"Kind of."

"Maybe they'll let you take a sitz bath."

Amy pictured the plastic basin she occasionally found set upon the toilet bowl in her mother's bathroom. It had always mystified Amy, but suddenly she saw its value.

"You know, I wonder," her mother began, and Amy thought, Here it comes: Who's the father?

How did this happen?

Didn't you notice your periods stopping?

And what are you going to do with it?

But instead, her mother said, "I wonder if they have a whirlpool. They had a whirlpool in the hospital where I had you. I think I'll go check. I'll be right back."

No, stay, Amy wanted to say, but her mother was already out of the room.

Now the baby stirred. Amy looked over and watched as he arched his back and made a face. What was the theory of swaddling them so tightly? She leaned over the ba.s.sinet and slid her hands beneath the little bundle and carefully lifted him up. He weighed absolutely nothing! She untied her hospital gown and held him to her breast and tickled his cheek, just like the book said, and he twisted his mouth to the side, like a little gangster. She stuck her giant nipple in between his lips, but he made funny breathing noises, and she was afraid she would suffocate him, so she held him up, and he began to cry, and she began to cry, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s felt p.r.i.c.kly all over, and she wished her mother had not left the room, and she wanted to go back to yesterday, the day before Lava, when she was not a mother, she was not pregnant, there was no baby, it was just a stomach problem, annoying but temporary.

She heard the swish of Kleenex and opened her eyes. Her mother was standing by her bedside, and Amy saw the saddest thing she'd ever seen in her life: the sight of her mother crying. Which made Amy cry even more.

Susan took the baby while Amy blew her nose. But Susan didn't hold him very long; as soon as Amy was ready, she handed him back. Then, using her own finger, Susan gently opened the baby's mouth and at the same time guided his head to Amy's breast and helped work her nipple into his tiny mouth. He clamped down, and Amy felt an inner tug as the baby's jaw worked up and down.

"That's what they mean by latch," Susan said gently. As the baby nursed, she dabbed at the corners of Amy's eyes, which made Amy start crying all over again. Amy stroked the baby's downy hair, feeling more naked than she'd felt while giving birth.

"Why should I nurse him if I'm not going to keep him?"

"Because it's good for him," said Susan.

"If it's good for him, then I should keep doing it, which means I shouldn't give him up. And if I keep nursing him, I won't be able able to give him up. I'll want to keep him even more." to give him up. I'll want to keep him even more."

"Shhh," and Susan handed Amy another Kleenex. Then she told Amy to lean forward a little. She moved around behind her, and after removing a comb from a plastic wrapper, she began to gently work the snarls out of Amy's hair. "All these things will fall into place," she said.

"There's no rush to decide."

"I don't know who the father is," Amy whispered.

"That's all right."

"No. It's not."

Susan set down the comb. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

"No. Because that means I'll remember more than I want to remember."

But it was already there, whether she wanted to remember it or not.

"I won't flip out," Susan said. "I promise."

"Yes you will." And it suddenly hurt Amy, to think of how much it was going to hurt her mother, to hear what had happened.

"Amy," said Susan, peering around to face her, "I just helped you deliver a baby. My mind's already imagining the worst. You might as well tell me."

"About how I got drunk? You realize I probably don't have all the details, because of that."

"Believe me, honey, I probably don't want all the details."

Amy adjusted the baby, who had fallen back asleep and was sweating against her breast. She was grateful that her mother was standing behind her. "So last Halloween?"

"Okay," Susan said, "okay," and her voice sounded guarded, and Amy wished she hadn't begun the story but knew there was no way to stop at this point.

"I wasn't even going out that night. I was going to stay home and hand out candy. But then you got dressed up as Pippi Longstocking."

Susan stopped combing. "I liked that costume!"

"Except you wanted me to dress up too. You had a Little Orphan Annie wig you wanted me to wear."

"I did?"

"Yes, you did."

There was no way she was going to stay home and wear a Little Orphan Annie wig. And so Amy had left the house and gone to a coffee shop, where she ordered a hot chocolate and read a chapter in Walden Walden. Around ten, some guys came in; one of them was in her math cla.s.s. And they must have taken pity on her because they asked what she was doing there alone, and she said she was reading ahead for lit cla.s.s, and that's when they joked about kidnapping her.

People didn't usually joke with her, and it made her feel cool. She didn't say that out loud to her mother.

"So we went to a park," she went on. "They had vodka. They weren't trying to be mean; they just figured I knew how to drink."

"How much did you drink?"

"Like I'd know?"

"Do you remember calling and telling me you were staying at Sarah's?"

"Is that what I told you?"

"You did. And I believed it."

"Sorry."

"That's okay. It's not like I never lied to my parents."

Things got even fuzzier after that. She remembered being in the backseat of someone's car and people helping her walk into a house. She remembered the scratchy carpet against her face, and some girls helping her to her feet and taking her into the bedroom, where there was a king-sized bed piled with coats. She woke up in darkness with a cottony mouth and cold feet. Her pants lay on the floor; her legs were damp and sticky, and her underwear was on backward.

She had the sense there'd been more than one.

She told all this to her mother, except the part about the underwear. And the number. Which she really didn't know. It was just plural.

"Who was it?" Susan said, after a while.

"You said you wouldn't ask."

"No I didn't."

"Mom."

"Honey, we-"

"Mom."

At home she took a shower, and everything stung, and yes, it occurred to her, but only fleetingly, and she put it out of her head because there were more pressing things to think about, such as college visits during the winter and SATs and AP exams in the spring.

"Didn't you feel yourself gaining weight?" Susan asked.

"I'm always gaining weight."

"But didn't it feel different?"

"No. Yes. I don't know." Don't worry Don't worry, she wanted to say. Next time I have s.e.x with the football team, I'll make sure to get a pregnancy test Next time I have s.e.x with the football team, I'll make sure to get a pregnancy test.

"And those girls didn't stay to help you?" Susan said suddenly. "Didn't they know they shouldn't leave you alone like that? Whatever happened to the idea of girls looking out for each other?"

"It doesn't work that way, Mom," said Amy.

"I want to wring their little necks," said Susan. "I want to wring that boy's neck too."

"Mom. You told me you'd be able to handle it."

"I didn't say I wouldn't get mad, though," said Susan. "It infuriates me. Not just what the boy did to you. Didn't anyone look in on you? You were pa.s.sed out! You could have choked on your own vomit! What's with with these kids?" these kids?"

Amy shrugged. She'd been the subject of whispery speculation for about a month-until Thanksgiving, actually, when someone else did something dumb and provided new gossip for the high school tabloids.

Now she lay against her hospital pillow, watching her mother pace. She wanted desperately to comfort her mother right now. I'm alive I'm alive, she wanted to say. I survived I survived. But she knew her mother's heart was broken, and nothing she could say would help. And she hated herself, for getting drunk that night and doing this to her mother.

"Mom. Stop. I'm all right."

Susan took a deep breath and sat down beside Amy and searched her eyes.

"It isn't easy, hearing this," she said. "But you're right. I promised you I wouldn't flip out. I feel I feel like I'm going to flip out, but I won't. I just need to vent a little. But I'll deal with this. You'll deal with this. It's not going to wreck your life. You're not going to punish yourself forever. We're going to figure out the best solution, and it might not be clear for a couple of days, or even weeks, but we're going to get through this. Remember what JT said? You lose your confidence, you lose everything. My goodness." She sighed. "What if we had never come down the river? What if this had happened back in Mequon? I don't know if I would have been able to get through all this and come out whole. Maybe I would have. But I don't know." She took Amy's face between her hands and shook her own head in a way that meant yes. like I'm going to flip out, but I won't. I just need to vent a little. But I'll deal with this. You'll deal with this. It's not going to wreck your life. You're not going to punish yourself forever. We're going to figure out the best solution, and it might not be clear for a couple of days, or even weeks, but we're going to get through this. Remember what JT said? You lose your confidence, you lose everything. My goodness." She sighed. "What if we had never come down the river? What if this had happened back in Mequon? I don't know if I would have been able to get through all this and come out whole. Maybe I would have. But I don't know." She took Amy's face between her hands and shook her own head in a way that meant yes.

"We'll figure it out," she said again.

"Okay" said Amy.

And even Amy thought that particular word, "okay," sounded different, when spoken for once without anger or sarcasm.

DAYS TWELVE AND THIRTEEN.

River Miles 179225 Below Lava to Diamond Creek

50.

Days Twelve and Thirteen Miles 179225 Everyone had a theory about the dog. Evelyn was sure he was dead. She recalled Lava Falls, and how much water there was. Automatically she computed numerous factors in her head-volume, body weight, time, and temperature-and knew there was simply no way the dog could have survived.

Jill thought he was dead too. Not by any calculation of the odds, but because of her ingrained belief-despite this river trip-in her own personal Murphy's Law: if something could possibly come along to make her boys forever happy, it wouldn't. She began to regret not letting the boys get a dog earlier-perhaps if they already had a dog, they wouldn't have grown so attached to Blender. She wondered how much grieving time she should allow before suggesting they visit the animal shelter in Salt Lake City.

Mark, on the other hand, was convinced the dog had survived, that it was only a matter of time before he caught up with them.

"That dog has nine lives," he declared, right in front of the boys, which made Jill wince for all its false hope. At the same time, she envied his optimism.

Please, just don't let us find a body, she thought.

Ruth, who had buried a yardful of pets, was more philosophical. Perhaps because she had seen so many animals come and go; perhaps because she knew it was, after all, just a dog, and at the moment other things-childbirth and degenerative illnesses, to name a few-seemed more compelling. And Lloyd had already forgotten completely about the dog; he couldn't understand what the fuss was all about. "Dogs aren't even allowed down here," he kept reminding people, implying that fourteen people had hallucinated Blender's existence.

For his part, Mitch.e.l.l was racked with guilt, and he retreated into morose silence. He kept revisiting the run through Lava. Just when had he let go of the dog? Was it in the V-wave or below? He sat in the hot sun in the back of JT's boat and stared at his hands, trying to understand how they had released their grip. And why hadn't he clamped his thighs around the dog more tightly? Why didn't they think of tying him to one of the lines, for that matter? There were a thousand decisions that Mitch.e.l.l, in anguished hindsight, would have made differently.

By the end of their last full day, there was still no sign of the dog. They pulled into a camp with a large open beach, and their attention was briefly diverted when Evelyn went off downriver in search of a more isolated site for her last night and came running back, hollering that she had seen a four-foot rattlesnake coiled in the sand; and everybody wanted to see it, which JT didn't recommend, but they all trooped off anyway to see the beast, cameras in hand, and came back shaken up enough to move their sleeping mats in toward the center of the clearing for the night.

Over dinner they managed to focus on JT's tales of past mishaps, blunders, and pranks. They all laughed. But during cleanup, when the dog would have been scrounging for sc.r.a.ps, they missed him as though they'd raised him from puppyhood, and they grieved at the thought that they might never know just exactly what had happened to him, on the river.

"Because he might show up in the night," Sam explained to his father, after Mark asked him why he was keeping his headlamp turned on, even as it lay on the sand.

"Of course," said Mark.

"Dad?"

"What's that?"

"If somebody else picked him up, they'd take him to a shelter somewhere after their trip, right? They wouldn't just keep him?"

Mark said he guessed that any good-souled person would do that.

"So we might find him when we get back to Flagstaff?"

"We might. I don't want you to get your hopes up, though."

"I won't, Dad. Can I leave my light on?"

"Sure," said Mark, and when he bent down to kiss his son good night, Sam wrapped his arms around his neck and didn't let go for a long time.

"I hate to give him false hopes," Jill said when Mark came to lie down beside her.