only waited.
Finally Brit muttered a couple of bad words and reached for the phone.
Ingrid didn’t take the news well. She insisted on speaking to Liv. Brit was only too eager to pass Liv the phone.
Liv was treated to her mother’s frantic voice uttering an endless series of pleas and demands that she make her crazy baby sister come home. Powerless to do any such thing, Liv babbled a bunch of meaningless placating noises and waited for Ingrid to wind down.
Liv hung up the phone. ‘‘I’ve got a splitting headache and I’m going back to sleep.’’
Brit took the tray, her laptop and her M&M’s and tiptoed out.
Liv scooted down and pulled the covers over her head. Lord, what a weekend. Elli had married a huge, tattooed Viking berserker, she herself had spent the night in a field having wild sex with a virtual stranger, and Brit had pushed their mother to the verge of a nervous breakdown. What more delights might be in store?
Liv didn’t want to know. She spent the remainder of the day and the evening in her rooms, avoiding any possibility of running into Finn, nursing the queasy end of her hangover, feeling totally fed up with herself and her sisters and the world in general, longing only for the next day when she’d be on the way home.
Liv woke in the middle of the night. Her eyes popped open—wide. She was going to be sick again.
With a miserable cry, she threw back the covers and sprinted for the bathroom.
Brit found her a few minutes later, hugging the toilet—again.
As she had the morning before, Brit stayed close. When it was finally over, she turned on the light and handed Liv a cool wet washcloth.
Liv bathed her face, then chucked the washcloth toward the bathtub, flushed the toilet a final time and pushed herself upright, grabbing the edge of the wide sink basin when she swayed a little on her feet.
‘‘Livvy, maybe you shouldn’t—’’
She gestured for silence. ‘‘Toothpaste,’’ she said. ‘‘Toothbrush…’’
Brit helped her, getting the tube and squirting a line of paste on the brush while Liv clutched the sink rim and wondered why her head wouldn’t stop spinning.
‘‘Here.’’ Brit took Liv’s right hand and wrapped it around the base of the toothbrush.
Liv looked down at the bristles, the neat line of mint-green paste. Doubtful, she thought. Her hand was shaking.
‘‘Oh, Livvy. What’s the matter? What is going on?’’
Liv was wondering the same thing. Her hangover had faded hours ago. So she must really be sick now. Terrific. Just what she needed with a long flight ahead of her: a bad case of some awful stomach bug.
She looked over to tell Brit not to worry. She was okay, just a bug of some kind.
But her mouth stayed shut. Her fingers went nerveless; the toothbrush clattered into the sink at the same time her other hand let go of the rim. Then her knees gave way. She sank to the cool smooth tiles of the floor as, far in the distance, she heard Brit frantically calling her name.
Chapter Three
Liv opened her eyes. She was flat on her back on the bathroom floor.
Brit was bending over her. ‘‘Livvy?’’
Liv frowned as she studied her sister’s face above her—upside down and way too pale.
Brit said, ‘‘Can you hear me?’’
So strange, Liv thought dazedly, the way a mouth looks when it’s moving upside down, as if the top were the bottom and the bottom the top.
Brit’s turned-around mouth continued asking questions. ‘‘Do you know what happened? Do you know who I am?’’
‘‘I fainted. You’re Brit.’’
Brit’s upside-down mouth formed what must have been meant as a smile. ‘‘Welcome back.’’
‘‘Why are you grinning?’’
The forced smile flattened out. ‘‘Damn it, I’m trying to be reassuring.’’
‘‘Well, it’s not working—and really, I’m okay.’’
‘‘I’d better get a—’’
Liv grabbed Brit’s arm before she could jump up and rush off. ‘‘I don’t need a doctor.’’
‘‘But—’’
‘‘I mean it. I am fine.’’ She did feel a little warm. She fumbled at the silk frogs that buttoned her pajama top.
‘‘Here.’’ Brit scooted around beside her and gently pushed her hands out of the way. She unhooked the first three frogs—and then she gasped.
‘‘What?’’ Liv popped to a sitting position and looked down at herself.
Her Chinese-style tangerine silk pajamas gaped. She could see her upper chest, the shadows of her breasts. Everything seemed to be right where it was supposed to be. She looked closer.
Liv felt her mouth drop open. ‘‘Omigod.’’
Beside her, Brit said in an awed whisper, ‘‘My sentiments exactly.’’
Liv met her sister’s astonished eyes. ‘‘It can’t be.’’
‘‘But Mom always said—’’
Liv didn’t let her finish. ‘‘Help me up.’’
‘‘Are you sure? You just fain—’’
‘‘Help me. Now.’’
Brit took her hand and half dragged her to her feet. Together, they turned to the mirror above the sink. Liv pulled the sides of the mandarin collar wide. The skin of her upper chest was a florid red—blotched and welted with a livid rash.
‘‘It can’t be,’’ Liv said. ‘‘I refuse to believe it.’’
‘‘But, Livvy. You’re showing all the signs.’’
Liv shifted her angry glare from her own chest to her sister’s wide-eyed reflection. ‘‘Oh, please. You know very well it’s only a family superstition.’’
‘‘Call it what you want. It did happen. To Mom and to Aunt Nanna and Aunt Kirsten, and to Granny Birget, too.’’
‘‘So they say.’’
‘‘Why would they lie?’’
‘‘I don’t know. I’m sure they didn’t lie—not exactly. I’m only saying, it’s a story. A family myth.’’
‘‘But your symptoms are exactly the same. You threw up. You fainted. And now, there it is. The rash.’’
The Thorson sisters had heard it over and over all their lives: The women in their family—on their mother’s side, the Freyasdahl side—always knew right away when they conceived. They’d all discovered they were pregnant within twenty-four hours of conception. They knew it every time, without fail. Partly, it was a simple feeling of certainty—that it had happened; there was a baby growing within them. But beyond the certainty, there were, each and every time, the family signs: they’d throw up, followed by a fainting spell and then by a bizarre bright red rash across the upper chest.
Liv spoke firmly to Brit’s reflection in the mirror. ‘‘I just don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. It’s a family superstition, that’s all—and besides, he used a condom.’’
Brit’s gaze slid away, was drawn inexorably back.
Liv wanted to