At the entrance to the hospital, Cat got out of the car without speaking, slammed the door, and blinked at the bright lights and muted roar of activity: phones ringing, a child screaming relentlessly, clumps of people walking busily in different directions.

Lyn seemed to have made best friends with the man from the restaurant. Cat watched as she leaned back in the window and chatted enthusiastically, before straightening up and waving good-bye.

She held up a little fan of business cards. “He’s a landscape gardener, a wedding photographer, and a personal trainer!” she said, as if this were interesting. “He was on a blind date but apparently it wasn’t going too well.”

Cat shrugged.

Lyn put the cards away in her purse. “Right, well, let’s see what’s happening with Gemma, and we’d better get someone to look at you. I wonder if you’ve bitten your tongue.”

Cat shrugged again. Perhaps she would give up talking forever. It might make life less complicated.

“Is that you, Lyn? Um, Cat?”

They turned around. It was Charlie walking toward them. He was wearing muddy tracksuit pants, a T-shirt, and a black beanie. He looked sweaty and agitated.

“I’m on my way home from touch footie and your sister calls for the first time in six months,” he said. “She asks me how a lightbulb works. So I start to explain it; I mean that’s Gemma, right? She was always asking funny questions. But then she starts crying like her heart is going to break and says she’s calling from an ambulance on the way to have a baby, and would I like to come and help her breathe, if I’m not too busy? Are you girls strange, or what?”

“No question, we’re strange,” said Lyn.

He held both palms upward in a very Italian gesture. “Man! She dumps me, she wasn’t even going to tell me she’s pregnant, and now suddenly she wants me to help her breathe?”

“It’s quite presumptuous of her,” agreed Lyn.

“And I don’t how to do this!” An expression of pure terror crossed his face. “There are classes for this sort of thing. Books. Videos. I like to know how things work!”

Lyn beamed at him. “Just hold her hand. Do what they do in the movies.”

“Jesus.” He pulled his beanie off, ran one hand over the top of his head, and took a deep breath. “And is she O.K.?”

“Well, there was a little accident but they’re looking at her now.”

For the first time Charlie looked at Cat and her blood-soaked napkin. Cat looked at the ground and tried to pretend she was somewhere else.

“An accident?”

“Let’s go inside and find out what’s happening,” said Lyn.

While Lyn and Charlie went off to find someone official, Cat sat down on a green plastic chair and began heavy negotiations with God.

All she wanted was for Gemma and the baby to be O.K. It didn’t seem like too unreasonable a request. She simply wanted one particular action to be without consequences.

And if God would do that, Cat would give up alcohol and every other potentially pleasurable activity. She would graciously accept that she was never going to have children herself and live a quiet, nunlike existence, thinking only of others.

She might even consider some very unpleasant form of volunteer work.

After a seemingly endless discussion, Charlie and Lyn came back over to where Cat was sitting. She looked up at them wordlessly.

“Someone’s coming to see us now,” explained Lyn.

Charlie looked closely at Cat. “Are you O.K.? You don’t look so good.”

Cat nodded and mumbled, “I’m fine shanks.”

“Gemma Kettle’s family?” An efficiently frowning nurse appeared. “She’s doing well. Four centimeters dilated. Who’s going to be with her for the labor?”

“Just the father,” said Lyn.

Charlie gave a little start. “I guess that would be me.”

The nurse gave Cat and Lyn a meaningful and hugely unjust “Men!” look and said, “This way, please.”

“Rightio.” Charlie handed over a sports bag to Lyn and obediently followed the nurse without looking back, his shoulders in the dirty T-shirt very square.

Lyn sat down next to Cat and shook her head. “That man is a saint. If she doesn’t hold on to him, I’ll throw a fork at her!”

At that moment Maxine marched into the hospital waiting room to find her daughters, propped up against each other’s shoulders, laughing helplessly.

She held the strap of her handbag disapprovingly against her chest. “Well, really!”

At eight o’clock the next morning Cat held her nephew for the first time. A tightly bound eight-pound bundle with a wrinkly red face, matted black hair, and long eyelashes resting mysteriously against caramel-colored skin.

Cat and Gemma were alone in the room.

Charlie had gone home to change. Lyn was coming back with Maddie and Michael later that afternoon. Maxine and Frank were buying coffee in the cafeteria.

“I’m sorry, Cat.” Gemma’s face against the pillow was blotchy, puffy, and suffused with joy. “I did a terrible thing to you.”

Cat shook her head and kept looking at the baby.

Some time last night, a doctor had informed her that her jaw was broken. Her back and front teeth were now wired together. If she tried to talk, her mouth started foaming with saliva.

She felt, fittingly, like a freak. It was her penance.

“I thought of the baby as yours,” said Gemma. “All the way along. I swear to you. And then all of a sudden, I started wanting—I wanted the baby and I wanted Charlie. I wanted everything.”