Tina sat in Dr. Wilson’s waiting room, flipping through the pages of PEOPLE magazine.

“You’re not even looking at the pictures,” Shane said, glancing up from her copy of PARENTING to frown at Tina through her rimless reading glasses.

“I’m not really interested in the latest J-Lo scandal,” Tina said, arching her eyebrows.

“MONEY?” Shane offered, scanning the magazine covers in the rack.

“Too depressing.”

“BETTER HOMES & GARDENS?”

“Better NOT,” Tina said, rolling her eyes.

“How about this month’s ON OUR BACKS?” Shane grinned. “Bet they have that here somewhere.”

“Yeah, right next to the current issues of ***** and THE ADVOCATE,” Tina said, shaking her head.

Shane had been coming along on these prenatal visits since the end of Tina’s first trimester, and all of the doctor’s appointments for the next four months were already marked in Shane’s date book.

They’d never discussed it, Shane stepping in to help fill this particularly gaping hole Bette had left vacant. It merely happened one afternoon when Shane, Alice, Dana, and Tina were trying to schedule lunch together. They were sitting at The Planet, palm pilots open, tossing out and subsequently rejecting one date after another.

“What are you people? Important? You don’t have any free time? Look at next Thursday. How’s that?” Alice said.

“I can’t do it-I have doctor’s appointment at 11:30,” Tina said.

“Another one? How often do you have to go?” Dana asked.

“Every four weeks for the first 28 weeks,” Tina said.

“So what’s next week? Sixteen weeks?” Alice asked.

“Twelve. It’s twelve weeks,” Tina said quietly, busying herself in her purse while her friends haggled over lunch plans.

Shane watched Tina, noticing her averted eyes and the hint of sadness in her voice, and tried to determine what had caused her mood shift. And then Shane realized that it had been at exactly this point in Tina’s first pregnancy when she’d lost the baby. Twelve weeks.

Last time, Tina and Bette had been eager to share the minutiae of Tina’s pregnancy. Every subtle physical and emotional change became fodder for group processing, and no detail was deemed too explicit or too incidental. This time, though, it was entirely different. Tina was obviously happy about being pregnant. But she was also much more private about it. Shane wondered if having Bette so brutally betray her trust had made Tina wary of sharing herself, even with the people who loved her most. Or maybe it was that the person Tina most wanted to share this miracle with was now completely unavailable to her, and no one else could compare. Whatever the reason, Tina didn’t reveal more than basic information, and even then only when she was asked.