down. I don’t think it’s good for them, and neither is this.” He wasn’t looking her in the eye.
“Of course, I’m sorry.”
She had scooted herself to the edge of the chair she sat in. As Bruce shifted to go to Ethan, Ben appeared to bobble in his arms, and Knox reached forward to steady him, though immediately Bruce corrected Ben’s angle as he rose. As she moved to sit down again, she noticed another change in Bruce’s face; the muscles around his brow contracted and his thin lips parted slightly in surprise.
“Is that … Charlotte’s?” he said.
Knox followed his eyes downward, where the hem of Charlotte’s yellow slip had come loose from her waistband and dropped into sight below her shirt. She felt her chest prickle with sweat.
“I know. I was wearing it. It’s so weird,” she blurted. “I forgot I had it on.”
Bruce said nothing. Knox wished she could make them both disappear, absenting them completely from the moment so that only Ben was left, lying peacefully on his blanket, opening and closing his tiny hands. She was a freak. She had no business. She guarded against the defensiveness she knew could ride right in on shame’s back, against saying to herself: But she’s mine, too, my sister. No—there was no excuse for this violation.
“Bruce, I’m sorry,” she said. “It was in the closet upstairs. I should have asked. I just threw it on.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” Bruce said. “It wasn’t mine.”
She nodded. Bruce watched her for a moment, then turned and carried Ben out of the room. Knox remained where she was, her hands clasped in her lap, numbly wondering how much time she should allow before following Bruce. Despite everything, he would need help with Ben while he changed Ethan and got him dressed. But she remained where she was, turned to stone.
THEY GAVE each other a wide berth during the week left before they flew to Kentucky. Knox wouldn’t have called them wary of each other, exactly. Once again, it was easy for them to avoid one another if they chose, with the necessities of the boys’ care hanging between them. They were polite, and on the surface of their shared, work-filled hours, it appeared that little had changed. “Ugly, it’s me. When do you need me to pick you up?” She and Ned had hardly spoken at all since the first week she’d been in New York. At first, she’d attributed this to an abstract understanding he must have of the wormhole she’d fallen into; he’d been with her every moment in Kentucky, hadn’t he, before she’d come. Then she remembered the awkwardness between them before this all happened, the way he’d behaved the day after the bluegrass festival, and wondered if he was giving her room or, justifiably, taking some room for himself, now that she didn’t need him to bathe, feed, and rock her to sleep. Of course, she wasn’t exactly available now. If he had the energy to chase her down, he’d find her; otherwise, he wouldn’t. Today, he’d found her: hustling by the hall table, Ethan sprawled against her chest in his carrier, his long, bare, skinny chicken legs bouncing against her stomach.
“Well, speak of the devil,” she said, the lightness in her tone belying the way she felt, even upon hearing his voice, which was lonely.
“Your father told me you were coming on Thursday, so I wanted to be of service.”
“How nice. But we’ll have car seats and a lot of gear, it looks like. I think Mama should fetch us in her car.”
“Oh. Okay. I hadn’t thought of that. How are the boys? I can’t wait to see them.”
“And me, right?”
“Naturally.”
False, easy cheer. Why did she feel so guilty about it? Knox rubbed her fingers up and down one of Ethan’s calves, tickling him. He stared up at her from his place under her chin, serious as a heart attack, his lips slick with drool.
The memorial was scheduled for Saturday. Ned read her the announcement in the paper.
The next pediatrician’s appointment came and went. Ethan contracted a fever after the shots this time, but it broke within a day. They spent the night before the trip back home packing the boys’ clothes, bottles, bottle brushes, blankets, pacifiers, diapers, wipes, formula, special laundry detergent, hooded towels, bath liquid, lotion, thermometer, gas and fever medicines in case, infant nail clippers to keep their faces from getting scratched during the course of their time away, burp cloths, the music player they relied