Maybe her little boy is really a girl. She’ll love it anyway. She’ll get to feel its breath right next to her face, all warm and milky. It’ll break the silence with its crying. Her whole life is going to change. It’s a promise she can’t get away from. Even the other promise—her little girl with her broken bunny—she hasn’t gotten away from her either. She knows that.

“Should I call her?” she said. “I think I should call her.”

I’m not blinking anymore. I’m turning my head from side to side like I’m following a magician’s finger with my eyes. This means no.

“What do you want? Just say something.”

I turn to her. I want her to see the look in my eyes, I know it must be there: how much I want to love her and her little baby too. I want to kneel on all these rusty porch nails and put my cheek against her stomach and feel him kick. I can’t think of a single other thing I want. I say, “I want a drink.”

And here it is again: the steady glug and then the bittersweet. I want to be alone and this is something I can say to her without pause or shame, and I do say it, and she does leave, and now it’s just me, filling my throat and blinking to make the beach once more. I can see her running down the sand, fearless Dora, long hair opened like a sail into the wind. I’m waiting behind, holding Lucy’s hand, clutching. Lucy is pointing: Look at that girl. Not a single thing stopping her. Lucy is squeezing my fingers. You’re my girl too. I see the dark spots of crab holes and then I see them melting back into the sand. Dora runs like her whole body wants it. She comes back with her shirt gathered into a satchel. And where have you been? Lucy asks. Dora’s purple bathing suit is wet and shows her ribs. Getting these. She shows me her barnacles in splendid rows. And you, she says, what do you have to show for yourself?

Being pregnant gave me the steadiest sickness of my life but now I miss the bitch of it, the worst parts most: throwing up in the trailer living room, hair getting caught on my wet lips. The sight of Fiona struggling slowly up from her big chair, trying to help, making me feel even sadder, sad for both of us.