Kneeling before her washbasin, she reached into the cabinet, removed a Walgreens bag, and carried it into the private cubicle that surrounded the commode. Then she latched the slatted door, opened the bag, and took out a large tampon box. From this box she removed the small carton she’d concealed inside it yesterday afternoon. The side of this carton read e.p.t. With shaking fingers she removed a plastic bag, ripped it open, and took out a testing stick not much different from the one that had struck terror into her heart as a nineteen-year-old. Remarkably, she felt more fear in this moment than she had as an unmarried teenager.

Holding the stick between her legs, she tried to pee, but her urine wouldn’t come. Had someone walked into the bathroom? One of the kids? Hearing no breath or footfall, she forced her mind away from the present, to the parent/teacher conferences she had scheduled today. As she thought of the anxious mothers she would have to deal with later on, a warm rush of fluid splashed her hand. She withdrew the stick from the stream, wiped her hand with tissue, then closed her eyes and counted while she finished.

She wished she’d brought the Razr in with her. It was crazy to leave that phone in the bedroom with Warren home, crazy to have it in the house at all, really. The cell phone Laurel called her “clone” phone was a second Razr identical to the one on their family account, but registered in someone else’s name, so that Warren could never see the bills. It was a perfect system for private communication-unless Warren saw both phones together. Yet despite the danger, Laurel could no longer stand to be apart from her clone phone, even though it hadn’t brought her a single message in the past five weeks.