“Can’t you do the math?” She’d been so angry since that night on Duck Pond that she felt she was manufacturing rage in her own body, when really, she was manufacturing his child; part of Anthony was inside of her, his cells wildly multiplying and dividing with her own. How could that be? She wished like hell that she’d never met him. She liked to think of Anthony as an apple core she could toss out of a car window, something that could be forgotten, left to rot into nothing.

“Do you show?”

“I’m starting to.” She used a large safety pin to extend the waist of her pants, and wore long flannel shirts to cover her belly.

“And does anyone know?”

“Just you. You and the doctor at Planned Parenthood.”

“Just keep it quiet. For now. Let me figure this out. I’ll come up with a plan. Does Michael know?”

“No,” Ann said. “Not yet.” She wanted to tell him, and came close a few times, but she knew he wouldn’t take it well. His feelings for her weren’t exclusively brotherly, a fact he couldn’t hide no matter how aloof he tried to act around her. She remembered Michael’s kiss as if it had been exchanged between two people totally different from who they were now. That one perfect moment of sweet adolescence she hadn’t known would, in a matter of weeks, dissolve into this shitty version of adulthood.

“I need to tell my parents,” she said. “I’m telling them tonight.”

“Not tonight. In a week. Give me a week to think.”

“They’re going to figure it out on their own.”

“Just give me a week, Ann.”

“I don’t have a lot of weeks to give.”

“Let me handle it. You’re confused, this is a hard time. Look, you can’t make good decisions right now. You normally can, I know, but you’re under a lot of stress. Everything is going to be OK. I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but I’ll make sure of it. Just hold tight.”

This sounded almost reassuring. She started to think she might hate Anthony just a little less until he said, “And don’t breathe a word of this to my wife.”

The line went dead.

FIFTEEN

Michael