There’s something else I hadn’t properly examined until this moment: I assumed that it would be either hard or impossible for me to get pregnant. Even though I knew Penny had invented many of her pregnancy issues, the experiences had imprinted themselves on me nonetheless. When you believe something to be true in the moment, it’s very hard to go back and edit that memory according to facts you’ve learned later. Rather than canceling each other out, those two truths—the one you felt and the one you later learned—simply live uncomfortably side by side. And so even though I know that Penny invented and engineered Ava’s illnesses—that she likely caused her early entrance into this world as surely as she caused her early exit—the specter of the NICU and the ghostly, hellish corridors of Children’s Hospital haunt me still. It has always seemed to me that the world was a hostile place for a child, one in which first your body and then their own could inexplicably turn on them. And this paranoia lived right alongside another one: that every mother of an ill child must automatically be a danger to that child. When I saw sickly looking children with their mothers, I immediately searched for signs of Penny—the eerie calm, the showy ministrations, the blank wash of the eyes. Even with the Madres de la Plaza, with their resolute but hollow eyes, I had the horrible thought that they were performing their grief. And then there was a third, even more potent fear: What if I held inside me some latent gene that would turn me into Penny once I became a mother?

These buried irrational fears, I realized, had been exerting their pull. If I kept the pregnancy, I would have to find a way to let them go.

I come to the party early and pass on the wine, citing stomach trouble.

“Is Gemma here?” I ask Edward.

“She’s in the bedroom getting ready.” He smiles. “Go on back.”

I knock gingerly at the door.

“Come in!” I think Gemma won’t be nearly so cheerful when she sees it’s me. Sure enough, she catches sight of me in the mirror she’s looking into and slowly lowers her mascara wand.

“Hello, Liz . . . er, Katie. What shall I call you now, darling?”

“Liz. Not everyone knows.”

For a moment, we stand like that, her back to me, as we face one another’s reflections.

“Gemma,” I say, “I’m so sorry.”

She turns around and comes swiftly toward me, taking me in her arms. “Oh no, I’m sorry. I feel like such an arsehole.” She has tears in her eyes, and, just like that, I do too. Another side effect: I’m as emotional as can be.

We sit next to one another on the edge of the bed.