“Babe, don’t go, get in the car!” Marcus called after her.

“No!” Christine felt tears come to her eyes.

“Let me give you a ride!”

“I’ll walk!”

“Fine! See you at home then!”

Christine didn’t reply. She didn’t know if she was going home. She didn’t know where she was going. She felt untethered, unmoored. Disconnected. She had lost everything. She had left a job she loved, for nothing. She had lost Michelle and Dr. Davidow. And she had no hope of a happy family anymore.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she found herself picking up the pace toward her car.

And then, she ran.

Chapter Eleven

Christine left the hospital via the back roads, since Marcus always took the Parkway. She kept her face front and her hands on the steering wheel, but the last of her tears were running down her cheeks behind her sunglasses, in the time-honored tradition of women everywhere, who drive-while-crying. She had done it once in high school after she got dumped by Michael Rotenberg, and she had done it again in college, after she got an undeserved C in American Civilization. She knew Lauren had done it when she didn’t get into Penn, and she’d seen other women on the road, driving-while-crying, probably enough to make it its own acronym, DWC.

Christine felt the lowest she had ever felt in her life, but she still had her sense of humor, and it kept hysteria at bay to know that she was a cliché on wheels. The rush-hour traffic was stop-and-go, and she braked behind a tall truck. She avoided looking at the other drivers, who were texting or talking on the phone; she never texted while she drove, and she talked only hands-free, so she could be forgiven a crying jag after her husband had just told her he didn’t want their child. A serial killer’s child. Her child. Or all of the above.

Christine sniffled, reached in the console for the umpteenth Starbucks napkin, and blew her juicy nose into its recycled brown scratchiness. She tossed it used onto the passenger seat, where it joined a soggy pile of other used napkins, evidence that she was the ugliest crier of all ugly criers. She thought about calling Lauren, but the dashboard clock read 6:15, and she remembered that Lauren was going out to dinner with Josh and the kids, celebrating the last day of school. The thought made Christine reach for another napkin, since leaving teaching might’ve been the dumbest thing she ever did, after using a serial killer as a sperm donor.

The truck finally moved, the traffic got going, and she gave the car gas, noticing that at the exit ahead was a cluster of box stores, including her favorite food store, Timson’s. Her stomach growled in response, and she realized that she was starving, which was probably her favorite symptom of pregnancy so far. She’d always wondered if she’d have food cravings while she was pregnant, and it turned out that she did—she craved food. All food, any food, at any time.

She dried her eyes and headed for Timson’s, and in no time, pulled into the parking lot in front of the massive grocery store, with its characteristic façade of indeterminate beige stone, which, though it wasn’t her Timson’s, looked exactly the same as her Timson’s, and gave her comfort. She kept her sunglasses on, grabbed her purse and phone, and went inside the store, letting the air-conditioning soothe her jangled nerves. She glanced around in the artificial darkness, and the layout was the same, so the prepared foods were straight ahead.

She made a beeline for the glistening stainless-steel counters bubbling with cooked food, then grabbed the large-sized plastic clamshell from an upside-down stack and followed her nose to the spicy Indian food. She felt her mood improve as she shoveled goopy orange glop into her clamshell, then added a pile of French fries and a square of eggplant parmesan, wondering in which universe these foods went together. Answer: Pregnancy World.

She got a bottle of water, checked out, and carried her tray to one of the dining areas for grown-ups; she had learned to avoid the kid-friendly dining area, with the undersized chairs and tables and the television that showed The Lego Movie on a continuous loop, because she used to wonder if she would ever be lucky enough to be one of those mothers. Now that she was, it didn’t feel so lucky.

She sat down at a circular wooden table in the sunny eating area, which was filled with adults and children, but no matter. She’d realized long ago that the suburbs were about children, and it was part of the reason she felt so odd being childless; she didn’t fit in in their neighborhood without a kid to take to school, soccer practice, or the pediatrician. Between the children at home and the children at school, Christine lived a life surrounded by children, and she’d be damned if she was ending this pregnancy, no matter what Marcus had said.

Christine picked up her little plastic fork and dug into her Indian food, glancing up at a flat-screen TV on the wall, which was showing CNN on mute. She flashed on Trivi-Al at her good-bye party, but noticed that the TV program was showing political coverage, with the presidential election around the corner, in November. She wolfed down a forkful of food, which tasted hot and delicious, as she picked up her phone, logged on to Google, and typed in Zachary Jeffcoat, wondering if there had been any new developments. She clicked on the first link that popped onto the screen, which took her to the CNN article from yesterday. She scanned it quickly, but it hadn’t been changed. She navigated back to the Google page and clicked on the second link, which was from the Philadelphia Inquirer. There was no photo, and the story was only a paragraph long:

NURSE MURDERER CHARGED

By William Magni

Zachary Jeffcoat, 24, was arraigned today for the murder of Gail Robinbrecht, 31, a nurse at Chesterbrook Hospital. Federal and state authorities believe that Jeffcoat may be responsible for serial killings of other nurses in Maryland and Virginia. Jeffcoat is awaiting trial at SCI Graterford Prison in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, on a special hold to the prison, a maximum-security penitentiary.

Christine navigated back to the Google page and clicked on the third link, which was another Philadelphia-area newspaper that ran the same story verbatim. She kept researching, reading as she ate, but there was no further information about Jeffcoat. She clicked back to the front page of the Inquirer, and the lead stories were about the presidential election. She glanced back at the television, which was showing another set of talking heads, with closed captioning about the election. She watched TV as she ate, and there was a news story about a bombing in the Middle East, then another one in Kabul, and by the time she had finished her meal, the political commentators were back on, talking about the election. It looked like the news cycle had pushed the Jeffcoat story to the background.