It was dark when she returned to the motel. She walked to a nearby Mexican restaurant, where she had a platter of sizzling chicken fajitas and a plate of sopaipillas. She didn’t even wince when she looked at the check.

The next morning, she had her car serviced and bought four brand-new tires. Then she drove to an animal-rescue establishment on the far west side of the city.

“I can’t bear to look at the animals,” Jamie told the woman behind the desk. “I’m afraid I’ll want them all. Just bring me a nice, friendly dog that nobody else is going to want.”

The animal the woman brought was about as homely as a dog could be. One ear stood straight up and the other flopped over. He was a nondescript shade of grayish brown, and his coat appeared to have the texture of a Brillo pad. His legs seemed too long for his slender body, and the last three inches of his tail veered off at an angle. But the crooked tail was wagging, and his big brown eyes were looking up at Jamie with such hope. When she knelt in front of him, however, he cowered a bit and backed away. She held out her hand for him to sniff, and he took a tentative step forward, then she gently scratched his neck. And with great solemnity, the dog licked her chin.

“I love him,” Jamie declared.

The woman smiled. “He’s been with us for several months. Apparently he’d been fending for himself for some time when he was brought in. He was little more than skin and bones and had a serious case of mange. He’s about eight months old now, and I wouldn’t hazard a guess about his breeding. We’ve been calling him Ralph for no particular reason, but you can change that, of course.”

“No, Ralph is fine,” Jamie said.

She paid for his immunizations and neutering and was told that she could pick him up in the morning. “We’ll have him bathed and ready to go,” the woman said. “You’ll need to bring a collar and a leash.”

Jamie knelt in front of Ralph and explained that she would return for him tomorrow. “We’re going to be a family, you and me,” she promised. “And I hope you like to walk. I plan for us to walk miles and miles every single day.”

Jamie felt almost happy as she drove back to the motel. She would have a dog to keep her company during the strange journey on which she was embarking.

Perhaps it was just as well that Amanda Tutt Hartmann and Toby Travis did not plan to fawn over her and make her feel like a member of the family, Jamie decided. That would be dishonest of them, and she really didn’t want to have any sort of lasting relationship with them. It was better that way. Tidier.

She spent the following day getting to know her dog and taking him for his first walk at the end of a leash. He was smart and eager to please. “We’re going to get along just fine,” she told him. That evening she folded a blanket on the floor by the bed, and he dutifully curled up on it.

The next three days went by quickly.

She went shopping and bought socks, underwear, jeans, knit tops, hiking boots, a windbreaker, and a warm coat.

Twice she drove to a nearby greenbelt and took Ralph for an extra-long walk.

She visited the UT distance-learning office. The clerk told her that yes, the university still offered old-fashioned correspondence courses, although most of their students enrolled in online courses. Jamie left the office with a catalog of course offerings.

She spent one afternoon writing letters. The first was to her sister, Ginger. “I just wanted you to know that I’m okay but will not have a permanent address for a number of months. Please remember me to my nieces. I know you are so proud of them.”

Then she wrote to Charlene in California, two other high school friends, and her closest college friends, saying only that she had a “domestic” position with a wealthy family and would be living on their ranch and that she hoped to return to college next summer and would let them know when she had a permanent address.

And she wrote to Joe Brammer’s grandparents, thanking them for years of friendship and their help during her grandmother’s illness. “Tell Joe I said hello,” she added at the end.

She wondered what Joe would think of what she was doing. Would he be appalled? Or would he think she had made a sensible decision?

And she wondered if Joe was married yet. If he ever thought about her at all.

She recalled the day he stopped by the dry cleaner’s to tell her that he was going to get married. He had tried to make it seem like a by-the-way sort of announcement on his part and not something that he felt the need to tell her because there had been any sort of understanding between them. Which there hadn’t been. Not ever. But that was the last time she saw him, and if he thought of her as just a friend, wouldn’t he have continued to drop by to say hello when he was in the neighborhood?

Of course, only a few weeks later, she had taken her semester finals and gone home to take care of her dying grandmother, so she never had a chance to discern the nature of his exact feelings for her. But even if Joe had fostered some level of romantic feelings for her, apparently they weren’t deep enough or strong enough to keep him from wanting to marry someone else.

The afternoon before the insemination procedure, Jamie watched her car being loaded on to a flatbed truck for its journey to the Hartmann Ranch. That evening she purchased a carry-out meal at a nearby restaurant and tried to watch television but couldn’t concentrate. She paced for a while, which made Ralph nervous. Finally, she took a bath and crawled into bed. Ralph took his usual position on the blanket beside the bed, but she patted the place beside her. Once he had resituated himself, she put an arm around him and curled her body against his.

She wondered about tomorrow. Would Amanda and her husband be there? Or would Toby have been there earlier to…

She struggled for a term that was not indelicate to describe the act that Toby would be required to perform but could not come up with one. God, it was so weird. Toby would masturbate to provide the semen that would be used to impregnate her. She hoped that Toby had already left the clinic by the time she arrived. She would blush if she saw him. Which would be mortifying. Maybe he had already done his part. He’d said that he and Amanda traveled a lot. And mentioned a trip to Florida and then a ten-city “crusade.” Maybe she wouldn’t see him and Amanda again for weeks and weeks.

The next day, Dr. Betty Winslow showed Jamie the instruments she would be using and explained that Jamie might experience some discomfort but it would be over very quickly.

Jamie closed her eyes and tried to keep her mind blank while Dr. Winslow carried out the procedure.

Once it was completed, the examining table was tilted so that her feet were higher than her head, and she was told that she would need to remain in that position for a half hour. As Jamie lay there staring up at her feet, she wondered what the baby’s last name would be. Would he be given his father’s last name or his mother’s far more famous one?

Then she put such thoughts out of her head. The baby’s name was none of her business. She didn’t want to know its name. Didn’t want to know anything about it at all. Except that it was healthy. She would like to know that.

She wondered if a woman who had been penetrated by an instrument could still be considered a virgin. Would she someday have to explain to a man that she had never had sex but had given birth?

Or did one just keep such things a secret?

“How’d it go?” Lenora asked when Jamie entered the waiting room.

“Okay,” Jamie said. “I’m sorry you got stuck with making sure I don’t go on some sort of a binge.”

“No problem,” Lenora said, linking arms with her. “Let’s go treat ourselves to a wonderful dinner, then curl up in bed and watch a movie.”