Then she was speaking of blessings and curses. And the strain of keeping a delusion intact: “All your strength goes into it, it’s like the first twelve weeks of a pregnancy, the new life feeding off yours. . . .” Then she was crying again. Or she had been crying all along, rubbing her fist into her eye as she’d seen Sheila do, as she had done as a child. Her nose running and her cheeks hot and damp and her throat constricted with pain. He had made her have the abortion, she said. No he had only wanted her to have the abortion, it had been his wish. She couldn’t see how she was to blame but he blamed her. But she was to blame. He knew. He guessed. The stratagem was hers, the trick. To get pregnant, to make a change in their lives, to force the issue. I will force the issue, she had thought, manic with excitement. Then, afterward, the guilt—the luxury of guilt—sucking and gnawing on guilt—Monica weeping hysterically in Harold’s arms because they were murderers because they were trapped together in an act of supreme significance because it was all a ruse and Monica was playacting Monica hadn’t loved him from the start Monica hadn’t been capable of love but had quite liked being loved. “It was really all my fault,” she said, “—but the sympathy was for me: he had ‘made’ me have an abortion and then he ‘stopped loving’ me.”

She was shamefaced, crying, laughing in surprised hiccuping gulps, she hadn’t known until this moment, Sheila staring at her, Sheila leaning forward staring at her, what a liar she was: and how perceptive her husband had been, to know. Even as she wept. Even as she coiled upon herself wanting to die. Near the end she claimed that she loved him after all and he said, “That’s a mistake, then, don’t,” then shortly afterward he said, “No, you’re lying again,” and she had thought her heart might be wrenched out of her body. It was as if the embryonic life—her life—had been sucked out of her body a second time.

She wept, hugging herself. Her breasts were aching. Her belly, her loins. After a moment Sheila reached out and touched the scar on Monica’s jaw, one tentative forefinger, direct, not especially gentle: “Did he have anything to do with this?—I’ve always wondered.”

Monica drew away at once.

No, it had been an accident.

A hot blush rose from her throat: it had been an accident.