“Anyway,” Sharon says, opening up a cooler and taking out a handful of fat carrots. She feeds them to the horses, showing Sonia how to hold one hand out, palm up, so the beasts can take the carrot without taking the hand along with it. “Anyway, how about you go off to work and Sonia and I will do a little farming? Any idea when this magic potion of yours might be ready? I’d like to talk to my mother. Well, Del’s mother, but she’s the only one I’ve got now.”

“Yeah. So would I.” I explain about Mamma and her aneurysm.

“Looks like you and me are in the same barrel of pickles, Jean,” Sharon says, and takes Sonia by the hand. “I don’t envy your position, though. You get the cure done, that little bracelet goes back on. You don’t, and your mama keeps babbling. One or the other, one choice to a customer, as my daddy used to say.”

“I could set something up for early next week. Maybe Tuesday?”

“That’d be real nice.”

We exchange numbers, and Sharon tells me Del will call over the weekend, if that’s okay.

“Meanwhile,” she says, “you don’t say anything about our little talk here, all right? Del’s got a lot to lose, with him being the errand boy for the resistance. I don’t want him in trouble. Or anyone else.”

“There’s a resistance?” The word sounds sweet as I say it.

“Honey, there’s always a resistance. Didn’t you go to college?”

As we walk back to the house, the woman beside me seems more and more like Jackie. I imagine her carrying posters and organizing sit-ins while I stayed home with my nose in a book, or while Patrick and I went out for cheeseburgers and rolled our eyes at the latest campus protest. Sharon, even with her mud-caked boots and torn overalls, makes me feel dirty.

“I’ll pick her up at six, if that’s not too late,” I say before kissing Sonia goodbye.

“That’s fine. We’ll be here.”

On the way to my doctor’s appointment, I think of Del, my mailman, running errands for some underground group of anti-Pure people, and I laugh.

They would use a mailman.

Chapter Thirty-nine

THIRTY-NINE

It’s official. I’m pregnant.

The gynecologist who stepped into Dr. Claudia’s place at the clinic tells me I’m about ten weeks along, give or take a few days. You never really know exactly when conception happens, he says before giving me a sealed envelope addressed to Patrick. It contains the date of my next appointment, some general literature, a schedule, and other information I might find useful. This is what he tells me.