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guessI’ve just let myself go since we moved to the island. You know I do freelance editing, which means sitting around a lot—and I tend to eat when I’m sitting around reading—and in Boston when I worked for the publishing house I had to walk a lot more, around the office and around the city and so on—and here I just don’t get that much exercise—” She was blithering, she knew it, she couldn’t stop herself, she was trying to put a wall of words between herself and Mary, spinning a cocoon of words to hide in.
    “Oh, Sara,” Annie Danforth said, “you don’t look pregnant . I swear, Mary, you’ve got babies on the brain. Is that all you ever think about?”
    “Well, can you blame me?” Mary laughed. “That’s all I see from morning to night. Don’t get me wrong, Sara, I don’t mean you look fat or anything, it’s just that—well, you have gained some weight since you moved here, haven’t you? And naturally, I just thought, I mean Steve’s so …” She let her voice trail off. She smiled knowingly at Sara.
    “I’m the one who looks pregnant!” Wade Danforth said, leaning into the conversation from the other side of Steve.
    Sara cringed inwardly again, realizing that the entire table had heard Mary’s question.
    “Look at this!” Wade went on, patting his big belly. “I’m the proud father of a six-pack of Michelob!”
    “More like a case,” someone at the table said, laughing.
    “That reminds me,” Carole said. “Who’s bringing the wine for Thanksgiving? And what shall we have for cocktails? Does someone want to do mulled wine or something? I really don’t want beer at our Thanksgiving dinner.”
    “Hey, why not? I’m not coming if we can’t have beer,” Wade yelled.
    “Don’t be such a peasant,” Annie told him. “One night a year you can try for a little class.”
    The conversation flowed on again past Sara. Now am I paranoid or was Mary being intentionally cruel , she wondered, and if she was being cruel, well, why? Next to her, Steve was deep in a discussion about building codes on the island; she knew he had been oblivious to Mary’s question. She wished Julia were here—she could envision how Julia would squint her eyes, and mouth “What a bitch!” across the table to Sara.
    No. What Sara wished, more than anything, was that in a few weeks she would say, laughing, to Mary, “You know, when you asked me if I was pregnant that night atthe Atlantic Café? And I said no? Well—guess what?—I was! But I didn’t know it yet!”
    Sara smiled, lost for a moment in this reverie of her triumph, telling the women about it with a hushed voice, an amused but smug expression. Then it would be all right, then she would be able to handle Mary, then she could handle everything.
    When the group finally dispersed, Sara and Steve walked together through the darkened autumn night, and after the noise the silence swirled around them as if enclosing them in an iridescent shell. Steve put his arm around her and pulled her against him. She leaned her head on his shoulder as she walked. They entered their house and soon were naked together, delving deeper into the intimate whorls of their love. Sara’s veins seemed to flow with gratitude, with honey and delirious joy and gratitude. She and Steve were one; and with the logic of such strong love and such a complete marriage, their joining should make three. A baby. Their baby. She could almost see its creamy skin and tiny limbs. She could almost feel its fragile breath.
    But when she rose from her bed she found that once again their baby was not there.

Chapter Two
    Morning.
    Sara was brought to consciousness by a clock from the bedside radio.
    “… a beautiful morning. The weather report for the Cape and islands in just a moment. But first a warning to all you turkeys out there, in case you forgot, tomorrow’s Thanksgiving!”
    She reached over to her bedside table, moving as little as possible, and picked up the small plastic