—
OUT OF SHEER BOREDOM,Wren was eavesdropping.
“Dr. Ward’s been at it since nine-thirty,” Vonita was saying. “We had a fifteen-week come in for Cytotec this morning and she’s in the back now.”
“All that while I was sitting home eating bonbons?” The girl with pink hair laughed.
“Bonbons,” Vonita sighed. “I wish.” She took a sip from her tumbler.
“What’s in there?”
“I hope it’s the ground-up bones of supermodels,” Vonita said sourly. “This crap is the work of the devil.”
“Why do you even drink that garbage?”
Vonita gestured to her generous curves. “Because of my torrid love affair with food.”
Aunt Bex stood up. “I think I’m growing roots,” she said, starting to walk in small circles. “How long can it take to give someone a prescription?” Wren watched her lift her arms over her head, bend at the waist, and do it over again.
Oh my God. Her aunt was doing old-person yoga inpublic.
A buzzer hummed on the reception desk, and Vonita glanced up over her reading glasses. “Now who does this one belong to?” she mused.
Wren craned her neck. The glass window in the door of the Center was specially made, so that they could see out but whoever was on the outside could not see in. She glimpsed a middle-aged man squinting into the mirrored surface.
She heard a click, the buzz of a lock being released, like Wren had seen in movies about New York apartments. “Can I help you?” Vonita said.
About a year ago, Wren and her father had been driving a deserted road near Chunky, Mississippi, when suddenly all the hair stood up on the back of her neck. The next minute, a doe had bolted from the woods and slammed into the car. They had been hit hard enough for the airbags to deploy and for the windshield to shatter. It was the one truly prescient moment of her life.
Until now.
Wren felt a shiver of electricity, the brush of an invisible icy finger. “What did you do to my baby?” the man said, and then the air around her cracked into pieces.
She fell to the floor, covering her ears. It was as if her body had reacted on instinct, while her brain was still struggling to catch up. She couldn’t see Vonita anymore, but there was a pool of blood spreading where the reception desk met the floor.
Wren tried to will herself to move, but she was frozen in ice, she was trapped in tar.
“Wren,” Aunt Bex cried, reaching out her hand.
To pull her up? To drag her out the door? To embrace her?
Wren didn’t know. Because then her aunt’s eyes went wide, and she was struck with a bullet. She tumbled to the floor as Wren scrambled closer, screaming, her hands shaking as they hovered over the bright blood on her aunt’s blouse.
Aunt Bex’s eyes were wide. Her mouth was open, but Wren couldn’t hear any sound coming out.
She read her aunt’s lips.Wren. Wren. Wren.
Then she realized what her aunt was actually saying.
Run.
—
THE OTHER CLINIC HAD BEENnothing like this one, Janine thought. It had been in a different state, in a different life, in a part of town full of drunks and Vietnam vets fighting PTSD. There had been someone smoking a bowl in the alley next to the building, and the lobby had smelled like Chinese food. But none of the differences could make Janine shake the fact that she had willingly—once again—entered an abortion factory.
Janine sat on the ultrasound table, her phone tucked in a pocket of her dress, where it was taping the entire conversation between her and the social worker.
Her name was Graciela, and she had the most beautiful black hair Janine had ever seen. It reached her waist. By contrast, the cheap wig that Allen had given her for camouflage was itchy and brassy. Janine scratched her temple. “Still…you think I should get an abortion, right?”
