Every morning, the sun streamed in through the windows and hit Bridget square in the face. No matter which side of the bed she was on, she always managed to get the sun right in her eyes, and since the days were getting longer now the sun's wake-up call was arriving earlier and earlier every day. Somehow she'd managed to survive three months of the sun waking her up. It had taken three months for her to feel comfortable enough to think that maybe she could make this one small change.

"Can we get blinds for that window?" she asked.

Andrew's only response was a snuffle into his pillow. The sun didn't bother him in the slightest, of course, because Andrew could sleep through anything.

"Why, yes, sweetie bear," Bridget continued in a deeper voice, "you can buy blinds. Buy any kind of window treatment you want.

"But Andrew," she said, in a mock-high-pitched voice, "I don't want to make any decisions without you.

She made a grumpy face. "It's okay, honey, really, I'm a guy, so I don't care what it looks like."

Bridget looked over to see Andrew peering up at her from his pillow, eyes half closed. "That's not true, I care very deeply what this place looks like." He put his hand on her arm. "It looks beautiful from where I'm sitting. And yes, you can buy any sort of blinds you want."

She leaned over and kissed him. "Good morning."

He put his arm around her and pulled her down to where he lay. He nuzzled her hair in a sleepy way. "It is now."

Three months she'd woken up every morning with Andrew, and it still seemed crazy or impossible. She didn't want to make any assumptions, or start making any plans. But still: three months.

Three months was ninety days, she realized. Was there a ninety-day relationship pin?

She was still going to meetings every day, although she'd noticed her underlying desire for a hit had almost vanished overnight. One of the group leaders suggested that maybe she'd transferred her addiction to her relationship, which wasn't uncommon. Bridget was almost completely certain that wasn't what was going on here — she loved Andrew, but whenever he wasn't around she felt okay, like everything was going to be fine. In the depths of her dependence on pills she had never once felt okay when those pills weren't nearby. But just in case, she kept going to meetings.

She'd even started working with some of the newer members. Not acting as a sponsor, because she wasn't ready for that yet. But she could see doing that, in the future.

The future.

Hey, those two words didn't scare her. It was going to be a good day.

Andrew had just started massaging the sensitive skin on the side of her abdomen that always made her shiver when the phone rang. Bridget looked over at it.

"Ignore it," he said into her ear.

The phone read GEMMA.

There had to be a good reason Gemma was calling them at seven-twenty in the morning. And Bridget was never not going to be there for her friend.

She picked up the phone. "Hey, what's up?" she said, as though Andrew's hand hadn't shifted to the soft flesh between her thighs and begun lightly moving back and forth.

"Siobhan's in labor," Gemma said.

Bridget was guessing Andrew had heard what Gemma said, because his hand stopped moving.

~oOo~

Henry was in the waiting room in the maternity ward. Another man, with close-cropped hair and slightly ill-fitting clothes sat nearby. He was Henry's minder, Bridget thought. A plainclothes cop sat nearby, maybe keeping Henry under surveillance while he waited for Siobhan or maybe he was Siobhan's keeper when she wasn't in labor. Bridget had definitely seen him before though.

"She won't let me in there," Henry said.

Bridget sat down across from him. He looked so handsome and so sad. Had this man actually tried to help Siobhan murder her? Gemma had told her that Henry had taken a plea agreement from the Feds: testify against Siobhan, explain all of her crazy schemes, and plead guilty to conspiracy, and in return he'd get probation and serve no time, although he'd have a criminal record.

"I had to explain to him that was a better deal than he was going to get if he took his chances and had a trial," Gemma had said. "Has he not seen prison movies? I sent him the first two seasons of Oz on disc and said, 'Watch these and take notes, you moron'."

"Why are you here?" Bridget asked Henry.

The corners of his mouth went up, but it didn't look like a smile, not exactly. "I really love her."

It's why he did everything he did, of course. Love was a crazy emotion. The time to re-evaluate was when it made you do crazy things.

"One day she might realize that's important to her," Bridget said.

He shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I don't actually think she can love me back. I don't think she can love anyone."

"I think she doesn't love herself," Bridget said. God knew she'd met enough of those people in the NA meetings. People searching for some kind of love and validation from every source, other than the one they needed it the most from.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

"I want to apologize," Henry said.

"Henry —" Bridget said.

"No, I know. This is off the record and I've had to make all those statements to the lawyers and whoever. But I really am sincerely sorry for everything I did." Henry swung his hand through the air, palm out, indicating he was done. "That's it. You don't have to say anything. I don't want anything in return. I just wanted to make sure I said that."

Bridget nodded. Andrew had warned her about discussing the case at all with Henry. And given the sensitive nature of what had happened, that seemed like a pretty good idea.

She still couldn't help feeling the tiniest bit sorry for him. Dreadful things had happened to her, but in her mind she was free. Henry was never going to be free, no matter what.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"My sister's having a baby," she said. "Of course I want to be here."

Bridget stood up. "I'm going to get some tea from the cafeteria."

She stopped at the nurses's station, where Nurse Gabby was entering in some information into the terminal there. "Hi," she said.

"Hi." Nurse Gabby did a double-take and said, "Oh, you must be identical twins with the one in there, huh?"

"How's she doing?"

"The process takes as long as it takes."

"Can't say anything, huh?"

"Sweetheart, you wouldn't believe how some people react to what the nurse says. We have to tell them to turn off their video cameras before we'll even admit they have a baby, because people will sue over anything."

"It's just…she's been in labor a long time."

"My first took eighteen hours. The second one about twenty minutes. Come to think of it, that sums up their personalities." Nurse Gabby laughed at her own joke. "How about you? You have kids?"

Bridget shook her head. A lifetime of bad choices had curtailed some possibilities for her. "I can't… I can't have kids."

"Oh." Gabby gave her a sympathetic smile. "It can be hard."

Bridget smiled in return. "My life's pretty good. I have no complaints."

"That's a good attitude."

"One day at a time."

When she came back from the cafeteria, Nurse Gabby waved her over to the desk. "Would you like to see your new nephew?"

"It's a boy?" Bridget asked. "Siobhan had a boy."

She followed the nurse down the hall to the window facing the area where the obstetrics nurse held a small blue bundle with one hand and an eyedropper with the other. Next to her was a man in a suit, watching her every move. After dabbing the bundle with a tissue, the nurse carefully laid it on a scale, and then picked it up. She shooed the man in the suit out of her way as she moved.

"He's so small," Bridget said.

"Be thankful when they're small. Each of mine was over nine pounds. Let me tell you, that was some pain."

"Can I see her? My sister?"

Nurse Gabby shook her head.

Now the obstetrics nurse was bent over the blue bundle, shaking her head and cooing as she poked in with a little stick.

"What's she doing?" Bridget asked.

"Getting cheek cells." Nurse Gabby blushed, perhaps realizing she'd said too much. "It's for a kind of test."

The DNA test. Of course. Andrew had given his blood sample to the firm doing the testing already. She assumed Henry had too.

The obstetrics nurse sealed the stick into a glass vial, closed it with a white label, and then handed it to the man in the suit. Then she repeated the procedure twice more, sealing each vial with a white label. Only then did the man in the suit leave the room.

"How long does it take to get the results?" Bridget asked.

"I'm not the person to talk about that, sorry."

"Could you ask again if I could see her?"

Nurse Gabby smiled. "Sure."

Bridget returned to the waiting room. "She had the baby," she told Henry. "It's a boy."

"No," he whined. "Not another boy. I already have two boys." His hand slammed against the back of his chair and he sulked.

Bridget stared at him and not for the first time wondered what Siobhan, who married someone as completely and totally amazing as Andrew, had seen in this man, enough to have an affair, commit crimes, abandon her home, and attempt murder.

She tried to find the words to say something, anything, even though she knew Henry's filter wouldn't allow him to hear her in the first place.

The plainclothes policeman managed to get Bridget's attention by shaking his head behind Henry.

She clutched the straps of her purse and turned to go. There was no point to her being here.

"Ms. Kelly?"

Bridget turned to see the man who'd been in the obstetrics ward with the nurse who'd done tests on Siobhan's baby.

"That's me."

"Your sister would like to see you. You can have fifteen minutes."

A wave of dizziness passed over Bridget and she wondered if she might be ill. Even though Bridget had been asking to see Siobhan, somehow it had been easier when she'd been asking and mostly sure that it wasn't going to happen. Now that she had permission, that it could actually happen, she wasn't at all sure.

Henry leapt to his feet. "What about me?" he demanded. "I need to see her. I should talk to her first."

"Do you want to see her?" the man said to Bridget, as though Henry hadn't spoken.

"Yes," Bridget said. "Yes, I do."

The man turned out to be Troy Layton, and he was one of Siobhan's lawyers. He would be present for their meeting, although he'd be on the other side of the room and not an active participant. He told Bridget not to bring up any circumstances with the case.

Our entire lives are this case, Bridget thought. She couldn't think of one thing they could discuss that wasn't tangentially related to what had happened.

He led her down the corridor to room 535. When Bridget walked in, all she could see was the blue curtain that had been drawn across to shade the occupant from the passersby in the hallway.

She walked in, slowly, telling herself that there wasn't anything Siobhan could do to her now. That she was doing this for herself.

She would have stopped at the edge of the curtain but she told herself, Now now now do it now. And she turned the corner.

There was Siobhan, lying in the hospital bed. She looked exhausted, pale and sweaty, her blonde hair up in a ponytail and flat out on the pillow behind her head. She was wearing one of those terrible hospital gowns and she wasn't wearing makeup.

She still looked fierce and marvelous and shrewder than everyone around her.

Siobhan's gaze moved from the TV, where some ridiculous soap opera was playing, to Bridget's face.

The two sisters stared at one another for a few moments.

"And here I thought I'd be the one who looked like hell," Siobhan said.

Bridget almost smiled. She'd made a mistake. Andrew had told her not to come, not to ask to see Siobhan, not to put herself through it. Well, she'd signed up for this. Best to soldier on through. And plan on going to a meeting directly afterward.

"Hi Bonnie," Bridget said.

"What do you want?"

"I wanted to see my sister again."

Siobhan's head shook slightly, as though she were trying to figure out what Bridget had just said. "Why?"

Bridget walked around and sat in the chair nearest the bed. The lawyer hovered nearby, perhaps fearful Bridget was going to try something. "Why did you tell him I could come in here?"

Siobhan snorted. "Touché." She operated the bed controls to move into a more seated position. Of course, that put her as a superior position to Bridget, the better to look down at her.

"So how are you feeling?" Bridget asked.

"I just pushed a human being out of my vagina, how do you think I feel? God, women do that more than once?"

"What are you going to name him?"

A look passed over Siobhan's face, like she was about to say something mean and horrible, but then she just shook her head and flopped her head backward. "His father can name him, I don't give a damn."

Before she could think twice about it, Bridget reached out and covered her sister's hand with her own. Siobhan looked at her, startled, and the lawyer even took a step forward. Bridget squeezed Siobhan's hand. Siobhan didn't respond. After a moment, the lawyer stepped back into his corner.

"What do you give a damn about, Siobhan? Is there anything you care about?"

Siobhan's lips pressed together, going white, and then she yanked her hand away from Bridget's. "So you're here to gloat, is that it?"

"What? No."

"You've done so well for yourself, haven't you. You're sleeping in my house, with my husband, in my bed."

Bridget sat back in her chair. "Ask yourself why you're not there."

"Speaking of my husband, how is the romantic and drippy Andrew Martin?"

The lawyer objected. Bridget ignored him. "He's actually doing pretty well. All things considered. It's been a tough year for him. But he's going to get through it just fine."

Siobhan wiped the corner of her eye. Was it a real tear? Bridget couldn't tell. "How is dear, sweet Gemma?"

"She's dating an aide to Senator Ozawa. Incredibly smart guy. Went to Princeton and Harvard. He laughs a lot and he loves Gemma's jokes. He and Gemma have the same sense of humor."

Siobhan stared at Bridget, tears running more actively from the corners of her eyes. "And how are you doing?"

Bridget wondered how to answer that. She could concentrate on how her twin sister had betrayed her. How it had felt to wake up in a psych ward, addicted to the very drugs she'd worked so hard to get out of her system. How hard it was to go through detox, again. Or what it felt like to have lost everything and wonder where she could go from there.

She decided to go with brutal honesty. "You know, my life is amazing right now," she said. "I have some really good friends and for the first time in my life I feel really content. It's crazy to talk about feeling grounded in a place like Manhattan, but I do."

"So what, you're here to gloat about how wonderfully everything's worked out for you?"

The lawyer moved into Bridget's field of vision, tapping his very expensive wristwatch. Time's up.

"No, I came here to see my sister because she'd just had a baby. We probably won't have an opportunity to speak again for a very long time." She covered Siobhan's hand again. "Please take care of yourself. You know, every day find one thing you could be happy about."

"I have nothing to be happy about!" Siobhan screamed. "Don't you get it? My life is completely destroyed and it's all your fault, you stupid whore!"

Bridget got up and slung the strap for her purse over her shoulder. A million responses occurred to her, all of which were nasty and cutting and served no purpose other than to get the last, vicious word in. Siobhan wasn't listening, she was just once again looking for someone to take the blame. Had it always been that way? Probably. "Take care, Bonnie," she said. "Try to take care of yourself."

She let herself out without a backward glance.