“I guess I have to be, don’t I?”

“It’s just a few more months,” I said softly. He didn’t answer, but I felt the car speed up, as if by mashing his foot on the gas pedal he could hasten the baby’s arrival.

As the fall went on, he rarely asked how I was feeling, the way he had with both of the boys. Then, he’d been tender and considerate, opening bottles of seltzer so they’d go flat, the way I liked it, before pouring me a glass, sweeping and mopping the floors so that I wouldn’t have to bend. On nights when we were both home, I would prop my feet in his lap and he’d rub them with lotion, massaging them. Whenever we went out with the boys, he’d always double-check to make sure the diaper bag was packed. Now when he was home he’d sit in his recliner, eyes on the television, jaw set. . and, more then once, running errands or at the library, I’d reached into the diaper bag and found that I was missing wipes or diapers or an extra pair of size 3T pants. Frank seemed to have decided that the bag, once his responsibility, was now my job, along with everything else around the house.

I tried to talk to him, but every time I asked if there was something wrong, he denied it. “What could be wrong?” he’d ask with a tight smile. That smile scared me, which meant that I never tried to ask follow-up questions, to point out the things I’d noticed, the way his eyes slid away from my belly, the way he hardly ever touched me anymore. The first time we’d tried to make love after the test had come back positive, everything had been fine at first — his mouth nuzzling the skin beneath my ear, my hands roaming over the deliciously taut muscles of his shoulders and his back. When he’d rolled on top of me I’d been wet and more than ready, pushing my hips up hard to meet him… but there’d been nothing there.

“Sorry,” he’d muttered, rolling onto his side so that I couldn’t see him. “Guess I had too much to drink.” Except he hadn’t had anything more than a single beer before dinner, and dinner had been five hours ago. I touched his shoulder, then the tattoo on his arm. “Is anything bothering you?”

“I’m fine.” His voice was loud.

I pulled up my panties and pajama bottoms. “It happens,” I said to the ceiling. At least I’d heard that it happened. It had never happened to Frank before, and I knew what was wrong, even if he didn’t want to say anything: it was the baby. He was worried about this baby in a way he’d never worried about his own. We’d made love right up until the ninth month with the boys, only stopping because I’d gotten too tired to do anything in bed except sleep, but now that I was carrying someone else’s baby, Frank couldn’t. . or wouldn’t. I was never sure, because I couldn’t get him to talk about it, and there was no one I could ask.

The real trouble started when I was thirteen weeks along. I was in the living room with the boys, the three of us putting together a giant puzzle of the White House on the floor — I’d bought it for a quarter at a tag sale — when I heard a crash from the kitchen, and Frank cursing. I ran in to find him throwing a loaf of bread at the wall. “Goddamn stupid crap!”

“What’s wrong?” I looked at the plate on the table and saw the ragged remnants of half of a sandwich. He’d tried to fold the bread in half, only instead of folding, it had crumbled.

I crouched down to pick up the mess. “It’s organic.” It was true, the bread India wanted me eating, made without additives or preservatives, was considerably harder to fold than the Wonder bread I normally brought.

“It’s crap,” he said again, and kicked the wall on his way out. I winced, hoping the boys hadn’t heard.

It took me a while to realize that it hadn’t been a coincidence, Frank losing his temper the day after we’d done our bills. We paid them the same way we always did, in the living room after the boys were asleep, Frank in a chair with the stack of mail, me on the couch with the checkbook, only for once things had gone smoothly, thanks to the money from the clinic I’d deposited in our account, the first installment of the fifty thousand dollars I’d eventually get. We paid off the balance on one of our credit cards, and another two thousand dollars on a second card, instead of just the minimums the way we normally did, and we hadn’t had to decide whether to be a few days’ late with one of the utilities. For once, there was enough to go around, with money left over at the end, and I’d been stupid enough to smile about it, to say, “Wow, this is great,” without realizing how my comment would hurt him.

“Couples fight when the woman gets pregnant,” India said via Skype the day after our fight. It was funny, listening to her talk like she was some kind of expert on marriage after less than two years as a wife. Since the insemination, I’d gone to New York twice, arranging for my mother to pick up the boys after school. India and I also chatted by Skype every few days on the brand-new laptop she had insisted on buying me.

At first I’d been worried that it would feel like India was checking up on me, but gradually we’d started to feel. . not exactly like friends, but more like coworkers who were friendly, who could share a meal and gossip about their lives.

“Men have mood swings and cravings,” she told me. “I saw a thing about it on the Today show.”

“How about you?” I asked. I’d told her about the argument, leaving out the particulars — the broken plate, the cursing — and now I was eager to steer the talk toward safer ground. “Are you having any cravings?” That was, of course, a joke: even on the computer screen that only showed her from the neck up, I could see she was skinny as ever, her skin smooth, her eyebrows and makeup all perfect.

“Nope,” she’d said. “I’m very horny, though.” My mouth must have fallen open because she’d laughed. “Don’t look so shocked,” she’d said. “I’m not that old.” This was true — she wasn’t that old, but her husband was. I’d met him after my first doctor’s appointment in the city. “Look at me,” he’d said, escorting us down the sidewalk, “taking two beautiful ladies to lunch.” We’d gone to a French restaurant near the doctor’s office, a place with white tablecloths and a long, skinny loaf of bread in a paper bag in the center of the table, along with a crock of unsalted butter. Marcus, who I knew was a very big deal, had been friendly, asking questions about my house and my boys and if I followed the Phillies, but he’d been distracted when the food came, tapping at his BlackBerry, and excused himself after downing his steak frites (I’d ordered the same thing; India had sea bass en papillote). He was nice-enough-looking for a man his age, with thick hair and big white teeth. I could feel the energy of the room change when we arrived, and I noticed people looking at him, the hostess’s respectful manner as she took his coat. Marcus was polite to her, and interested in me in the same way, but most of his attention he reserved for his wife. He clearly adored India, but I couldn’t imagine him having sex. I couldn’t even picture him without a suit and tie. That must have shown on my face, because India started to laugh.

“Oh, look at you!” she said, her cheeks turning pink. “You’re making me feel like a dirty old lady!”

I turned down the volume on the computer, angling the screen so it faced away from the bedroom, where Frank was still asleep.

“I’m just jealous,” I confessed.

“So you guys aren’t, um, active?”

I didn’t want to say, but my face must have given her an answer. “Men get weird about it,” she said. “Get him drunk! Buy some scented candles! Wear something fitted! I just saw the most gorgeous cashmere sweaters in these scrumptious colors…”

I nodded politely. India lowered her voice. “Do you think the baby’s listening?”

“I don’t think the baby has ears.” Honestly, I wasn’t sure what the baby had and didn’t have. With Frank Junior and Spencer I’d signed up for e-mail updates telling me what the fetus was doing or growing at that very moment. I’d been tuned in to every change in my body, every flutter and kick, but now, with two boys to care for and a husband who wasn’t inclined to help, plus the knowledge that this baby wasn’t mine to keep, I wasn’t paying the same kind of attention.

“So what’s the problem?” India asked.

“Everything’s fine. We’re going at it night and day. Right on top of Mount Laundry, while the boys are kicking a soccer ball at the bedroom door.”

India sighed. “I feel bad.”

“Oh, no,” I said, worried, again, that she thought I was hitting her up for more money. “It’s no big deal!”

“I’d be happy to hire a cleaning lady…”

“I don’t work,” I said. “I can clean.”

“But you’re tired.”

“I’m fine,” I said firmly. My mother had hated housework, heaving epic sighs every time she fetched the vacuum out of the closet or the bucket out from underneath the sink, but I’d always liked it. There were few things I found more peaceful than carrying a basket full of warm, clean clothes into the empty TV room and folding them while I watched one of my shows.

“You’re so cute,” India had said fondly when I’d told her how I liked doing the laundry, and I’d smiled, but in the back of my mind I was thinking of another book, The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel Gabe had recommended after I’d asked him, half teasing, if all the books he read were by men. The book was set in the future, where fertile women were given to powerful men and their old wives to have babies for them. I remembered the way the old commander’s wife had hated Offred, the handmaid, the one who was supposed to bear her children, and I wondered sometimes whether, behind all the smiles and the friendliness and the gift cards for Whole Foods, India secretly hated me, too.