Page 44 of A Song for Another Woman

He sighs at it. “If this is another podcast, I’m telling them you joined a convent.”

I lean back in the chair and close my eyes. For one second, I let myself feel it.

The show is working. More than working. The station’s ad slots are filling. Pop got three sponsor inquiries yesterday from businesses outside the county. A woman in Kentucky sent a letter with a pressed violet tucked inside and wrote,You made the night less mean.

No one can take that from me. The thought is clean and almost frightening. No one can take that from me because I built it with my own voice.

Then my stomach rolls again, and the clean thought gets swallowed by heat and saliva. I barely make it to the bathroom.

June finds me sitting on the closed toilet lid at the Dogwood Diner two nights later with my forehead pressed against the cool metal stall divider.

Her shoes appear beneath the stall door. Black non-slip clogs, flour dusted over one toe. “You’ve been nauseous for weeks.”

“It’s stress.”

“You tried that one.”

“Coffee.”

“You switched to tea.”

“Tea betrayal.”

“Emmy.”

I close my eyes. There's a tone sisters use when they are about to love you without asking permission. June’s has been sharpened by years of running a diner, burying our father, and watching me insist I was fine from Nashville while my voice got thinner every month.

“I’m okay,” I say.

“No, you’re upright. Different thing.”

I lift my head because that one sounds too familiar. “You need new material.”

“You need a doctor.”

“I need crackers.”

“You need both.”

She goes quiet. Too quiet. My skin prickles before she says anything else.

“When was your last period?”

For a second, I’m not inside my body. I’m standing somewhere above it, watching a woman in a diner bathroom blink slowly at a door lock.

I know the answer. Not the exact date, because I’ve been very busy pretending dates aren't real, but I know enough.

“It’s late,” I say.

“How late?”

“One day.”

June says nothing.

“Two,” I add.

Still nothing.