Chapter 9: B.Q.

Freya's POV

The message was long, and the doctor had written it carefully, in the English she had learned from television.

Dear Freya, I have the laboratory report on your tablets.

These tablets are not emergency contraception. They contain no levonorgestrel.

They contain a strong drug that thins and scars the lining of the womb.

Taken twice a month for two years, it would produce exactly the damage I saw.

Someone made them to look like the real thing.

This was not an error. I am sorry.

Under it was a photograph of the lab sheet, with a column of chemical names I could not read and a line at the bottom in bold.

COMPOUND NOT FOUND IN ANY EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTIVE.

I read it twice.

I read it a third time with my finger under the words.

Then I sat down on the bed, because my legs had stopped working.

Jakub stood in the doorway with his hands at his sides, not coming in.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I should have..."

"Wait."

I held up one hand.

I was looking at the bottle.

It sat on the little table where I had put it, a white plastic cylinder with a pharmacy sticker on the side.

I had looked at that sticker two hundred times.

I had never read it.

I picked the bottle up and turned it to the light.

QUARLES APOTHECARY, it said, in green print, with an address in Chicago and a phone number.

Under that, in blue ink, in a round hand I knew very well, someone had written two initials.

B.Q.

I had thought it meant the bag.

I had thought it was a label for whoever carried the order.

I put the bottle down, very gently.

"Every month," I said. "A white bag in the bathroom cabinet. Two bottles."

Jakub waited.

"She brought them herself. Because the pharmacy was on her way. She told me that once, and I thanked her, and she hugged me."

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