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“Forget that, Sylvia. Did you have your period? Did you take care of it?”

“No.”

“No? What are you saying?” I stood there, thinking hard, as she picked up her boxes. “Sylvia?”

“I don’t remember,” she said. “But I don’t care. I don’t like it.” She walked to the stairway. “We have to get dressed up,” she said. “Come on, Audrina. You said we’d do my hair, too.”

I nodded and watched her walk up the stairs.

Was my heart still beating?

“I’ll be right up,” I shouted to her, and hurried to the telephone.

To my surprise and delight, Arden picked up instead of Mrs. Crown. “Hey,” he said. “My secretary is in the restroom,” he added, as if that was important. “Did you get some nice things?”

“Arden . . .”

“I’m still here, Audrina. Yes?”

“I think . . . I’m afraid . . .”

“What?”

“Sylvia.”

“What about her now?”

“She might be pregnant,” I said. The words seemed to burn my lips. I couldn’t swallow.

“Arden?”

“Why do you say that?”

“She missed periods. I forgot to check her, and she even said she had a baby in her.”

“How would she know that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Next thing you’ll tell me is she said your father told her,” he said. “Lucky this is a slow day. I’ll come home early, but please be sure this isn’t something imagined. I’m mentally exhausted. With both of you,” he added, and hung up.

From somewhere in the shadows of Whitefern, I could hear Vera’s gleeful laugh.

Truth Is the Loneliest of All

“I hope this isn’t a false alarm, Audrina. You tend to get very melodramatic about everything these days,” Arden said the moment he entered the house. He ripped off his scarf and took off his coat angrily. I knew he was upset about having to come home early.

The two of us went into the living room to talk. Sylvia was upstairs. He poured himself a drink quickly, claiming he needed it to settle himself down. He had rushed out of the office and left others to answer important calls.

“I’m sorry, Arden. I thought you should know right away.”

“It seems to me that all we do these days is move from one crisis to another. It makes my head spin.”

He turned to me with his drink in hand and took a long swallow.

I was tired of saying everything was my fault, but it was. Why didn’t I check on Sylvia earlier? Why didn’t I tell Arden that I had the terrible suspicion something more might have happened between Sylvia and Mr. Price?

He looked a bit calmer after the whiskey settled in his stomach. “Now, as I understand it, Audrina, women can miss periods for reasons other than pregnancy,” he said, sitting in his favorite chair, which had been Papa’s favorite. He continued to sip his drink and looked at me, probably expecting me to be more optimistic, too. But I wasn’t.