She was wearing that big brown jacket, except this time she wore tracksuit bottoms and sneakers instead of her hospital gown.

“Nora!” I called, and she turned to me, her black hair out and whipping in the wind.

She looked only a little surprised to see me.

A faint roar of the crowd carried on the wind, and the crashing of the waves in front of us, so Nora turned away from the bay and I waited until she was beside me before walking back to the infirmary.

“You are here for the football,” she said, and I nodded. “How did you find me?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d be a big soccer fan, and I figured you’d still need to be resting. . . .”

We got back to the building and stopped at a little two-seater swing chair on the wraparound veranda. It was a rusted thing that squeaked a bit when Nora sat down, so instead I leaned my back against the railing and looked at her.

“So, why aren’t you at the hospital?”

Nora threw her hands out as though to say, Look!

I rolled my eyes. “I mean the real hospital.”

Nora closed her eyes. “They say I should come back here, that the baby is still months away. . . .”

I looked behind me at the random buildings dotted all around, and the long stretches of grass that led down to those little cliffs and the beach below. I thought of the drive here, of the winding roads and bushland stretching every way through the national park—I thought of the trip from Portsea to Sorrento, and then the other twenty minutes or so it’d take to get to Rosebud and the hospital. And I thought of the night Anika and Luca rushed off, when there was so much blood in their bed.

“What if something happens, though?” I asked. “Like before?”

“They say is all in my head,” she said, gently touching her fingers to her temple. “They say my bija is okay, no problems.”

“Bija?” I said. “Is that baby?”

Nora shook her head. “Daughter.”

I smiled a little at that. “Do you have a name yet?”

She turned her face toward the wind so it pulled her hair out of her eyes. When she looked back at me I couldn’t tell if her eyes were watering from the wind or something else. And I knew she would not answer, so I asked something else.

“Whose jacket is that?”

Like she couldn’t help it, Nora ran a hand down the front of it and over her belly, and then pulled it tighter.

“My father’s,” she said.

I gulped before asking the next bit. “Where is he?”

“He is home, in Rahoveci.”

“Why isn’t he here? Have you tried to find him? My friend’s dad brought these computers in—”

“He is dead.”