Bekk nodded, her eyes looking down at her belly stretching her T-shirt taut. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail braid. Her face was puffier than when I’d seen her last, and the circles under her eyes darkened her olive skin.

She hadn’t said much, mostly just nodding along and listening with a bit of a blank expression, not unlike a deer caught in headlights. When I told her that I’d gone to see Indu, she hadn’t even reacted or asked about him.

“Hey, guys!” Rikky said cheerily as she strode through the swinging double doors at the far side of the waiting room. She looked lovely, even in her peach-colored scrubs. Her dark auburn hair was over her shoulder in a fishtail braid.

Pan had been sitting beside me, but he jumped to his feet to greet her. She threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly to her as if she hadn’t seen him in years, instead of the reality that we’d visited her at the beginning of the summer.

She was also his ex-girlfriend, but that wasn’t quite as defined as I’d liked, since she had kissed him the last night we stayed with her. And he’d kissed her back. For a second. He’d told me he only thought of her as a friend, but she made it fairly obvious she still had feelings for him.

“Thanks for helping us, Rikky,” Pan said when she released him.

“No problem,” she said with her easy smile, and she finally looked over at me. “Nice to see you, Ulla.”

“Yeah, you too,” I said.

Pan did brief introductions, since she hadn’t met Elof or Bryn before. Then she offered to take Elof back to set up his makeshift lab, and Pan went with him, carrying the heavy analyzer and lending a hand where Elof needed it.

Rikky led the guys back through the swinging doors, while Bryn, Bekk, and I continued to wait in the stiff vinyl chairs. A nurse sat at the front desk to check patients in, but right now we were the only ones there. In the corner, a fish tank bubbled, and the air conditioner keeping the clinic pleasantly cool hummed loudly.

“I only did this because I wanted a baby,” Bekk said softly, and the way she was looking down at her belly, I thought she was talking to the baby at first.

“You mean you were only with Indu because you wanted a baby?” I asked.

“I’d tried with other men, ones I actually cared about. I tried with Omte men, and when I lived in Doldastam for a summer years ago, I tried with Kanin men. But I couldn’t get pregnant.” She shook her head. “Indu fathered other babies. I knew one had died, but I didn’t realize how many. Not until later. After I was already pregnant.