“I do,” Lexie said. She tipped her head toward Pearl, again without meeting her eyes. “My sister’s here. She’ll drive me home.”
Sisters, Pearl thought. They looked nothing alike, she and Lexie. No one would ever believe that she—small, frizzy haired—was related to willowy, sleek Lexie. It would be like saying a Scottish terrier and a greyhound were littermates. The woman glanced at them quickly. After a moment, she either seemed to find this plausible or decided to pretend she did.
“Go ahead and fill these out,” she said, handing Lexie a clipboard of pink forms. “They’ll be ready for you in a few minutes.”
When they were safely settled into the chairs farthest from the desk, Pearl leaned over the clipboard.
“I cannot believe you are using my name,” she hissed.
Lexie slumped in her chair. “I panicked,” she said. “When I called, they asked for my name and I remembered that my mom knows the director here. And you know—my dad’s been in the news, the whole case with the McCulloughs. I didn’t want them to recognize my name. I just said the first name that came into my head. Which was yours.”
Pearl was unappeased. “Now they all think I’m the one who’s pregnant.”
“It’s just a name,” Lexie said. “I’m the one in trouble. Even if they don’t know my real name.” She took a deep breath but seemed to deflate further. Even her hair, Pearl noticed, seemed lank, falling in front of her face so it half covered her eyes. “You—you could be anyone.”
“Oh, for god’s sake.” Pearl took the clipboard from Lexie’s lap. “Give me those.” She began to fill out the forms, starting with her own name. Pearl Warren.
She had almost finished when the door at the end of the waiting room opened and a nurse dressed in white stepped out. “Pearl?” she said, checking the file folder in her hands. “We’re ready for you.”
On the line for “Emergency contact,” Pearl quickly jotted down her own mother’s name and their home phone number. “Here,” she said, thrusting the clipboard into Lexie’s hands. “Done.”
Lexie stood slowly, like a person in a dream. For a moment they stood there, each clasping an end of the clipboard, and Pearl was sure she could feel Lexie’s heart pounding all the way down her fingertips and into the wood of the clipboard’s back.
“Good luck,” she said softly to Lexie. Lexie nodded and took the forms, but at the doorway stopped to look back, as if to make sure Pearl were still there. The look in her eyes said: Please. Please, I don’t know what I’m doing. Please, be here when I get back. Pearl fought the urge to run up and take her hand, to follow her down the hallway, as if they really were sisters, the kind of girls who would see each other through this kind of ordeal, the kind of girls who, years later, would hold each other’s hands during childbirth. The kind of girls unfazed by each other’s nakedness and pain, who had nothing in particular to hide from one another.
“Good luck,” she said again, louder this time, and Lexie nodded and followed the nurse through the door.
At the same time that her daughter was changing into her hospital gown, Mrs. Richardson was ringing the doorbell of Mr. and Mrs. George Wright. She had driven the three hours to Pittsburgh in one swoop, without even stopping to use the restroom or stretch her legs. Was she really doing this? she wondered. She was not completely certain what she would say to these Wrights, nor what information, precisely, she hoped to obtain from them. But there was a mystery here, she knew, and she was equally sure the Wrights held the key to it. She had traveled for stories a few times in the past—down to Columbus, to investigate state budgeting cuts; up to Ann Arbor, when a former Shaker student had started at quarterback in the Michigan-OSU game. It was no different, she told herself. It was justified. She had to find out, in person.
If Mrs. Richardson had had any doubts about whether she’d found the right family, they were dispelled as soon as the door opened. Mrs. Wright looked strikingly like Mia—her hair was a bit lighter, and she wore it cut short, but her eyes and face resembled Mia’s enough that Mrs. Richardson glimpsed what Mia would look like in thirty years.
“Mrs. Wright?” she began. “I’m Elena Richardson. I’m a reporter for