Chapter 13: Until Thursday

Candace stood in the clinic doorway with her bag on her shoulder, and her husband was half out of his chair.

For a moment the only sound was the filter in the fish tank.

"Honey, look who drove all this way," he said. "Your friend Joanna."

Candace's mouth opened and closed.

"Hi," she said. "Hi, Joanna."

I had a choice to make, and I made it before she reached the middle of the room.

I stood, smiled, and took the blue folder out of my bag.

"You dropped this at the hotel," I said. "I brought it so you wouldn't miss your appointment."

She took it. Her fingers were cold.

"That was kind of her," her husband said. "Wasn't that kind, Candace?"

"Very kind."

A nurse leaned out of the inner door. "Mrs. Rudd?"

Her husband squeezed her shoulder. "Go on. I'll feed the meter and come right in."

He went out into the cold, whistling.

Candace caught my sleeve and pulled me into the hall by the water fountain.

Marcy followed and stood at the corner with her arms folded, guarding us from nobody.

"Please don't tell him," Candace said.

"He's about to be a father," I said.

"I know."

"No. He is a father. Isn't he?"

She stared at me.

Then she leaned her back against the wall and slid until she was sitting on her heels.

"I knew in August," she said. "I paid for a second test, and I swabbed my husband's coffee mug for it. It came back his."

"And you kept telling Neil the baby was his."

"He'd already moved me into the suite. He bought a stroller, Joanna. He cried when he saw the ultrasound."