“The milk?” she repeats when I look blank. “I called you half an hour ago. You said you’d stop at 7-Eleven on your way?”

Interesting. I have no recollection of this. For someone as fastidious as I am, I can be staggeringly absentminded. It’s strange. I have a photographic memory for names and faces, I can find any book in the library with only a character name or cover description, but I will regularly walk out of the house in the morning and leave the front door wide open (Mrs. Hazelbury from next door has taken to just closing the door again, after calling me at the library the first few times, in fear that I had been burgled). Rose says my absentmindedness is part of my charm, but I find it highly irritating. I hate the feeling of not knowing my own mind, not trusting myself, even if the fact is that I’m not to be trusted.

“Never mind,” Rose says with a smile. “I’ll get some after dinner.”

Rose retrieves a preprepared quinoa salad from the fridge and places it on the table. “So,” she says. “Tell me something about your day!”

I appreciate Rose’s choice of words. Most people ask, How was your day?, which is so frustratingly intangible. Telling someone something about your day, on the other hand, is specific. I contemplate telling Rose about my interaction with the possible vagrant at the library, but as there is a high possibility that this would lead to a flurry of questions, I select a different item to report instead. “I found out who’d been crossing out the swear words in the books,” I say.

Rose tosses the salad. “Oh, yeah? Who?”

“Mrs. Millard,” I say. “From the retirement community. She’s the one with the mole on her cheek with the hairs growing out of it. She returned a book through the slot after their book club meeting and I happened to be standing there. I saw the crosses and confronted her. She didn’t deny it. I told her she had to pay to replace that copy and if I saw any more copies that had been scribbled on, she’d have her library card suspended!”

“Good job, Officer Castle.”

Technically, she should have said “Constable,” but I understand what she means. “No one defaces library property on my watch,” I say.

Rose smiles. Rose is very pretty. Petite with a round face, huge eyes, and nut-brown hair. We don’t look like twins (lots of people tell us that). I am tall with a narrow face and reddish-blond hair. In fact, the only physical thing the two of us have in common is the color of our eyes. A very pale blue, like seawater in the shallows of a white sandy beach (an old boyfriend of Rose’s said that once, and I thought it the best description I’d heard for the color).

“It’s nearly ready,” Rose says, getting out her lancet device and blood-glucose strip.

Rose has type 1 diabetes, which means her pancreas produces little or no insulin, which the body needs to function. To compensate for her lack of insulin, Rose has to give herself twice-daily insulin injections, test her blood sugar up to ten times a day, and strictly control the type of food she eats as well as the time of day she eats it. It’s a lot of work but she never complains. Now, as she prepares to prick her finger to test her blood sugar, she looks up to warn me and, as always, I set off on a lap of the house (blood makes me queasy).

The house feels empty without Owen, even after all these months. I am fond of him despite his many disagreeable qualities, such as his penchant for throwing an arm around my shoulder at unexpected times, and his refusal to call me by my given name, preferring instead to use uninspired versions of it: “Fernie,” “Fernster,” “the Ferminator.” It’s always struck me as one of the great mysteries of life, who you are fond of. As I wander back toward the kitchen, I nearly stumble on the open suitcase on the floor, partially filled with shoes and a folded garment bag. At the sight of it, my stomach clenches slightly.

Rose is going to London on Friday for four weeks to visit Owen. One full lunar cycle. I know Rose is excited about it, so I’m trying to be excited too, but Rose and I haven’t been apart for four weeks before—not even when Rose and Owen got married, because they had a destination wedding in Thailand followed by a “group honeymoon” that all the guests (including me) attended. I try not to think about what could go wrong while she’s away, and that, of course, makes me think about what happened that night and then, suddenly, I can’t think of anything else. I don’t want her to go.

“Dinner’s ready!”

I tuck the edge of the garment bag back inside the case. That’s when I notice the bottle. A white pill bottle with a pink label, showing the midsection of a woman, with full breasts and a curved abdomen. I pick up the bottle and read the label: ELEVIT. TO SUPPORT YOU THROUGH THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF PREGNANCY.

“Fern? Dinner!”

I stand. “Are you pregnant, Rose?”

It wouldn’t be ridiculous, I suppose. Rose is twenty-eight, which is an appropriate age, more or less. I have watched television programs about the way fertility dwindles after the age of thirty. Apparently, doctors were recommending that partnered women who wanted children should start as early as possible. Once the surprise of it fades, I feel something akin to excitement hit my system. A child. I’ve always been partial to children. Their lack of complexity, their proclivity for speaking directly, without subtext or agenda. Of course, I’d long accepted that I couldn’t have a child of my own, but Rose having a child would be the next best thing.

I return to the kitchen and give Rose a once-over. She doesn’t appear to have gained any weight. Then again, if common wisdom is to be believed, morning sickness could ward off weight gain in the early months. Perhaps she’d been feeling off-color these past few weeks, having aversions to food she’d previously enjoyed, but keeping it secret, waiting for a special moment to announce it? But Owen had been gone for months. What would it mean as far as he was concerned?

“I guess you found the Elevit,” Rose says after a beat. “My doctor advised that if I was going to try to get pregnant, I should start taking them. Unfortunately,” she says, “it hasn’t happened yet.”

“So … you’re trying to have a baby?” I ask.

Rose picks up the plates and carries them to the table. “I didn’t want to tell you until, well … I hoped I’d be able to tell you when we had something to announce. Turns out, getting pregnant isn’t as easy as I’d hoped.”