The photographs are perfectly symmetrical.
Not on the wall, although that too, but within their frames: each tanned limb, each white smile, each starched shirt carefully arranged and contained within its beige matting like a delicate butterfly pinned in place and kept under glass.
It's so far removed from the life she knows-present, past-that Sara would preserve it all in the same way, if she had it for herself…abdomen, thorax, wing. A child. A beach. A life.
To her, it's boldly exotic. It's beautiful and rare, and precious in the manner of a museum-quality artifact. Something you might long for without quite coveting. "God, good for her," she breathes.
And she means it. She absolutely does.
"We could have that, if we want it."
He's looking at her with an expression so vulnerable, so…childlike…that it yanks her away from Deb's charmed life and back to her own with a tug decisive enough to send her retreating to the bathroom. She closes herself into a world of blue terry octopuses and ivory tile, because she can't offer him a reply.
Not with such a burning question of her own yet unanswered.
She finds it startling to realize that in thirty years, this is the first pregnancy test she's ever taken.
Because she's a careful woman.
Or at least, always has been.
She imagines that's how she'll tell him: I'm not…when it comes to you. And maybe, on some long-distant day-assuming she's granted one-that's how she'll tell their child, too: we were reckless the way only ill-fated people can be. We were daring in the manner only eminent danger can bring.
We were in love.
But you know that, she can only hope she'll be able to add. With a smile. With a pat on a small knee and a tuck into bed. Because you see it. You live it, everyday.
She escapes his presence yet again.
He notices, and she's sorry, but she knows herself: this news is too big for her to conceal if she stays still for too long. If she allows his hand time to alight upon the small of her back, if she grants him access to her mood, to her skidding heart rate, he'll guess. Somehow, someway, he'll know.
If he chooses this moment to kiss her, it's over. She'll tell.
If he tips her chin up to meet his gaze, she'll smile, her lip curving as it always does under the pads of his fingers, and then she'll cry.
She does both, back in the sanctuary of the bathroom. The plus sign on the stick stares back at her in blue ink, and she thinks: it should be an exclamation point.
Suddenly it's a lot of things: a fear so great it leaves her breathless, yet another warning of all that could be taken away, swept free of her feet like a proverbial rug. But also, but mostly: a hope so shockingly undiluted it sends her into a spasm almost like mirth. An antidote to a death sentence that's shadowed her for months.
She turns to face herself in the mirror. Still clutching the test, she allows herself a smile, then a laugh, then a sob.
Because somehow, her medical degree-obtained so long before with Deb of the photographed family-had led to a key that has opened everything after. She may be a criminal now. She may be a junkie, adrenaline and otherwise. She may well be doomed; just today, she had been forced to her knees with a gun to her head. But somehow, she had found the one man on this earth whom she could die beside. Who could love her, unsettle her, who could reach out and steady her, stirring her to action with all the power of a flock of birds on wing.
The fact is, she can't ever remember feeling so alive.
