Page 102 of The Deepest Lake

I hold my breath, and push a little harder, arching my back. She pulls her hand away as if shocked.

I startle in response, watching her hands go to her mouth. I feel sick with terror. She noticed what I was doing. She knows I’m faking.

I stare at Eva, my eyes wide. She stares back.

Then she starts to giggle.

My relief is so strong that I start giggling, too.

“Did you feel it?” I ask.

“Wait—did she kick?”

I note the pronoun. She.

“I think she did. Or is it too soon? Maybe it was just a gas bubble.”

Eva giggles again, and then her eyes are overflowing. “It usually happens at twenty weeks.”

I smile, eyes crinkling. “And this is . . . ?”

“Let’s see,” she counts on her fingers. “Closer to twelve.”

I stow the information for safekeeping. “Maybe she’s precocious.”

Eva’s face lights up. “Of course she is. Oh, Jules. This is beautiful.”

I throw my arms around her. She squeezes back. While I’m clasping with all my heart, my mind is racing.

I can restart the antibiotics, with only about two more weeks left in the prescription. My leg will heal. Maybe now that she believes me, I can get out of this hut. If she lets me stay at Casa Eva, I can escape.

“Please,” I say. “I’m just so lonely. I mean . . . happy to have a baby. But it’s so hard, here, living by myself . . .”

She jerks back. A button pops loose from her flowy green blouse. She looks at me, and then down, sighing. “There goes. That was my shirt for the opening party.”

“The opening party—for a new workshop session? Already?”

Part of me is excited. I’ve lost all sense of time. People are coming, already! The more people visiting, the better chance someone will realize Eva is acting strangely, or Eva herself will slip up.

But the bigger part of me knows this isn’t good. There’s no way Eva will let me come stay at her house. Plus, the workshoppers will stress her out.

She may reverse course. She may decide a baby that isn’t biologically hers isn’t worth it, after all.

Eva is still looking down, oblivious to my flustered expression. “It’s okay. I’ll pick something else.”

“No. That’s your best shirt. I love that shirt. You look like a beautiful forest fairy in that color green.”

Eva tugs her shirt shut, but it won’t stay that way. The top of her bra shows above the topmost remaining button.

“Here,” I say, grasping my eyebrow bar and sliding the piercing out of the tender skin.

She looks at it with an expression that is half disgust, half curiosity.

“It’s just jewelry,” I say. “Like a tie tack, or a pin. To hold your shirt.” I reach forward and push it through the fabric, replacing the missing button.

“I don’t know,” she says, but her hands remain at her side, letting me fix her shirt.

“Promise me you’ll wear it,” I say. “It makes me feel like we’re together, even when we’re not.”

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