Aneeta was going to pick up her boys from school, and Maja walked back to her house alone. She called Ted’s cell, and when he didn’t answer, she hung up and dialed his office number, which went to the firm’s voice mail. She tried his cell again, and this time she left a message, her voice sounding high and strange to herself as she recounted the problem with the credit card. She wanted to call the credit card company, but although her cards had her name on them, the accounts were technically Ted’s, and it was always a pain when she contacted customer service because she didn’t know his passwords and pin numbers.

When she got to Aneeta’s house, she grabbed her ATM card and walked to the drugstore a few blocks away. She was worried there was something she didn’t know about the credit card accounts, and her stomach felt queasy.

In the drugstore she took out cash to pay Aneeta back, and then went to pick out a shampoo. She’d forgotten to pack her own, so she’d been using handfuls of the kid shampoo that was kept in the hall bathroom and wanted to replace it before she left. She couldn’t remember exactly what scent they used, and she surreptitiously opened a bottle to check its smell. It was overpoweringly sweet, like sipping from a leftover cosmopolitan in the middle of the night when you thought you were reaching for a glass of water. Maja shoved the bottle back onto the shelf as she fought a wave of nausea. Then she stood very still, trying to think.

It’s just the scent, she thought. Too sweet. Or her anxious, unsettled stomach. It couldn’t be . . . she didn’t even let herself finish the thought. But it persisted, like the slightly metallic taste in her mouth.

For the last few years, she could have told you off the top of her head what day of her cycle she was on. Now she realized that she’d lost track of it during the commotion about the house. Should she have had her period by now? She counted back. It had been at least a month. She felt a slight flutter of hope, but she tried to tamp it down. It was the stress, she told herself, messing with her cycle. She and Ted hadn’t exactly been in the mood very often this month. Was it even possible?

There was only one way to know. She left the shampoo on the shelf and picked up a pregnancy test from the family planning aisle.