smelled of intermingled perfumes and bleach and potpourri, and she could feel the bile rising in her throat again, her stomach cramping, something inside her bucking and twisting.
A gray-haired woman in a twinset emerged from a stall, and Rebecca pushed past the line of women and slammed the door behind her. She didn’t have time to twist the lock before she was on her knees, retching up the buttered dinner roll and the sparkling water and the half a langoustine she’d managed to choke down. Tears stung her eyes.
There was a knock on the door. “Are you all right? Can I get you something?”
“I’m fine,” she bleated, just before her stomach revolted again. She was spitting up bile now, nothing more. She pressed her forehead against the cool porcelain.
Another knock. “Would you like me to get your husband?”
“No, thank you.” She wondered briefly how they would know which husband belonged to her, but of course, all of them knew about her and Patrick. They had watched him onstage barely a half an hour ago. “My beautiful wife,” he had said, pointing toward her, and they had joined in the polite applause while she practiced her demure smile.
Humiliation swept through her like a wildfire. She needed to get up off the floor and get cleaned up and go back out there before the news spread. As quietly as she could, she spat one last time in the bowl and then flushed. She pulled herself up and wiped the sweat off her brow and straightened the neckline of her dress and sailed out of the stall as gracefully as she could. “I’m sorry about that,” she murmured apologetically. “There’s a stomach bug going around. I must have picked it up.”
The women cooed sympathetically as she dabbed water to her wrists and temples, but she could feel their eyes on her in the mirror, watching, weighing her up. She could feel the questions pressing inside them. Had they seen the waiter refill her wineglass more than once? Had she seemed unsteady on her feet or glassy-eyed? Worse: had the langoustines been bad? They had eaten them, too—did the same fate await them?
Rebecca checked her reflection in the mirror and tucked a stray hair back into place. She looked pale but not too bad. One of the women walked up to her and handed her a mint. “Your breath, dear,” she said, and Rebecca flushed with embarrassment but accepted it gratefully.
When she got back to the table, Patrick was watching her, eyes anxious. “You okay?” he whispered as she slid in beside him.
“Fine,” she said brightly. “Just a little upset stomach.”
But a thought had occurred to her on her walk back from the bathroom, and she was already doing the mental math.
Her mother had told her once that the term “morning sickness” was a misnomer. “When I was pregnant with you, it was more like all-the-damn-time sickness. I couldn’t keep down anything but saltine crackers for the first three months.”
Six weeks on Sunday. Usually, she was like clockwork.
She stared into the distance as the waiter whisked away her plate.
St. Vrain, New Mexico—207 Miles to Albuquerque
Cait sensed it before it happened, something tingling at the back of her neck. The sound hit her next. It was nothing at first, the buzz of an insect above the hum of the engine, but it grew louder, quickly, and just like that a pair of headlights was blinding in her rearview mirror. The truck was charging up the road toward them, fast. Too fast. The buzz became a roar.
The truck passed on her left, a blur of sound and steel, before swerving back into her lane and hitting the brakes. Cait had to slam on her own brakes to keep from rear-ending it. “What the fuck?”
The truck was moving slowly now, the speedometer barely edging thirty. “What is he doing?” Rebecca asked.
“I have no idea.” It was a two-lane highway, and there was no one else out there. Plenty of room to pass. Cait moved into the left lane. He swerved in front of her. She moved back into the right. The truck followed. She leaned on the horn, hard. “What the hell is he doing?” The truck slowed down again. Twenty now. Fifteen. “Jesus Christ.”
“Maybe he wants you to pull over,” Rebecca suggested, but Cait shook her head.
“We shouldn’t stop. We don’t know . . .” She didn’t have to finish the sentence. They’d read articles, watched films, read books, listened to podcasts, existed in the world