Third Degree

Laurel wasn’t even sure whether a fetus conceived while you were on the pill was viable or not. She would have to look it up on the Internet. She should already have done it, but that kind of practical act didn’t square with her strategy of intense denial. She still couldn’t believe she was pregnant. She was on the pill, for God’s sake! Ninety-eight percent effective! How could she be in the unlucky 2 percent? She’d had some bad luck in her life, but never the worst luck. It was the rotavirus, she knew. Last month, she had somehow contracted the same gastrointestinal virus that had required the quarantining of major cruise ships. CNN had said the virus was sweeping the country: people were simultaneously puking and pooping from coast to coast. Three to five days of that, Laurel had learned, could eject from the system the progestin contained in a woman’s birth control pills. Since she’d had sex almost every other day last month, pregnancy must have been a near certainty.

She laid her forehead against the steering wheel and allowed herself a single sob. She’d always believed she was a strong woman, but now fate had colluded with chance-and stupidity-to make the prospect of raising an illegitimate child in her husband’s house a reality.

And that she could not face.

There are probably women doing it, said a rebellious voice in her head. Right here in this town. Desperate to avoid thinking of her impending meeting with Starlette, Laurel spun through the possibilities. If you were going to be stuck in a loveless marriage for the rest of your life, that “love child” might be your only link to sanity, or at least to the life that might have been. But could she live a lie for the rest of her life? She had found it difficult enough to lie about even small things over the past year, to bring off the thousand tiny deceptions that an extramarital affair required. The thrill of the forbidden had lasted about three weeks for her, and after that, the lies had begun to produce a sort of psychic nausea. Every lie generated the need for a dozen others-lies and sub-lies, Da

Yet what she was contemplating now was no simple deception. She wouldn’t be the only one lying. She would be forcing her unborn child into a lie from the moment of its birth. Its very life would be a lie. And what about Warren? He would try to love this baby, but would he actually feel love? Or would he sense something alien in the little interloper in his house? Something inexplicably but profoundly wrong? A disturbing scent? A genetically dissonant sound? A shiver at the touch of skin or hair? And of course, the baby wouldn’t look like Warren-it couldn’t-except by the merest chance.

Laurel actually knew one woman who had done it. Kelly Rowland, a sorority sister at Ole Miss who had become pregnant by a one-night stand while engaged to the boy she had been dating for three years. Kelly’s fiancé had been a good, stable, somewhat bland boy of medium attractiveness and excellent financial prospects; in short, the ideal husband for a sorority girl at Ole Miss. Kelly had always insisted that her fiancé wear condoms religiously during sex, so it struck Laurel as odd when Kelly allowed one of the house-boys-a devastatingly hot soccer player-to screw her brains out sans protection one night after a candlelight ceremony for one of the other sisters. But when Kelly learned she was pregnant, she had simply moved up her wedding date, scheduled her own candlelight ceremony, and never looked back. That was thirteen years ago, and the couple were still married and living in Houston.

Laurel drew no inspiration from this memory. But what was the alternative? Abortion? How could she abort the child of the man she truly loved? And even if she convinced herself she could bear that, how could she tell her husband she wanted an abortion? You get the abortion without telling him you’re pregnant, said a cold, Darwinian voice. With dread she pictured herself ru

A fist rapped on the window beside Laurel’s head.

She jerked away from the noise like a woman being carjacked, then looked back to see Diane Rivers, the third-grade homeroom teacher, mouthing her name with obvious concern. Diane was a bighaired Southern belle with a heart of gold, almost a throwback to Laurel’s mother’s generation, though she was only forty-three. Laurel had seen pictures of Diane in a glittering sequin unitard as she twirled two batons at a national college competition. Diane made a cranking motion with her hand, meaning that Laurel should roll down her window, though almost no cars had window cranks anymore, at least not in the parking lot of Athens Country Day.

Laurel wiped her tears on the shoulder of her blouse, smearing mascara on the white silk, then pressed the window button. The glass sank into the door with a low whir.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Diane asked. “Are you all right?”

Do I look all right? Laurel silently responded. But what else was someone supposed to ask when they found you crying in a parking lot? Some teachers would have derived savage ecstasy from finding her in this state, but Diane wasn’t one of them. She really meant well.

“I think I’m getting a migraine,” Laurel said. “I’m getting that aura, you know?”

“Christ on a crutch,” Diane said with empathy. “Seems like a long time since you had one.”

“Over a year.” Since before Da