“You’re seven months pregnant, sweetheart,” Kate says. “You can’t leave and you can’t get divorced and you can’t confront Angus because the emotional turmoil is bad for the baby.”

Blair should never have told her mother. She should have just swallowed her pride and confided in Kirby. Kirby would never advise Blair to stay with a cheating husband. “That’s such an old-fashioned view, Mother,” Blair declares. “What would Betty Friedan say?”

“Who?” Kate says.

Blair shakes her head and collects herself. “I thought maybe I could move into Nonny’s house,” she says. “Since she’s away.”

Kate laughs.

“The house is just sitting there, empty,” Blair says. Her grandmother’s town house in Beacon Hill is large, cool, and gracious with clocks that chime and hand-knotted silk rugs that feel like heaven under bare feet. The bed in the guest room is a king, and the windows look out over the back courtyard, where there’s a tall, wrought-iron fountain that makes a soothing gurgling sound. It wouldn’t be as good as escaping to the islands but it would be better than staying here on Comm. Ave.

“And empty it will remain,” Kate says. “I’m sorry, sweet pea. You’re twenty-four years old, a grown woman, married, and pregnant, and you need to act like an adult and not a child who runs away from her problems. Angus has a remarkable career and provides very well for you. If he is having a dalliance with this…Trixie, it’s probably because he’s under so much pressure. Really, you might think to be grateful.”

“Grateful?” Blair says. “Grateful, Mother? He’s never home, he works all the time, and on the rare occasions he does make an appearance”—she pauses, unsure how much more she wants her mother to know. Kate looks at her expectantly—“he’s…moody. Unpredictable. Sometimes he seems like a completely different person than the man I married.”

“Oh, honey.” Kate seems to soften a bit. She reaches over to brush a stray hair from Blair’s forehead, and Blair briefly leans into the cooling comfort of her mother’s palm, remembering how she used to pretend she felt feverish just so that her mother would rest that soft and steady hand against her face. The memory ends when Kate stands up briskly and leaves the bedroom. She returns a moment later with a glass of brown liquid over ice. At first, Blair thinks it’s iced tea, but when she smells it, she’s happy to find it’s scotch.

“Isn’t your doctor’s appointment tomorrow?” Kate asks.

The appointment with Dr. Sayer, yes. The deplorable Dr. Sayer with the grotesque overgrown beard who feels Blair up with cold hands while his googly eyes swim behind his glasses.

“Yes,” Blair says. She stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray by the bed and takes a sip of scotch. Immediately, she relaxes. “At ten.”

“Is Angus going with you?”

“He’s supposed to,” Blair says. “But he may have forgotten and planned a rendezvous with Trixie.”

Kate laughs and says, “It’s best to keep a sense of humor about it. Let me know how it goes. We should be on Nantucket by four in the afternoon tomorrow. Love you, sweet pea. Be well.” Kate leans over to kiss Blair on the forehead and give her shoulder a squeeze, and for one instant, Blair feels okay.

“Bye,” Blair says. She can’t believe her mother is being so nonchalant about the news. Blair should have disclosed the prostitute part; maybe then Kate would have been appropriately aghast. Her mother grew up in a time when young women were expected to just put up with unfaithful husbands. But now it’s 1969 and Blair won’t stand for it. If moving into Nonny’s isn’t an option, then Blair will just go to Nantucket for the summer. She’ll have the baby on the island, at the cottage hospital.

But…Blair won’t last two hours in the car and two hours on a ferry; merely driving up the cobblestones of Main Street might send her into premature labor.

She’s trapped.

Angus remembers about Blair’s doctor’s appointment the next day, which is a relief to Blair because the notion of going anywhere alone in her condition is daunting.

Ruth, the office receptionist, takes one look at Blair and Angus and leads them right back to the office where Dr. Sayer is sitting at the desk, smoking. Blair can’t tell if Ruth is alarmed by her size or if she’s impressed that Dr. Whalen has chosen to accompany his wife to the appointment when he’s such a busy man working on a matter that’s so important to the nation’s pride. Maybe it’s a little of both.

There is no mistaking Dr. Sayer’s reaction, however. When he sees Angus, he jumps to his feet and starts pumping Angus’s hand. There follows a long conversation about the moon launch and the merits of various astronauts—Angus wholly defends Armstrong and Aldrin, but Dr. Sayer feels Jim Lovell should be included—and then Angus shifts into technical talk about thrust, elliptical orbits, and Hohmann transfers, and Dr. Sayer nods along, though Blair is certain he’s just as lost as she is.

When she can’t stand being ignored another second, she clears her throat.

“Oh, yes,” Angus says. “My wife is concerned about—”

“My size,” Blair says. She finally has Dr. Sayer’s undivided attention and she knows she’d better take advantage of the opportunity. “I’m huge. A hippo. I’ve outgrown every dress but this one.”

Dr. Sayer gives her an appraising look, then comes around his desk and puts a hand on her belly. Blair feels the baby kick. “Let’s send you to X-ray,” he says.

Angus chooses to stay in the examining room while a nurse leads Blair down the hall and asks her to lie on a cold metal table. While the X-rays are taken, tears leak out of Blair’s eyes. She’s certain they’re going to find she’s carrying a giant, a monster, an octopus. She regrets ever marrying Angus and allowing herself to get pregnant. She imagines her life if she had taken an alternate path: Blair Foley, slender of body and nimble of mind, becomes a renowned scholar in the field of twentieth-century women’s literature, starting with Edith Wharton and moving on to Shirley Jackson, Flannery O’Connor, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich. She would date different men, as Sallie does, an architect one weekend, a museum curator the next. She would not be here, lying on a metal table like a side of beef, awaiting news of what horrific creature is growing within her; she would be lounging on Cliffside Beach on Nantucket, and Marco, the lifeguard from Rio de Janeiro, would watch her trim, firm backside when she strolled from her umbrella to the water.