Chapter 25: Eleven Weeks

I read the sonogram standing at the kitchen counter at one in the morning, with Brody on one side of me and Nate on the other.

"It's a baby," Nate said. "It's a baby with a face. Why are you both being weird?"

"Because Kayla says she's seven weeks along," I said.

"So?"

"So at seven weeks, this is a bean."

I laid the sheet flat under the light.

The gray fan on the paper showed a head in profile, a nose, a curled spine and a tiny hand.

In the corner it said 11w3d.

Under that, in small print, it gave the date: September 19.

"I took the obstetrics block last spring," I said. "That's a baby at eleven weeks. Seven weeks, you'd see a flutter and a dot."

Brody hadn't spoken since he'd read the date.

I looked at his face.

He was counting backward, and I could see him doing it.

"Brody."

"If she was eleven weeks in September," he said, "she was pregnant in July."

"Look at the top of the page."

The sheet had been cut across the top with scissors.

A straight line, a little crooked at one end, ran through where a name should have been.

Under the cut, one line was left.

Patient DOB 03/1999.

"Kayla was born in 2005," I said. "She turned twenty-one in March. This isn't hers."

His shoulders came down slowly.

"You're sure."

"I'm looking at the year."

He pulled a chair out and sat on it.

"I did the math, and I couldn't stop," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm telling you because it's the term."

"I know." I put my hand on the back of his neck. "You can do the math. You just have to say it out loud, which you did."

Nate had gone quiet, which was rare.

He picked up the paper by one corner and turned it to the corner with the clinic name.

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