flicking me a quick glance as she slid hangers down the rack.
I ran my hand over it. "I feel good. My energy picked back up around eleven weeks, but I swear, if I keep eating this many scones, I'm going to gain a thousand pounds."
Isabel smiled as she held a shirt up to look at it. I could tell in her face she wasn't sure what to say next.
"What is it?"
She carefully hung the shirt back up. "Nothing."
I held up a white T-shirt covered in a black and white rendering of Queen Elizabeth with a red and blue lightning slash running down her face ala David Bowie.
Isabel grinned and motioned for it. "Perfect."
We wandered a little bit after she got the shirt. Since Isabel wasn't a student, I couldn't take her inside the Rad Cam (the Radcliffe Camera, also known as one of Oxford's most famous buildings), but I could show her my favorite place to sit and work. We worked our way through Oxford that way during the first couple of days, finding small nooks to sit where she could caffeinate, I could eat, and I'd get tiny snippets of what I was missing back home.
"What about Emmett?" I asked. "How's he doing? He's never around when I talk to anyone."
Isabel smiled. "The little prince is fine. I already told him he's going to be dethroned as the favorite when you give birth."
"You did not."
"Hell yeah, I did. Kid needs to be prepared."
I rolled my eyes. "You have the tact of a semi-truck, Isabel. He's nine. No one will be replacing anyone."
She glanced at me over the rim of her cappuccino. "You'll be living there, though, right? When you go home?"
My fingers plucked at the scone, and I took my time slathering cream and jam on it. It wasn't the first probing question I'd gotten from my big sister, but it was just the most obvious.
"I guess," I said. "I hadn't really thought about it."
Isabel hummed. The subject dropped. For another day at least.
On day four of her trip, we made our way into London where she'd booked another hotel for a few nights, and at her insistence, I packed a bag to stay with her, working on my paper while she slept in until late morning. We were just around the corner from Hyde Park, a beautiful tree-lined street in a quiet neighborhood, and when she stopped to take some pictures of an overflowing flower cart on a street corner, she poked me again.
"Have you thought of any names?"
My hand went straight to my belly. I found myself doing that more in the past few weeks. It was an interesting sort of reassurance. Yup, the bump was still there, as if I couldn't tell from the aching back and ravenous appetite and massive boobs.
"Not really," I answered.
We waved goodbye to the woman selling the flowers and pulled our hoods up to turn the corner toward Hyde Park.
"Isabel is always a classic choice for a girl," she said about a block later.
I nudged her with my shoulder, laughing under my breath. "If it's a girl, there's no shortage of family names I could use."
"True." For a while, I thought she was going to drop that subject too. We crossed the street and entered the park through the black wrought-iron gates. "I thought there'd be snow," she commented as she crouched to take a picture of one of the first fountains we passed.
"It's kinda like Seattle." I tucked my hands into my coat and shivered. "It can get cold enough for snow, but it's just not common. Lots of rain, lots of clouds, but honestly, I don't mind it."
She stood and gazed over the park. Now that her jet lag had dissipated, the dark circles under her eyes were gone. I didn't know why I studied her as if I'd expected her to change in the months since I'd last seen her. Maybe because I'd changed so drastically. But she was the same Isabel, tall and striking. Her hair, darker than the rest of ours, was braided down her back, and she had her head covered with a black cap. Even dressed casually, something about her was intimidating and drew the eye when she passed.
"You look good," I told her when we started walking again.
"So do you."
"I look pregnant, Isabel. You have to say that."
"I don't have to say shit, Lia. If I was worried about how you looked, I'd ask you about whether you were eating healthy or getting