“It wasn’t a baby,” I said. “It wasn’t even a fetus.”

“A fetus,” she said. “That’s what I meant.”

“You think it’s wrong?”

“I don’t know about wrong,” she said. “I think it’s terrible.”

“I just wanted things with him to turn out differently, that’s all. With Louis.”

“Who knows who that little baby would have been?” she said.

I frowned. YOU NEVER MET THE BABY YOU ARE KILLING. I wasn’t sure what to say.

Tilly rolled toward the wall, her voice barely audible. “I’m sorry to keep you talking.”

“Are you upset?”

“Let’s sleep.”

I rubbed her shoulder under the blanket. The gesture felt awkward. My fingers rubbed unsteadily against the fabric. I said, “You seem upset.”

She sat up. Her expression wasn’t kind. I couldn’t tell what it was. “Let’s leave tomorrow,” she said. “I couldn’t stand another day.”

She insisted on driving. Her face was puffy but her eyes looked bright and ready, squinting against the sun. She said it felt good to press the accelerator pedal. She’d never owned a car, she told me. Could I believe it? A little bit, yes, from the way she drove.

Just past the state border, we saw an RV stalled in the middle of the Mojave Desert. There was a cardboard sign propped against the back fender that said FREE.

Tilly pulled over without asking or signaling. An older man emerged from the door and eased down the steps, gripping the handrail. He was wearing a shirt with a huge tiger’s face, the open jaws spread over his belly.

“What’s free?” Tilly asked.

“I’ve got hot springs,” he said. He banged his fist against the trailer. “And this piece of shit if you’re interested.”

“Hot water?” I said. “Sounds terrific.” It must have been a hundred degrees, as they say, in the shade.

“A whole pool of it,” he said. “There’s a natural spring up that hill.”

He showed us where he meant: a scrubby slope rising away from the highway, pinned in place by a few gnarled trees. The ocean felt a thousand miles away rather than a hundred; it was just a notion somebody had had one day in the middle of the sand, an impossible act of imagination.

We followed dirt switchbacks to the pools: a tub of murky water breathing curls of steam, circled by fake rocks. Tilly took off her shirt and then shimmied out of her denim skirt. Her bra was the color of an old photograph, that sepia, and it barely kept her long breasts from swinging out. She tap-danced across the concrete. “It’s like a stove!” she said. “You’ll burn your toes!”

She was right about the ground. But the water was hotter. We held our bodies perfectly still under its surface. Even the smallest movement made tiny unbearable currents, like boiling threads, against our skin. Tilly gritted her teeth. “I’m barely here,” she said. “I think I melted.”