“Everything must go perfectly,” he added, his voice dropping to a low murmur.
“The doctor said the heartbeat is very strong, Evan.”
He finally looked at me, but his expression was vacant, like a man calculating interest rates in his head.
“Good,” he said.
“We cannot afford any complications at this stage,” he added, his thumb running along the edge of the legal stack.
“What kind of complications?” I asked.
“Financial ones,” he said, before quickly clearing his throat.
He did not expand on the remark, his attention shifting to the glass doors of the clinic as Claire stepped out into the light.
“We will talk later, Marianne,” Evan said, walking past me without another word.
His shoes clicked loudly on the asphalt as he hurried to open the passenger door for my sister.
I stood by my old Buick, the keys heavy in my hand.
The wind blew a loose sheet of yellow paper across the lot, but nobody chased it.
By seven that evening, the kitchen was quiet, the smell of roasted chicken lingering in the warm air.
Claire sat on my floral sofa, a stack of glossy nursery design magazines spread across her knees.
She turned the pages quickly, her long nails scraping against the glossy paper with a dry, irritating sound.
“Look at this wooden crib,” Claire said, pointing to a photograph of a pale pine room.
“They have it in three different stains,” she added, though she did not look at the price tag.
“It is beautiful,” I said, setting down two mugs of chamomile tea on the coffee table.
“We have plenty of time to choose,” I added, sitting on the armchair opposite her.
I watched the way she avoided looking at the small pink cardigan my daughter Chloe had left on the side table.
“I was thinking about names,” I said.
“If it is a girl, have you thought about naming her after mother?” I asked.
Claire stopped turning the page, her hand frozen mid-air over a picture of a blue nursery.
“We are not discussing girl names, Marianne,” she said, her voice dropping its usual sweet tone.
“Why not?” I asked.
“It is a fifty-percent chance,” I added.
