as she had been, flirting with the boys at her sweet sixteen party, her green dress swirling around her shins, her hair in pin curls, lips stained punch-red with Kool-Aid and 7Up. Ruth had trouble remembering to call Teresa “Sister,” could not conjure this new woman she had never met face-to-face. Only when she remembered the way Teresa had turned her appraising eyes toward Del, all those years ago, the way her head had bent under the weight of her disappointment, could Ruth picture Teresa in the gray habit and veil of their childhood teacher nuns. “That one's no good,” Teresa had said. “So of course that's the one you want.” Teresa, like the nuns Ruth had grown up with, was a confusing blend of compassionate love and harsh judgment. Sisterly, Ruth thought, embarrassed to be smiling at her own silent joke.

“I'll wait here,” Del said. “Have a beer or two.”

Ruth believed the nausea she felt then was as much homesickness as it was morning sickness, some result, certainly, of the difference between what she had and what she wanted.

Ruth dawdled. She bent down to pet a stranger's dog. She ran her fingers over the glass of the drugstore window. She picked up a piece of litter that turned out to be a crumpled brochure for the nursing program at the community college, smoothed it, considered it, put it in her pocket. Ruth had always wanted to be a nurse. After the blood and breath of birthing three babies, tending their fevers, bandaging minor wounds, she felt half a nurse already. She watched a lone tarantula pick a delicate path across the asphalt. She took deep breaths, counted the seconds between her steps.

IT TOOK A MOMENT for the women of the order to find the right nun, but finally Sister was on the line. “Everything okay, Ruth? The kids?”

Ruth closed her eyes. “Everyone's fine. It's me. I'm pregnant.”

Sister made a joyful noise and Ruth settled. She could count on Sister to love her babies just as much as she did. “Congratulations,” Sister said. “Ruthie, another baby! What blessings!”

The line crackled and popped. Ruth pressed her fingertips against the phone booth wall, felt the heat from the desert sun in the glass.

“I want this one to be born in Colorado,” Ruth said, “but I still can't afford to get there.” Ruth saved cash in an empty creamed corn can in the back of the pantry, that $3.72 the only secret she had in the world.