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After I pay, we head back outside. I put my hand on the small of her back on instinct as we walk out of the door.

"Stay right here," I say as I leave her standing in the shade of the oak. "I'll get the air on before you get in."

She gets in without the fight this time and manages the buckle on the first try.

I wait until the air coming through the vents turns cold before I pull out toward Sabal Point.

"So Monday morning I've got a thing at ten with Rao."

"Who's Rao?"

"My maternal-fetal medicine doctor." She says it the way you read a grocery list. "My blood pressure started running high back in June. The doctor in Asheville diagnosed me with gestational hypertension, which put me in the high-risk category."

I look over at her. "Since when?"

"It's fine. Totally normal for a twin pregnancy this late. There was no reason to alarm you."

"That's not nothing, Mackie."

"I'm on a medicine called labetalol twice a day. I check my pressure morning and night and write it down."

"Every day?"

"Every day. I go in weekly for monitoring now, and at thirty-two weeks it'll be twice a week."

"Twice a week."

"Welcome to high-risk pregnancy. They want to deliver between thirty-six and thirty-seven weeks if everything stays stable. End of August, give or take. I'll have them here at Sarasota Memorial."

I keep both hands on the wheel.

"That's why my care's down here." She looks out her window. "It's a twin thing as much as a me thing. I figured living alone and driving myself all the way to Asheville every week was silly, so this made the most sense."

I drive another block without talking. She should have told me all of this. The thought sits there uselessly. Telling her that now won't change a single number she just gave me.

The light ahead goes red, so I stop. Take the lunch receipt out of my pocket and the carpenter pencil behind it, and I write against the wheel. Rao. Monday. 10.

"What's the address?"

"To what?"

"Dr. Rao."

She gives it to me and doesn't say not to come or not to worry. We both leave it at that. I fold the receipt and put it back in my pocket.

At the lot I park under nothing, in full sun, and I'm out and around to her door before she's got the belt off. I open it.

"You told me in February that you hay all summer," she says, working herself up out of the seat. "It's July. I don't want you to feel like you need to be here. That's why I'm living with my mom. We've got this."

"Hay'll keep ten days."

She stops with one hand on the door. It occurs to me that she really doesn't expect anything from me. She knows what July means on my ranch, and instead of asking me to stay, she's giving me another way out.

I don't know why that bothers me as much as it does.

"If you're going to be around for a few days, let me know. It gets lonely in that condo all day, and my social life currently consists of my mother and an old folks' home."

She wrinkles her nose. "It's humbling."