“Of course.”
She swallowed. “Do you think that people get what’s coming to them?”
The detective looked at her for a long moment. “I don’t think anyone deserves a day like today,” he said.
Janine nodded. She blew her nose and balled the tissue into her hand.
Suddenly the door opened, and a uniformed officer stuck his head inside. “There’s a gentleman out here who says he knows you…?”
Behind him, Janine could see Allen—his florid cheeks and broad belly, the one that made him joke that he knew what it was like to be pregnant. Allen was the leader of the local Right to Life group. “Janine!” he cried, and he pushed past the cop so that he could fold her into his arms. “Sweet Jesus,” he sighed. “Honey, we’ve been praying for you.”
She knew they prayed for every woman who walked through the doors of the Center. This, though, was different. Allen would not have been able to make peace with himself if anything had happened to her, because he had been the one to send her inside as a spy.
Maybe God had been listening, because she had been released. But so were Joy, and Izzy, and Dr. Ward. And what about those who didn’t make it out alive? What kind of capricious God would roll the dice like that?
“Let me take you home and get you settled,” Allen said. And to the detective, “I’m sure Miz Deguerre needs a little rest.”
The detective looked directly at Janine, as if to see whether she was okay with Allen calling the shots. And why shouldn’t she be? She had done what he wanted from the moment she arrived in town, intent to serve his mission any way she could. And she knew that he meant well. “We’re more than happy to give you a ride wherever you need to go,” the detective said to her.
He was offering her a choice; and it felt heady and powerful.
“I have to use the restroom,” she blurted, another lie.
“Of course.” The detective gestured down the hallway. “Left at the end, and then third door on the right.”
Janine started walking, still clutching her foil blanket around her shoulders. She just needed space, for a second.
At the end of the hallway was another interrogation room, much like the one she had been in. What had been a mirror on the inside was, from this vantage point, a window. Joy sat at a table with a female detective.
Before she realized what she was doing, Janine was knocking at the window. It must have made a sound, because Joy turned in her direction, even if she couldn’t see Janine’s face. The interrogation room door swung open, and a moment later a female detective looked at her. “Is there a problem?”
Through the open doorway, she met Joy’s gaze.
“We know each other,” Janine said.
After a moment, Joy nodded.
“I just wanted to…I wanted to see…” Janine hesitated. “I thought you might need help.”
The detective folded her arms. “We’ll make sure she gets whatever she needs.”
“I know but—” Janine looked at Joy. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”
She felt Joy’s eyes flicker to the bandage at her temple. “Neither should you,” Joy said.
—
IN THE HOSPITAL ROOM, THEREwas a piece of tape stuck to one of the slats of the air-conditioning vent overhead. It fluttered like a ribbon, like an improbable celebration, as Izzy lay on her back pretending she didn’t feel the doctor’s hands on her.
“Here we go,” the OB murmured. He moved the wand left, and then right, and then pointed to the fuzzy screen, to the edge of the black amoeba of Izzy’s uterus, where the white peanut of the fetus curled. “Come on…come on…” There was something urgent in his voice. Then they both saw it—the flicker of a heartbeat. Something she had seen multiple times in other women’s ultrasounds.
She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
The doctor took measurements and recorded them. He wiped the gel off her belly and pulled the drape down to cover her again. “Miz Walsh,” he said, “you are one lucky lady. You’re good to go.”
Izzy struggled onto her elbows. “Wait…so…that’s it?”
“Obviously, you’ll want to make sure that you don’t have any cramping or bleeding in the next few days,” the doctor added, “but given the strength of that heartbeat, I’d say that little guy—or girl—is planning on sticking around. Definitely takes after its mama.”
