"I need a favor."

Wallace turned to her, a slow grin already lighting his face, but Veronica was pale, her features drawn, in the deluge of students flooding into the class as the tardy bell rang.

"You okay?" he asked, not answering immediately. "You look like you aren't feeling too well."

The corner of her mouth lifted in a wry smile. "What's your mom's schedule like?"

Thirty minutes later, she was turning the key in Wallace's front door, fighting the urge to glance around and make sure no one was watching. Nothing drew more attention than looking for it. She shouldered the door open and stood there for a moment after closing it behind her, the house cool and silent, Wallace and his mother and his little brother smiling at her from a dozen framed photographs.

She went through to the kitchen, going through cabinets and drawers until she found an empty plastic bag, then shut herself into the bathroom. Deodorant, shaving cream, razor. Wallace things. How was it that all her best friends were guys, now. With Lilly and Meg cold in the ground, maybe any girl with whom she maintained a friendship was cursed.

Veronica let her bag slide to the floor and sat down on the lip of the tub after she took the white paper bag out, turning it over and over in her hands. She was definitely overreacting. Just a persistent recurring touch of stomach flu.

She set the kitchen timer and paced around the house, almost touching things. Pictures of Wallace, the remote, the mantel over the irrelevant fireplace. Her ears were already ringing, but each time she checked the timer, it was still merrily ticking to itself. She took out her cell phone and looked at it, but couldn't bring herself to call anyone.

When the timer went off, she exhaled explosively, startled. She stood stock-still for another full minute, and her heart, already pounding painfully, redoubled its efforts. She felt faint, and sick, but whatever she was about to find out was already true, and her seeing it for herself wouldn't change anything.

Which was logical.

But the blue plus sign did change something. Nearly everything.

--

Everything came back here, to the edge of the ocean.

Veronica sat on the beach, huddled with her arms wrapped around her knees, plugged into her iPod. She could fake a doctor's note with no problem. Especially now. The thought of going back to school and smiling and paying attention and driving home and cooking dinner while she waited for her father, those were too much. She'd have to do it every day but today. She needed some time. She had to process this. Tomorrow she could go back to faking and giving good phone and cheering Wallace at basketball games. Making spirit boxes and studying until she couldn't keep her eyes open.

It had been hard enough to mourn him before he was gone. The one person she needed to talk to, and he had been gone for two months, and she had been the one to help him hide himself so perfectly, so finally, from everyone, including her. If she'd known, she protested, she could betray him somehow. Better that she never knew. Better that he disappear down a hole and pull the hole down with him. It had made so much sense then.

Two days ago she'd been idly checking her email while she waited for a pot of water to boil.

We were right, Veronica, she'd read, and her breath had caught in her throat. Her father would be home any minute. She skimmed over the rest of it, hardly daring to believe he'd found a way to contact her, a way that left him still feeling safe, still leaving her innocent.

I'm 99% sure I'm not her father. It's a good thing those paternity tests were never done.

We're safe but we still haven't settled down. I can't imagine doing this for the rest of my life, but we made a promise... and knowing she's not mine, it doesn't change anything. I still love her like she was my own.

And I miss you more than anything.

She had sautÈed onions to go into the sauce that night, to explain her swollen eyes when her father came home.

In another life she had sat on the beach and watched him surf off this very strip of land. Now it was just her and another lone surfer, effortless against the waves, his body swaying and crouched. Her music so loud in her ears that it drowned out the insistent hush of the water, the persistent Mobius strip of voices in her head.

One grew louder for a moment. Now there's no way I'll get the Kane scholarship.

She smiled, then, despite the tears which would not stop pooling in her distracted blue eyes. Now there might be no way I won't get the Kane scholarship.

--

"Thanks."

"Sure," Wallace said easily. "You ever gonna tell me why? No, no, let me guess... casting call in Los Angeles. Or you had to film an amateur porn video in my bedroom to draw some suspect out."

Veronica smiled. "How'd you guess, was it the strobe light I left? That had to be it."

Wallace laughed. "But you're okay."

"I'm okay," she nodded. "And I will see you at school tomorrow. And since I know you like your thanks to be in cookie form..."

"Spirit box," Wallace sang, happily. "That, or fifteen percent of whatever your take was today."

"You drive a hard bargain, Fennel."

Even though Keith almost never came into her room unannounced, she waited until he had been in bed for an hour before she pushed her laptop open and began to compose her reply.

Maybe Lilly isn't yours, but your mother's worst nightmare has come true anyway. Celeste is going to have a grandchild, to dawdle on her knee and spit up on her designer suits.

Veronica rubbed her hands over her eyes, her cheeks wet.

And I'm scared, Duncan. But knowing, for sure, now, it's almost like you're here with me. I have no doubt that what we did was right, and we couldn't leave Lilly with the Mannings. We couldn't.

And I miss you more than anything.

She pushed herself out of her chair and buried her face in the mountain of throw pillows on her bed, stifling the sob rising in her throat. Only for tonight would she allow herself to do this. Tomorrow was still an hour away. In the bedroom on the other side of her wall, she had lay in his arms for the last time. She had kissed the father of her child goodbye.

Another hour and then she would be strong again. Because nothing had changed since this morning, nothing save for a little blue plus sign.

I love you.

We'll be on a strict Radiohead diet until we see you again.