In New York, abrupt might be a way of life, but sarcasm was the national pastime.

And so it was that Vivien Armstrong Gray clutched her box of stuff to her chest and boarded the 57 bus to the Iris Cantor Women's Health Center, where at 2:42 P.M. Dr. Peter Sorenson blew what remained of the world as she knew it the rest of the way out of the water.

4.

I'M WHAT?" VIVIEN asked, certain she'd misheard. "You're pregnant."

"No, I'm not." She shook her head from side to side, adamant.

"Well, according to the hCG levels in your blood you are." Dr. Sorenson shrugged, equally certain there was no arguing with science. "I've scheduled you for an ultrasound next door so we can confirm how far along you are. There are several really great ob-gyns practicing here at the center. I'll be glad to refer you to one of them."

"But I can't be pregnant."

He looked at her face, which she knew was crumpled in horror and disbelief and the vain attempt to hold back tears. "Ah, so I guess those aren't tears of joy."

He handed her a tissue, which she used to try to staunch the flow. "I am way too old to have a baby."

"Apparently not," he pointed out not unkindly.

"And I'm not married."

"Not really a requirement," he said.

"And as of today I don't even have a job." The tears started again. "And I'm a complete emotional train wreck."

He smiled. "That part will go away in about twenty years."

Vivien sniffed and blotted some more. "I don't even particularly like children." G.o.d, she sounded so pathetic she could hardly stand it.

"Look," he said gently. "I can see this is a shock. Let's just take it one step at a time, okay? You'll go have the ultrasound, see if it confirms how far along your blood levels indicate, and then you'll know what your options are."

Numb and weary, she stood and followed a nurse to the ultrasound department where they confirmed that she was somewhere between eight and nine weeks pregnant. An embryo the size of an orange seed was inside her womb.

On her fortieth birthday last year someone had given her a card that read, "Cheer up. You could be this old and pregnant, too!"

And now, apparently, she was.

FOR THE NEXT week Vivien barely left her apartment except to pick up the odd cracker item or buy a lottery ticket at Fairway Grocery; in her current state of mind, winning millions of dollars seemed more likely than producing real income.

Alone in her hidey-hole, seeking every ounce of comfort it offered, she grappled with what to do. She was barely pregnant, the embryo so tiny she could barely imagine it as more than the seed it resembled. And yet this tiny, seed-shaped thing would alter the course of her life forever, whatever she decided to do.

Intellectually, politically, she had always believed in a woman's right to choose. Had argued vehemently that those who disapproved of abortion and birth control should be forced to adopt all the unwanted and abused children in the world, every last one of them, before they tried to force others to bear children they might not be equipped to care for physically or emotionally.

She still believed a woman should have the right to govern her own body, to choose whether or not to become a mother. But in the wee-est hours of the morning as she stared out her living room window watching the sun steal up behind the buildings to fill the cracks and s.p.a.ces of the city with light, she also knew that she couldn't give up anything that she and Stone had created together. Even if she were unemployed and alone.

So she made an appointment with her new ob-gyn, a smart, no-nonsense woman named Myra Grable, who gave her a prescription for prenatal vitamins, suggested she buy a copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting, explained the added risks that came with a pregnancy at her age, and promised that the nausea and exhaustion would pa.s.s.

But Dr. Grable didn't tell Vivien how to tell Stone he was going to be a father. Or where she might find the energy to go out and look for a new job. Or how she was going to go back on camera, a.s.suming she could even find a job like the one she'd left, while her body swelled and she remained unmarried. Hollywood celebrities seemed to do these things with impunity, but Vivien didn't know any television journalists who'd reported during unmarried pregnancies. So far she looked the same as always. But what would happen when her body began to change?

"Why did you quit? It's so much easier to find another job when you've already got one." Stone and pretty much every member of her family asked her that question in the following weeks, but it was almost impossible to answer. Because how could she describe the torrent of emotions that had propelled her to that scene with Dan when she wasn't ready to admit that the torrent was hormone-induced? That she was pregnant. And completely freaked out about it.

Her family would disapprove. And Stone? Stone, whom she had affectionately nicknamed Rolling Stone because of his love of rock 'n' roll and the joy with which he raced from story to story and war to war. He'd told her more than once that he loved her. It was possible he might marry her, might well offer to do "the right thing." But she wasn't even sure she believed in marriage anymore. She didn't understand how in the world her parents had stayed married for so long. And at forty-one, most of her friends' first marriages were already over. Did she want to marry someone to whom she was first and foremost a responsibility? It was the one thing that might make her feel even more pathetic than she already did.

Finally, when her cozy hidey-hole began to feel too small and her wallowing had produced no answers, she was forced to concede that no one was going to call and offer her a job. So she got up early on that Wednesday morning, took a shower, got dressed, and spent the day at the kitchen table first making a list of who to approach, then working the phone to set up appointments.

By early afternoon she wanted to crawl back into her coc.o.o.n on the couch. She'd only been granted three face-to-face interviews because "people were cutting back." "There was so much wrong out there that investigative pieces just didn't break through the public malaise as they once had." And though no one came out and said so, because she was forty-one and the first thing that sprang to mind when she said her name was no longer "inside scoop," but "bullet in b.u.t.t."

Still Vivien dressed carefully for the first interview. Her clothes were already snugger in the waist and bust, but even she wouldn't have known she was pregnant if she hadn't been forced to know. When she walked into CIN's rival, CCN, she felt cautiously optimistic because, after all, who in New York had more experience at investigative reporting than she did?

But when she was seated in the news director's office, the first question wasn't "When can you start?" but "What were you thinking when that first shot whizzed by?"

At the second interview she was asked whether she was relieved to have been shot in a place so well padded. And he wasn't referring to the parking garage. At the third, there weren't even any questions. Just a twenty-something HR person who knew nothing about her and didn't seem to want to. Vivien slogged home through the late-afternoon traffic and told herself something would turn up. And for a while she thought maybe something really would.

Friends and colleagues gave her leads on openings they'd heard about. But when she followed up she was inevitably deemed overqualified for the positions, and Vivi, who hadn't yet won the lottery and was growing increasingly desperate, had too much pride to beg.

Her closest friends took her out to eat and commiserate over the arrival of Regina Matthews, who was already appearing in brief bits on the air as they prepared the audience for the woman who would take over Vivien's spot. "She'll never be you," a former colleague told Vivi over lunch at a nearby deli. "But she does have great lips."

Stone chided her for giving up so easily. She was great at what she did and she had one of the best demo reels in the business.

"All they're thinking about when they see me is whether I have a scar on my b.u.t.t," she replied. "Or why they should hire me when CIN felt they needed somebody younger."

"You'll find something. And when I get back, we're going to take a vacation somewhere," he said. "Somewhere fun where n.o.body's shooting anybody else."

It sounded heavenly to Vivien, except that there was no telling when he might actually get back, and by the time he did she'd be noticeably pregnant or, possibly, a mother.

Yet she couldn't bring herself to tell him about the baby. Some small part of her was not only in shock and delusional but seemed to think that if she didn't mention her pregnancy, it would simply go away. In these earliest months when the chance of a miscarriage was highest, she told herself there was no need for a discussion that might end up moot. And so she kept the news to herself even though she knew that the longer she waited the harder it would be to tell him if she had to. And the harder it became to talk normally as if everything, other than her lack of employment, was just fine.

BY THE TIME she completed her first trimester, September had given way to October and Vivien could no longer pretend that her condition was temporary or that she was somehow going to find a position in New York even half as good as the one she'd left. In fact, she had begun to doubt she could find anything that came anywhere close to resembling journalism as she knew it.

She'd already talked to everyone who'd agreed to see her and a few who hadn't, and had been reduced to answering newspaper and online ads like some rookie fresh out of journalism school. Today's interview was with the editor of a weekly publication that might best be described as USA Today meets People magazine with a heavy dose of the National Enquirer.

Vivi studied John Harcourt surrept.i.tiously as she took a seat in his cramped, windowless office. He might have been twelve, thirteen at the most. Which meant Vivien could have already been at CIN a full two years before he was born.

He was not, as it turned out, familiar with her work, but he thought that her name sounded somewhat familiar.

Despite an almost irresistible urge to stand up and walk out, this time Vivien listened to the little voice that reminded her of how that had worked out the last time and instead ran through the highlights of her career. As she did so she told herself that if she couldn't get this appallingly low-paying job at the Weekly Encounter, she deserved to be unemployed.

"Honestly," he said. "The column we're looking to start doesn't really sound like your kind of thing at all." He was shaking his head, clearly getting ready to blow her off.

"Oh, I've covered all kinds of things," she a.s.sured him. "I enjoy investigative journalism, and I've worked in the broadcast field for a long time. But I'm a writer/reporter first and foremost. I started in print and I can cover anything and make it interesting."

"I'm sure you could." His expression said, not. "But I seriously doubt you'd want to . . ."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of what I'd want to do." She leaned forward, her words coming from between clenched teeth.

"He's already afraid of you," the little voice cautioned. "If you scare him too badly, he won't hire you to get coffee."

Vivien knew the voice was right. But just as her emotions had pushed her beyond control with Dan, her desperation was shoving at her now. She needed a job and she needed it right away. And given the fact that she was unmarried and pregnant, print would be a better choice for her now anyway. People didn't really care about the personality behind a byline. There were no celebrity journalists on a publication like the Weekly Encounter.

Vivien slid back in her chair and unclenched her jaw. "I mean, I can't think of anything I'd be unable to research or unprepared to write about." There that was better, calmer. More like a normal person. "And given the salary range you advertised you're unlikely to get anyone with half my experience to do it."

"Yes," he said. "That's why it's listed as entry-level. If I'd realized who you were, I wouldn't have wasted either of our time." He started to rise.

"Wait! I mean, no. Please. Sit down." She lowered her voice as he did as she asked, then drew a deep breath and let it out in an effort to remove the panic from her voice and her eyes. Later, much later, she'd let herself think about the fact that she was begging to be considered for a job so far beneath her.

"Why don't you just tell me what the job is? And we'll decide together whether I'm right for it or not." She spoke sweetly. While smiling. It was one of the most painful things she'd ever done.

"Well," he sat back and steepled his fingers, which made him look older-at least fourteen. "Our polls show that our readers are tired of all the celebrity articles. Oh, they want to know about Brad and Angelina and their kids, but they want to read about people like themselves, too. But maybe with some kind of kick to it, you know?"

She nodded, smiling with intent interest, just as she would have for the cutaway close-up Marty always shot to cut into the interview.

"What we're envisioning is a weekly column from the suburbs. A sort of ongoing commentary on the current state of motherhood and apple pie with a few soccer moms beating the c.r.a.p out of referees whose calls they don't like thrown in for good measure." He smiled, warming to his subject. "Snippets of real life as recorded in the real America."

Vivien stopped smiling and nodding, pretty much blown away that this child had managed to come up with the one topic Vivien was not even remotely qualified to or interested in writing about. She might have stood then and admitted defeat, except that she had a "bun in the oven" and she simply couldn't afford to be without an income-even one as small as the Weekly Encounter was offering.

So she stayed in her seat and arranged her features to telegraph abject admiration. "I think that's brilliant," she said. "We could call it Snapshots from the Suburbs. Or maybe Postcards from Suburbia."

He nodded, starting to unbend. Liking her for liking his idea.

"Maybe it could be written with an insider's knowledge but from a . . . newcomer's perspective," Vivien continued. "You know, like by someone just discovering the whole wonderful world of suburbia. As if an alien s.p.a.ce-ship had deposited them in . . . east Cobb, Georgia . . ." She pulled the name of the area where her sister lived out of the air. ". . . and had to learn how to blend in to its surroundings. Live like the natives."

The editor leaned toward her, his head nodding faster as Vivien painted the picture.

"There could be columns about . . . finding day care . . . a babysitter . . . striving to win the best yard award . . . being a troop leader. Selling Girl Scout cookies. Taking a ballroom dance cla.s.s." Again she pulled details of Melanie's daily life out of her memory, offering them up, trying to convince him even as she tried to convince herself.

She could do this. She wished she didn't have to, would give anything to snap her fingers and go back to her old life, but she could research and write this column. In a way it wouldn't be all that different from the way she'd investigated the worlds of gangs, drugs, corporate espionage, and financial machinations in order to report on them.

The suburbs might seem like an alternate universe to her now, but if she went and lived there and immersed herself in the culture, she could turn the weekly column into something much larger than John Harcourt had ever imagined. Maybe aim for national syndication. Or uncover something that could propel her back into investigative journalism.

And she wouldn't even have to look for an expert to help her. Vivien might never have sat on a bleacher, driven a minivan, or idled in a car-pool line, but her sister had done all of those things and actually seemed to enjoy them.

She felt a slight stirring of . . . not exactly excitement, but a determination to accept her current reality and to do what had to be done. To take advantage of the details that seemed to be falling so neatly into place.

Hadn't Melanie practically begged her to come recuperate at her house? And weren't Melanie and her children, Vivien's niece and nephew, the walking embodiment of suburban life? They were her entree to this brave new world, her personal tour guides to life in the hinterlands.

All she had to do was take her sister up on her invitation. While she was there she'd stick to Melanie like white on rice so she didn't miss a single nuance of suburban life.

Vivien looked the young man in the eye and knew she had him. She could never use her own name of course; it would be far too humiliating to ever let anyone know how low she'd sunk and how little she was forced to work for. She wouldn't even tell her family or Stone. The number of things she wasn't telling him gave her pause, but at the moment securing this job was her number one priority.

"I can do this for you, and I can make it first-rate," Vivien said. "But I'm going to have to go undercover in order to write about things the way I really see them. I can use an obvious sort of pseudonym to pique the readers' interest. And, of course, the Weekly Encounter will have to keep my ident.i.ty secret."

She smiled and stuck out her hand to seal the deal. "What do you think?"

He barely hesitated, and she realized she should have asked for more money, but she would be employed and she would be reporting. What she made of it would be up to her.

"I like it. I like it a lot," he said, shaking her hand with real enthusiasm. "We'll start promoting the coming of a new column next week; that will give you a couple of weeks to get situated and start filing your stories."

He walked her to the lobby, all but rubbing his hands together in glee. "I'll set up an appointment for you with HR-they'll be the only people other than me who'll know your true ident.i.ty."

Vivien felt lighter as she walked outside to hail a cab even though she'd already gained five pounds. Her mind whirled as she thought about all the things she'd need to take care of before she left the city-forwarding her mail, subletting her apartment, making up a suitable cover story. From the backseat of the cab, she punched in Melanie's cell phone number and waited impatiently for her sister to pick up.

Melanie hadn't exactly begged her to come down to recuperate, but despite their differences they were sisters, flesh and blood. Vivien knew that Melanie would never turn her away.

A well-bred girl from a good southern family might break an unwritten rule or two, but she'd never question a family member's intentions. Or ask how long that family member intended to stay.

5.

IN HER OFFICE at the Magnolia Ballroom and Dance Studio, Melanie hung up the phone. Resting her hands on the desk, she sat for several long minutes staring through the inset gla.s.s wall to the dance floor, trying to process the fact that her sister had just invited herself for a visit and had actually claimed that spending time with Shelby and Trip was one of her prime motivations for coming.

In a corner of the studio a private rhumba lesson was under way. Melanie watched as longtime instructor Enrique Delray patiently guided a recently retired couple through the slow-slow-quick foot movements. With studied grace he demonstrated both how to lead and how to follow, talking the entire time in the vaguely Latin accent that made him wildly popular.

The threesome looked small in the large and decidedly elegant s.p.a.ce. Originally built as a freestanding exercise facility, the dance studio was a long rectangle with two ab.u.t.ting mirrored walls and polished hardwood floors. When Melanie had purchased the business and building from the previous owner five years ago, it had been called Let's Dance! and its claims to fame had been a seventies-era dis...o...b..ll and a decidedly laid-back teaching approach.

Melanie's first official act had been to change the name of the studio to Magnolia Ballroom after her favorite room at Magnolia Hall. Then she'd decorated the s.p.a.ce to fit its new name, replacing the dis...o...b..ll with two carefully placed French chandeliers she'd unearthed in the bowels of an architectural salvage store and framing the large plate-gla.s.s window that fronted the parking lot with a gold brocade valance and side panels. The draperies in turn framed a collection of white-clothed tables that she'd paired with reproduction Louis XIV chairs. The lone solid wall had been treated with mahogany wainscoting and an ornately carved chair rail.

A "DJ" area where instructors took turns playing music during their cla.s.ses and for the Friday and Sat.u.r.day night practice parties had been tucked into one corner of the ballroom. From there, a short hallway led to the rest-rooms and kitchen. Between these, Melanie had created a more casual conversation area with a chenille sofa and an arrangement of club chairs and ottomans designed for sinking into and getting a load off.

Normally, Melanie felt a great deal of satisfaction as she surveyed her domain. Despite the intentional elegance, she had created a warm and welcoming environment and had made it a point to hire instructors who were not only well trained and certified but friendly and enthusiastic. The one thing Melanie had no patience for was "att.i.tude." Some of their students danced compet.i.tively, but many had arrived with no dance experience at all after becoming fans of the hit TV show Dancing with the Stars. Others came for the exercise and the opportunity to socialize and de-stress. It was almost impossible to worry while doing the cha-cha or the tango. Or while shimmying across the floor to cla.s.sic belly-dancing music.

Today her usual sense of accomplishment eluded her as her thoughts circled back to Vivien's unprecedented visit and the unstated reasons behind it.

There was a cursory knock on her open door and then Ruth Melnick stuck her head inside. "Hi, doll. I'm here."

Somewhere in her early seventies with beautifully coiffed white hair, a direct manner better suited to her New York beginnings and barely softened by her decades in Atlanta, Ruth had been taking lessons at the Magnolia Ballroom almost as long as Melanie had owned it. Ruth's transition from student to friend and unpaid worker had been gradual, but Melanie could no longer imagine the studio without her. Ruth had warm brown eyes that a.s.sessed people at the speed of light. Beneath her gruff exterior beat a heart so big Melanie wasn't sure how it fit inside her slightly barreled chest. Ruth manned the front desk three afternoons a week and seemed happy to fill in whenever Melanie needed her. She also continued to take cla.s.ses more, Melanie thought, to fill her days than anything else. And possibly, Melanie suspected, to add to the studio's financial bottom line without facing charges of charity.

"There's been real interest in the new Wednesday night belly-dancing cla.s.s," Ruth said. "And I still have to answer a few email queries. I'm thinking about taking it myself." She gave an exaggerated shake of her wide hips.

"It's great exercise and a lot of fun. I've got Naranya scheduled to teach, but I'm going to be there, too. I can always fill in in a pinch." Over the last year Melanie had added a number of dance-based exercise cla.s.ses and a mommy/toddler cla.s.s on weekday mornings and was constantly on the lookout for ways to increase revenue. "Let's remind the instructors to push it in their cla.s.ses, and I want to make sure it's mentioned in any calls soliciting former students."

"Will do," Ruth said. "I just gave a tour and brochure to a bride-to-be. The wedding's not until April, but she signed up for belly dance. Cute-about thirty, redheaded. Said she was looking to add a less painful form of exercise to her workout schedule."

"Maybe that's how we should be marketing the cla.s.s," Melanie said. "As an ancient Middle Eastern weight-loss technique."

"I like it." Ruth laughed, then looked pointedly at the clock on the wall. "Don't you need to get going?"

"Yes." Melanie glanced at her watch. "I've got to go pick up Shelby and get her to the tutor, but I'll be back to do the eight and nine P.M. cla.s.ses. Diedre's out sick."