“Come on,” Steve said to Barbara. His voice was hoarse. He’d been screaming—one of the officers at the scene had told her that, too—screaming Hannah’s name. “Let’s get out of their way for a minute. I could use some coffee.” He put a businesslike hand on Barbara’s shoulder. That was how he’d been the whole time at the hospital: all business.

“Okay, fine,” she said, for Steve’s sake, though, not for the doctors’. “But only for a minute.”

She followed Steve in silence down the hall toward the elevators. Instead of pressing the button for floor two (and the cafeteria), Steve pressed G for the ground floor.

“I thought you wanted coffee?”

Steve was avoiding eye contact. “Let’s take a walk instead.”

And so Barbara followed Steve off the elevator without arguing, even if the last thing in the world she wanted to do was take a walk. Her doing what Steve wanted was a peace offering, though she hardly felt like it was her responsibility to be holding out olive branches.

The hospital doors snapped open and they walked into the bright sunshine. It was warm for mid-March, the sky an unearthly blue that felt so terribly wrong under the circumstances. Steve was walking a bit ahead, more briskly now, as though trying to avoid her potential objections. And he was headed for those awful benches facing an inset patch of grass. It was a peaceful space for quiet contemplation. As far as Barbara was concerned, it was just like the dismal hospital chapel: too funereal.

“They said five minutes, Steve,” Barbara called after him. Anywhere but those benches. “I don’t want to go far.”

“We won’t,” he said. But he didn’t slow down, didn’t look back at her.

We have to talk, he’d said hours earlier. Before the river, before his wet clothes, before Hannah and all those doctors. Barbara had managed to completely erase it from her memory, until now. There was nothing good about Steve saying We have to talk. Barbara knew that from personal experience.

It had been unseasonably warm that night, more like August than June. There was only a week until graduation, and just when Barbara and Steve were about to start a life together, all of a sudden he was pulling away.

More and more Barbara had caught Steve looking at Jenna. Worse, he was trying to hide it less and less. Almost like he wanted Barbara to get so mad that she’d break up with him. It wasn’t just his looking at Jenna that was the problem either. It was the way he was looking—love, that was the look on his face. Which proved how not about Jenna his distance was. Because there was nothing to love about Jenna Mendelson. She was a whore, plain and simple. And now poor Steve was another one of the stupid boys who’d fallen for her wares.

Ignoring his wandering eye had seemed to be working until that night, when Steve had said he wanted to “talk” to Barbara. What teenage boy ever wanted to “talk” to his girlfriend about anything other than breaking up? But that wasn’t happening. Barbara was sure of that much.

“Hi there,” she called sweetly as she climbed into Steve’s beat-up Chevy truck.

“Hey,” he’d said, already unhappy.

Barbara was going to ignore that, too. She’d ignore everything if she had to. Steve was trying to sabotage what they had because he was scared, and Barbara wasn’t having it. They were perfect for each other. And they were going to be together, especially now. Steve would snap out of it once she told him. He was a good guy. He would do the right thing.

Barbara leaned over to kiss Steve in the driver’s seat. She’d worn an extra-short skirt and one of her tighter T-shirts for the occasion, and they both rode up on purpose when Barbara tipped herself over. Steve hesitated but turned and kissed her quickly, more like a lip bump.

“I know I said I didn’t want to go to the woods tonight,” Barbara said. “But it’s the last party, so let’s go!”

“Yeah, maybe.” Steve rubbed at his forehead with his thumb as he stared down at the steering wheel. “I think we should talk first, though.” He shifted in his seat. He wasn’t really going to do this, was he? Break up with her on this night, of all nights? Barbara had to head him off at the pass. Otherwise, they’d be stuck knowing forever what he’d really wanted.

“Okay, Steve, but there’s something I have to tell you, too.” Barbara turned to look out the open window toward her parents’ big, beautiful house, which would someday be their big, beautiful house. “Can I go first?”

“Okay,” Steve said after a long pause. Then he reached over and squeezed Barbara’s knee in a weird “let’s be friends” way. “Shoot.”

Something in him had already switched off, Barbara could feel it. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be flipped back on. It would be, she was sure of it. She forced a smile, even though her throat felt raw. She hadn’t pictured it this way. But she refused to be sad. What did a perfect moment matter compared to a lifetime of happiness?

Barbara swallowed hard and smiled. “I’m pregnant!” she squealed, grabbing Steve’s hands and pressing them hard against her flat belly, ignoring the way the color had left his face. “Isn’t it amazing, Steve? Six weeks. I know we wanted to wait until we got married. But we can get married right now, there’s nothing stopping us. I don’t need a big wedding. I don’t even need to be a bride. I just want to be your wife.”

Steve stopped near that clutch of awful benches, motioning for Barbara to have a seat—across from him. Not next to him, where he could wrap an arm around her. No, facing her. Barbara perched on the edge of her bench, watching Steve stare down at his hands clasped in front of him, as if he was trying to decide where to begin.

“Wait, you don’t actually think this is my fault, do you?” Barbara asked, her voice rising. That couldn’t be what this was about, but it bore stating. Because Barbara refused to be made responsible for Hannah’s insane choices. “I have done everything right, Steve. I have given my life for my children.”

“I don’t blame you for what’s happened. No, of course not,” he said, though he sounded like he was considering it for the first time. “We made mistakes with Hannah, that’s obvious now. But that’s on both of us.”

So he wasn’t letting her off the hook, he was putting himself on there with her? “What about the father? Are we going to find out who he is? Isn’t it statutory rape?”

Steve shook his head. “Hannah would have been sixteen.”

Barbara crossed her arms and blew out a breath. “But you’ll keep on trying to find him. Right?”

When Steve looked at her, his eyes were glassy. “Of course I will.”

“Good,” Barbara said. “Because crime or not, he’s accountable.”

Steve was nodding, but his attention had slipped away again. Barbara sensed it. He was thinking about something else entirely.

“How long have you known she was back?” he asked finally.

Barbara should have prepared better for this moment. She’d known it would come. But all she’d wanted to do was forget the whole sordid mess. A mess, mind you, that she had no hand in creating.

“Who was back, Steve?” Barbara held herself tight, resisting the way her body had begun to tremble. “And before you answer—is this really what you want to talk about, with your daughter upstairs in a hospital bed?”

Steve didn’t blink. “Tell me what happened between you and Jenna, Barbara. I need to know all of it or I won’t be able to help you.”

And there it was: the truth. This was what he thought of her.

“Help me?” She laughed icily. “Why would I need your help, Steve? What are you suggesting?”

“I know you were at Blondie’s. Jenna’s daughter came to see me. She told me that there was some blond woman with her mother during her last shift. They recognized your picture at Blondie’s, Barbara. You were with her the last time anybody saw her.”