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  “So, you want to take it away from her.” Another shift, another twinge. Marian squeezed her thighs tighter.

  “Yes.”

  “I need to use the restroom,” she said. “Can we finish this after I do that?”

  “Of course, of course. You’re welcome to use the staff restroom rather than the one the kids use. It’s out the door, down the hall to the right. Next to the library. I can walk you, if you want.” Garrett stood.

  “No, I can manage. I’ll be fast.” She wouldn’t have a choice to be anything else, not unless she wanted to embarrass herself by leaving a puddle beneath her seat.

  Marian found the bathroom without a problem. The relief of releasing her bladder was so deep that she had to bite back a groan that would have echoed in the tiled room. She went, then waited a minute without getting up, then went again in another short burst.

  Welcome to pregnancy.

  By the time she got back to Garrett’s office, she knew she was going to have to go again, and soon. She didn’t take a seat once inside, even though he clearly was expecting her to. She picked up her purse, instead.

  “Dr. Garrett, you’ve given me a lot to think about and a lot to talk about with my husband, for sure. I’ll make sure we discuss this religious stuff with Briella. But as for the project, I don’t really know what to say. If you think it’s best she be redirected to something else, I’m not going to argue with it.” Marian drew in a breath. “I want what’s best for my daughter.”

  “Of course you do, Mrs. Blake. Nobody here doubts that. I’m sure that despite some recent insecurities, Briella knows it, too.”

  “She’s so smart.” Her voice trembled. “Scary smart. I have to tell you, I really don’t know what to do with her. She used to be this happy little girl who could also just…you know, recite the alphabet backwards and give you a ten-minute lecture on facts about the states. She was figuring out the tip on restaurant bills when she was four. It was like…” Marian fought to keep her voice from trembling. “It was like she could do tricks. That’s all. Fun tricks, things we could be proud of her for.”

  Tricks are behaviors learned to gain rewards.

  Briella had told her that.

  “You can still be proud of her, Mrs. Blake. I don’t want you to think anything less of her. When I said Briella was an exceptional child, I meant it.”

  Marian wanted to tell him then, about the weirdness. The bad moods, the secretiveness. Her daughter had gone from being exactly as she’d just described to something else. Something much darker, and if Marian had not known why or how or what had prompted the change before today, everything Garrett had told her was shining a light into those shadows.

  But what would he do if Marian revealed to him that she was starting to believe she’d lost all control of her own child? That it had nothing to do with there being another one on the way and Marian’s exhaustion or the hormones or her preoccupation with being pregnant and what it was doing to her body? What would he do – what could he possibly do – if Marian told him the truth she had not dared to say to anyone else, not even Dean?

  Briella was becoming someone different, and if she’d started an obsession with angels and the afterlife and the existence of the soul, it might be, Marian thought reluctantly, because the kid herself did not seem to have what anyone might consider to be one.

  Marian couldn’t tell him that. She could never admit aloud that although she’d given up her faith a long time ago, she still remembered what it was like when she had believed. She couldn’t tell anyone that she feared something had sneaked inside her daughter and started to take over. Marian would sound insane, and what would happen then?

  They’d take Briella away, first of all. They might take Marian’s baby away from her after that. They might even try to put Marian herself away.

  “Mrs. Blake?” Garrett looked curious and concerned.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. Just…pregnancy vapors, as my mom would have said.” Marian made a show of fanning her face and putting on a smile that hurt her cheeks to make. She lifted her chin, meeting Garrett’s gaze. Giving away nothing.

  “Do you need to sit down? Some more water?”

  “No, thanks. I should get going, if that’s okay.” Marian held her smile with the emotional equivalent of hanging on to a ledge by her fingernails.

  Garrett nodded. “Of course. Thanks for coming in. I’ll walk you to the front.”

  Marian didn’t protest, although all she could think about was getting out of the office and behind the wheel of her car. She needed another bathroom stop. She needed a drink. She needed a nap. She needed to be anywhere but here.

  At the school’s massive front doors, she gave him a nod and a handshake, already halfway down the concrete steps before his voice called her back.

  “Oh, Mrs. Blake! I forgot, there’s one more thing we need to talk about!”

  She turned, wishing she could pretend she hadn’t heard him. “Yes?”

  “It’s about the bird,” Dr. Garrett said. “Onyx.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “You lied to me, Briella. What have we talked about with lying?” Marian’s voice sounded tight and controlled, although she felt anything but.

  Briella had just gotten out of the van and had made as though to go right to her room, a habit she’d been in for the past couple weeks. Marian had stopped her at the foot of the stairs and ordered her into the kitchen to sit at the table. The girl had admitted immediately that the bird had been spending time at the school, caged in the lab they’d given her to use. She’d also admitted to telling her teachers that the bird had been a pet for years and that she’d had full permission from her parents to bring it in. Not for experiments. Just as a pet.

  “You lied to me,” Briella answered, sounding sullen. “You told me that stick was nothing, but it meant you were going to have a baby. I asked you in the bathroom what it was, Mother, and you lied right to my face.”

  Mother. Briella had never called her that. Marian’s chest constricted. She hadn’t started calling her mom “Mother” until her teen years, but she’d done it with the same level of scorn.

  Marian’s fingers tightened, but she made sure to let them fall open, loose. Not making fists. Trying hard not to be confrontational. She remembered how it had been to battle with her mom over things that now, looking back, had been so stupid. But she remembered how important they’d felt at the time. “That was different.”

  Briella’s lip curled. “It’s not okay when grown-ups don’t tell the truth, not if it’s not okay for kids to do it. But grown-ups lie all the time, and they’re allowed. So why isn’t it okay for kids to do it?”

  “Because it’s not. Because there are things adults can do that children cannot, and that’s just the way the world works!” Marian gave in to the shout, hating the way the kid recoiled but finding a certain grim satisfaction in it, too. It felt good to yell. To be angry.

  It was better than being terrified.

  “Like swears,” Briella said.

  “Yes. Like that. And other things. You’re right. Lying isn’t okay. But sometimes not telling the whole truth is necessary for…reasons.” She’d started to run out of steam. “But you flat-out lied to my face about that bird.”

  “I didn’t,” Briella said after a moment. “You asked me if Onyx came to school with me for show and tell. And he didn’t. He came to school with me to help me with my project. That’s totally different. You never asked me again.”

  “You know I would have wanted to know about it. You knew that’s why it wasn’t coming around after dinner anymore, because you had it locked up in a cage at school.”

  “Not always. He’s not always locked up. I let him out sometimes.”

  “You should have…damn it, Briella. Why lie? What’s so special about this goddamned bird?”

  Briella was silent for a long time, so