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“These are good, Laurel. Really good.” Liz Cannawill looked up from the sheaf of drawings spread across her desk. “I think you’re definitely on the right track here.” Liz, whose graying page boy didn’t match her youthful face and slim figure, slid out from behind her desk. In Liz’s tiny office overlooking lower Broadway, with its shelves and tables stacked with rubber-banded manuscripts and galleys, its walls covered in C-prints and cover sketches and dust jackets, Laurel felt oddly at home. Not like her own apartment, where more and more she’d begun feeling

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like a guest who’d overstayed her welcome, divided by an invisible wall—the Berlin Wall of unspoken accusations that lay between Annie and her. This was only her second visit to Fairway Press, but here she felt she could relax, and be Laurel the artist instead of poor pregnant Laurel.

“Of course, I’ll have to show these to our art department, and I’m sure they’ll have some suggestions for layout,” Liz was saying, “but I don’t see a problem in giving you the go-ahead. Laurel, it’s been ages since I’ve seen work as good as yours. Especially coming from someone of your”—she paused, smiling—“shall we say, relative inexperience?”

Laurel could feel herself beginning to blush, but she was determined not to let her awkwardness show. What would Liz think if she knew that, aside from the program covers she’d done for the theatre department at school, this was her first real illustrating job? Standing up, Laurel smoothed her skirt. She’d worn her most businesslike maternity dress, one she’d sewn herself, a longsleeved charcoal jersey with starched white piqu้ cuffs. The bright silk scarf knotted loosely about her neck would draw attention from her big belly, she hoped, and with her long hair pulled back with a gold barrette, maybe she could pass for twenty or twenty-one.

“I’m glad you like them,” she said. “Of course, they’re just preliminary sketches. The final ones will be more fleshed out … and I thought maybe one or two colors? What do you think?”

“Well …” Liz was tapping the eraser end of her pencil against the eyepiece of her square tortoiseshell glasses, her mouth pursed in contemplation. “We’re working on a pretty tight budget with this one—a retelling of a fairy tale isn’t going to go out with a huge first printing, I’ll be honest with you. And colors … that would make it quite a bit more expensive. But I’ll do an estimate. In the meantime, why don’t you give me one of these with colors so I can compare them.”

“No problem,” Laurel said.

“End of the week?”

“First thing Monday morning,” she promised. “And

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oh,

I should have the final drawings ready in about …oh, eight weeks. Will that be okay?”

“Don’t rush. We haven’t even set a pub date. Probably it won’t go into production until summer, in time for the Christmas season.” She stopped, glancing at Laurel’s belly, her lip-glossed mouth turning up slightly. “But it looks like you’ll be going to press before then.”

Now the blush Laurel had fought earlier came over her full force—her face burned as if Liz had just switched on a bank of klieg lights in front of her. Inside, she felt hot, too—like one of those balloons with a flame making it expand and lift off the ground. In spite of her big stomach and swollen breasts and lumpy ankles, she felt hollow and light, as if she could just float away … right up through the roof and out over the avenue below with its colorful galleries and display windows. God, why did everyone have to keep reminding her? Why did she have to get beat over the head with it every time she went out somewhere?

“You know, I’ve always wondered how you mothers do it,” Liz went on. “I mean, working at home with a baby at your feet. It’s going to be quite a change.”

“Oh … I’ll manage.”

She felt a little dizzy and lightheaded, Fourth of July sparklers dancing at the corners of her vision. A baby at my feet? If only she knew …

“I’ll bet.” Liz, in her trim ocher-and-black suit, with her head cocked to one side, made Laurel think of a bird, a curious finch. She meant well, Laurel knew. And she probably had no children of her own, so she couldn’t possibly know what she, Laurel, was going through. “On the other hand, children … I imagine they give you all kinds of wonderful insights. Valuable, if you’re going to be illustrating children’s books.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Laurel, desperate to steer the conversation away from her impending motherhood, quickly put in, “What do you think about my making the bear a bit more menacing?” She pointed at the uppermost drawing on Liz’s desk.

An old story, a retelling of “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” but one of Laurel’s favorite fairy tales.

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She wanted to capture exactly the right mood, but not make it so realistic that it might scare the youngest readers.

“I think you’ve got it just right,” Liz said after peering carefully at it for several long seconds. “Authentic, natural, with just a touch of Walt Disney. Maybe a bit less teeth in this one-we don’t want it to look as if our bride is in danger of being eaten. But otherwise, I’d stick with what you’ve got here.” Liz glanced at her watch. “Oops. I hate to cut this short, but I’m late for another meeting.”

Liz started to walk out with her, but Laurel waved her back. “Please, don’t bother. I know the way out.”

“Okay. See you Monday, then.”

“Monday.”

Liz laughed lightly. “Deadlines … don’t you just love them?”

On her way down in the elevator, Laurel thought, Deadlines. It wasn’t Monday’s deadline that was tugging at her now, but tomorrow’s. She’d have to have an answer for Rudy by then. Stepping out into the polished marble lobby, panic clutched at her.

How can I do it? Give my own baby away?

You have to, a voice urged. It’s the only sensible thing to do.

But if that was so, then why didn’t it feel that way? Why did it feel about as sensible as cutting out her own heart?

Maybe she should have told Jess. But, no, what good would that have done? And besides, she had tried, that one time.

Laurel, as she made her way toward the subway through the crowds thronging the sidewalk, found herself remembering that day. She’d been sitting on the grass in front of Hind’s Hall, with Jess standing over her like a fiery Old Testament prophet, so furious he was punching the air. The My Lai mass murderer was acquitted. The government was shit. And he personally wanted to blow up the whole of Washington, D.C.

“Jess …” She’d plucked at the tail of his T-shirt, which had come untucked from his faded chinos. The shirt

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was black, with cut-off sleeves that showed the knotted muscles in his dusky arms.

“The guy’s a butcher, a fucking animal!” Jess ranted on, not hearing her. “Yeah, sure, it wasn’t him personally, but Medina was the commanding officer, the buck stopped with him. Galley’s guilty as hell, too, but he’s just the scapegoat. Man, I can’t believe this.”

“Jess,” she said, “the whole war doesn’t make sense. So why should this? Please, don’t let it get to you so much.”

He’d stared down at her, his arms falling to his sides as abruptly as if she’d yanked on them. “We can’t just stand around and do,nothing.”

“Of course not. But, Jess, some of the time we have to think of ourselves, too. I mean, when was the last time we talked about anything but, well, changing the system?”

He shot her a burning look that seemed to say, What else matters?

Then, as if realizing she might be right, he dropped down on the grass opposite her, forking his long legs so that they formed a V about hers. He smiled at her, that heavy-lidded lazy smile that had once melted her defenses but now had little effect on her. A summer apart from Jess had given her a new perspective on him—he seemed more childish than she’d thought at first, like a kid rebelling just for the hell of it. And what about the fact that for three whole months he hadn’t once written or called?

“Hey, Beanie,” he said, reaching out to wind a strand of her hair about his long, brown finger. “Maybe you’re right … maybe I ought to kick back once in a while. Let’s go back to my place … and afterwards we can talk about anything you like.”

That was the moment. He was next to her, sitting quietly, and she was going to tell him. But then a group of his buddies, spilling out of Carnegie Library, came over, waving and hooting. Jess asked if they’d heard about Medina, then they were shouting, each one cursing Nixon louder than the next. Laurel slipped away, and she felt sure nobody even noticed.

Since she’d dropped out of school, Jess had called her once to say he was going to be in the city and could

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he drop by. But she’d put him off. What was the use? There was nothing he could do. Nothing she wanted from him. And she certainly didn’t want to marry him.

God, why couldn’t it have been Joe? If he were the father of this baby, she wouldn’t care if he didn’t love her. Because if he was willing to give her even half a chance, she could make him love her. And maybe it wasn’t so farfetched. Lately, she’d been catching this look in his eyes-as if he were seeing her in a new light, and maybe imagining how it might be, the two of them. Each time she’d seen that expression on his face, it was like another stitch in the gossamer fabric of hope she was secretly weaving.

Reaching the Broadway-Lafayette station, Laurel reminded herself harshly that this wasn’t Joe’s baby. And she had only until tomorrow to decide what to do about it.

Don’t think about it, she told herself. There’s still time. You don’t have to make up your mind this very moment.

When she arrived home, Laurel was surprised to see Annie at the kitchen table, bent over what looked like a stack of contractors’ estimates—one bony elbow propped next to a coffee mug, her short hair rucked up on one side where she’d been leaning into her cupped palm. She was wearing a ribbed orange sweater, its sleeves pushed up to her elbows, and a pair of wide-wale tan corduroys. She blinked up at Laurel, then straightened, her thoughtful expression shifting, tightening somehow—the change so quick and subtle that only Laurel, who knew her sister better than anyone, would have noticed. Seeing that look, she felt something inside herself close off as well.

She still hasn’t forgiven me. And why should she?

Annie, she knew, was still as much in love with Joe as ever. So how could Annie forgive Laurel for what she’d done?

But what was she supposed to do about it? And, really, was she responsible for what had happened? She would have told Annie about Jess … but Annie, with her usual bulldozer approach, just had to run right down-

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stairs and confront Joe, not giving her … or even him … a chance to explain. Okay, she felt bad about it, guilty too, but was it her fault Joe and Annie were hardly speaking now, more than three months later?

Maybe it was meant to be this way, she thought. Even if she hadn’t gotten pregnant, maybe it never would have worked out with Joe and Annie.

And … well, when you got right down to it, why should Annie have any more claim on him than she did? Laurel remembered his kiss, still as fresh in her mind as if it had happened moments ago, rather than months—that first startled stiffening of his mouth, then the delicious feel of him yielding … opening to her … wanting her in spite of his telling himself he didn’t, he mustn’t. God, if only she could have that again … if only she could make him see that it wasn’t wrong to want her.

Not that he’d been unfriendly since then. No, he acted the same as always-kidding around with her, not holding back on the occasional brotherly hug. And hadn’t he agreed to be her Lamaze coach? Still, Laurel sensed the strain between them, the unspoken gap between what she wanted from him and what he was willing to give her. If only …

“Hi,” Annie said.

“Hi.” Laurel threw her coat and empty portfolio over one of the cane-back dinette chairs. “What are you doing home so early? I thought you’d be out quarterbacking with contractors.”

Annie groaned. “I was.” She riffled through the papers in front of her. “Would you believe it? Eleven estimates, and the lowest one is still about twice what I figured on.”

“What about doing it yourself?” Laurel suggested.

“You mean knocking out walls, installing electrical cables, plumbing, that kind of thing? If I could, I probably would.” She laughed. But Laurel hadn’t been joking.

“I don’t mean that. I meant, why pay a general contractor? You could hire the subcontractors yourself, couldn’t you? It’d mean overseeing everything yourself, but I can’t imagine you—not hanging over everyone’s shoulder

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anyway. And that way you could cut your expenses by about fifteen or twenty percent.”

Annie’s mouth dropped open in amazement, then she recovered with a little snort of laughter. “I have to admit I’m impressed. What do you know about building and contractors?” As soon as the words were out, her smile vanished, and the room’s temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. She had to have guessed the reason: Joe.

Laurel thought, She knows I’ve been spending time with him, not just the Lamaze classes, but at the restaurant … watching his addition go up, listening to him deal with plumbers, electricians, carpenters… .

Laurel shrugged. “You think I spend all my time doodling? I know a thing or two.”

“I’m sure you do.” With a sharp look, Annie gathered up her papers, and rose, the scraping of her chair against the linoleum sounding harsh and somehow dismissive. “Well, I guess I’d better start dinner.”

“It’s in the oven,” Laurel told her. “Eggplant parmesan. I made it this morning, before Ru-” She caught herself. “Before I finished getting my portfolio together.”

“How did the meeting go?”

“Good. She liked my drawings.”

“Well, I’d be surprised if she didn’t. They’re really fantastic.” Annie’s stony expression softened, and in her indigo eyes, Laurel caught a hint of pride. Laurel felt a pang, wishing she could bridge this awful gulf between them.