The question stays in my mind, but I tuck it back in a quiet corner for later as I turn to the other women in the cell.

Lin looks at me, then at Lorenzo. Next to her is the Argentine-Swiss beauty who used to hang out in our department. She’s still a knockout, even without the blond waterfall of hair streaming down her back.

Isabel Gerber.

The two of them are in the same drab gray as Jackie, sitting hip to hip, hands folded in their laps. Twin black bands circle their wrists.

“Caught them making out in a car,” Morgan says. “Fucking dykes.”

Lin opens her mouth to speak, then rethinks and closes it. The decision process takes all of a second, but it’s there, in her eyes.

Over my shoulder, I catch Lorenzo’s hands curling into fists. “Don’t do it, Enzo. He’s not worth it.”

Suddenly I wish I hadn’t left the vial in my car. I’d take it out right now and shove the entire thing down Morgan’s throat, glass and all. Or, better yet, I savor the image of Jackie, Lin, and Isabel locked in a small room with the bastard. A soundproof room, with no windows.

“So. Ready to work now, people?” Morgan says. “Or do I send one of them up to Fort Meade?”

The expressions on the women’s faces tell me Morgan has already filled them in, one vivid picture at a time.

Time, I think. Everything comes down to time in one form or another: The time I didn’t have twenty years ago, when textbooks and orals and qualifying papers were more important than Jackie’s marches and Planned Parenthood tea parties. The twenty-four hours I’ll wait before I find out whether the creature inside me is a boy or a girl. Lorenzo needing to leave “while there’s still time,” although I’m not sure there is still time anymore, not for either of us. Morgan’s hard deadlines. The morning meeting in only eighteen hours.

The time I slapped Steven. And all the moments I’ll spend wishing I could take it back.

Morgan steps forward and takes three identical pink booklets from the inside breast pocket of his suit coat. He passes them out like playing cards, first to Isabel, then Lin, then Jackie.

“Don’t forget to read your manifestos, girls,” he says. There’s a nasty emphasis on “girls.”

“Really, Morgan?” I say.

“Hey, Jean, I don’t make the rules. Take it up with Reverend Carl if you don’t like it.” He looks at my wrist and laughs a hollow chuckle. “Better hurry before your bracelet goes back on.”