And even to my eyes, Michael was vibrating with excitement. He and Brady had taken down enough slats from our fence to fit the tiered garden and had jerry-rigged sprinklers from each yard to cover it. Brady said something, and Michael laughed, shaking his head.

The corners of my own mouth curled up, and the glass of sparkling water Lena handed me caught the light as the bubbles rose.

Lena sank into the chair next to me and clinked her glass against mine. “Here’s to us.”

“And the boys.” My eyes were still on Michael, bending to tamp down the earth around a plant on the top tier. There was something so competent yet tender about him.

“Sure.” Lena raised her glass in their direction, and Brady looked up and waved back. “Here’s to the guys.”

Then she cut her eyes at me. “But we run this world. Here’s to them and cheers to us. All of us.”

She knew.

Pregnancy anchored me in my body, making everything beyond its borders—the past, the thoughts of others, my future plans—hazy and unimportant. In my second trimester, I felt powerful, supercharged with energy.

Lena and I continued our daily walks, and I made an effort to check in with Elizabeth. As zen as I felt with the new hormones surging through me, I could still see the fear beneath Elizabeth’s stretched-thin calm. I called and messaged her on the slightest pretext—about the Bluebonnet fund raiser, about a story I’d seen on the news, even for directions to a store she’d mentioned. Lena might have said, “Your GPS not working?” But Elizabeth always responded warmly, and usually followed up, and soon I didn’t even think before reaching out.

The evening of the Bluebonnet fund raiser for childhood literacy went off without a hitch with a predictable but fun “favorite literary character” theme. Michael had deferred to me on our costume, so I was dressed all in purple with a name tag that said Crayon, and he wore a pale-blue pajama top with the name tag Harold. Princesses, Austen characters, Sherlock detectives, and animals ranging from bears to mice to dragons laughed and danced around us, and I felt so buoyant that I didn’t miss the champagne.

That morning Michael and I had found out we were having a girl, news I wanted to tell Elizabeth in person.

I scanned the crowd until I saw her standing by a table of silent-auction items, her blond hair shining against the dark-brown dress she wore. Slipping between the revelers, I came up and grabbed her hand. “A girl,” I whispered. “It’s a girl.”

She hugged me, so quickly the embrace was over before I realized it had happened. Then she bit her lip, glanced around as if confirming that no one was listening to us, and whispered back, “We’re having a boy.”