When he kissed her, Joy wanted to believe that her conscience would cause her a moment of hesitation, yet that wasn’t true. She was on the Pill for period cramps, but even so, this was a stranger. She should have used a condom. Instead, she grabbed on to his shoulders and made him the center of her storm. And even though it was grief he poured into her, it was better than being empty.

Afterward, they were both wide awake and dead sober. “I shouldn’t have—” Joe began, but Joy didn’t want to hear it. She couldn’t stand being someone’s mistake again. She went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. When she came back out, Joe was dressed in his suit. “I called an Uber,” he said. “I, uh, got your address off an envelope.” He handed her an electric bill that had been on the coffee table with yesterday’s mail. He gestured awkwardly toward the bathroom. “Could I … ?”

Joy nodded, stepping aside so that he could pass. She told him where he might find aspirin, and he thanked her and closed the door.

Joe returned to the living room. He was tall, she realized, something she had not seen when he was slumped over a table. “I’m not the kind of person who—” she started, but he interrupted.

“I’ve never done this before.”

“Chalk it up to the alcohol,” Joy said.

“Temporary insanity.”

A car horn honked twice.

“Thank you, Miz Joy,” Joe said formally. “For showing me a kindness.”

Joy felt like she had shown him her very soul, disfigured as it might be. She looked away as he shrugged into his jacket and presumably out of her life. As she showered that morning, she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t the slut her foster mother had always called her; that she was entitled to creature comfort; that they were both consenting adults. She went to her classes, and then to her afternoon job at the college library, and then to her shift at the Departure Lounge, where she found herself looking for Joe although she knew he would not be there.

Until one night he was. That night, he hadn’t gotten drunk. He had waited until Joy’s shift was over, and accompanied her back to her apartment, where they made love and then shared a pint of ice cream in bed. She learned that Joe was not a lawyer, but a judge. He told her how his favorite moments on the bench were adoptions, when a foster kid got a permanent home. He stroked her hair and said he wished she’d been one of them.

He came back two more times, admitting that he was inventing business in Jackson just to see her again. Joy couldn’t remember a time that someone had run toward her, instead of away. She let him quiz her before one of her midterms and cook her a big breakfast before the test.

When you are used to fending for yourself, being taken care of is a drug. Joy became addicted. She texted Joe funny signs she passed on the way to work: the Baptist church with the live Nativity that advertised COME SEE OUR ASSES; the gaily flashing STOP—THREE WAY!; the Taco Bell billboard that said IN QUESO EMERGENCY, PRAY TO CHEESES. Joe wrote her back with daily Darwin Awards, anonymously describing the memorable defendants in his courtroom. When he showed up unexpectedly, she called in sick to work at the library so that she could spend as much time with him as he could spare. He was fifteen years older than she was, and sometimes she wondered if she was compensating for her lack of a father, but then she would realize there was nothing paternal about their relationship. She guardedly began to wonder if this was the moment that her terrible luck turned.

She should have known better.

Biology and evolution and social mores allowed Joe to leave; Joy was the one stuck with the pregnancy. Even though there had been two of them in that bed. Joy realized, in retrospect, she should have expected this. Life had repeatedly served her a big old side dish of miserable anytime she had a taste of anything good.

She had one more year of classes before she graduated with her bachelor’s degree—a degree she had fought for by scrimping and saving to pay for her credits. She worked two jobs already in order to make that happen. There was not a world in which she could take care of a baby, too.

That was Joy’s reasoning, as she sat in the bathroom at the library and whispered answers to the woman who scheduled her appointment at the Center.

Name. Address. Date of birth. First day of your last menstrual period. Have you been pregnant before?

Have you had any bleeding or spotting since your last period?

Are you breast-feeding now?

Do you have a history of uterine abnormalities?

Have you ever had asthma? Lung problems? Heart problems? Stroke?

And a dozen more questions, until: Is there anything else we should know about you?

Yes, Joy thought. I am pathologically unlucky. I’m perfectly healthy, except for this one thing that never should have happened to me.

The woman explained that because of the state of Mississippi’s requirements, an abortion was a two-day procedure. She asked if Joy had health insurance, and when she said no, the woman said Medicaid didn’t cover the cost. Joy would have to scrape together $600, if she could get here before she was eleven weeks, six days pregnant. Otherwise, the price jumped to $725 till thirteen weeks, six days. After that, it was eight hundred bucks, till the sixteenth week. After that, the procedure couldn’t be done.

Joy was already ten weeks pregnant.

She texted Joe, saying she needed to speak to him, but she didn’t want to tell him over text that this had happened. He didn’t answer.

She did some math in her head, and scheduled an appointment for a week and a half out. But even after skipping class to double her shifts at the bar and the library, she didn’t have enough money by the deadline. So she worked even harder, hoping to schedule an appointment at thirteen weeks. But her carburetor died and she had to pay for it or risk losing both her jobs. Before she knew it she was fourteen and a half weeks pregnant and running out of time. This time she called Joe, instead of texting. When a woman answered, she hung up the phone.

Joy pawned her laptop to get the cash, and rescheduled.

If she’d been richer, she wouldn’t have been here today.

She wouldn’t have been getting an abortion when a madman stormed the Center and started shooting.

It was just another layer of icing on the shitcake of her life.

This morning, when she had walked past the protesters, one of the women yelled that Joy was selfish. Well, she was. She had worked her ass off to get somewhere after aging out of the foster care program. She had struggled to pay for classes at college. She was determined to not wind up dependent on anyone.

The phone rang. And rang and rang. Joy slanted her gaze to the gunman to see if he would pick it up, but he was struggling—unsuccessfully—to tie a bandage around his bleeding hand.

It’s crazy, what puts you on a collision course with someone. You might wind up in an airport, drunk. You might be too poor to pick the appointment date you wanted. You might have the bad fortune to be born to an addict, or to be bounced from foster home to foster home.

What had brought this shooter here today with his gun? Joy had heard bits of conversation when he was on the phone with the police outside. He wanted revenge because his own daughter had come here for an abortion. Apparently she hadn’t told him what she was going to do.

Joy hadn’t told Joe, either, but then, he hadn’t returned her messages.

“What the fuck is your problem?” George asked, looming over her.

Startled, Joy pressed herself back against the chair. After what they had done to him—after what she had seen him do to Olive—she was terrified. She felt sweat trickle down her back. She had not felt this way—paralyzed—since she was eight. Back then the villain hadn’t had a gun, just fists. But he had still towered over her; he’d still had all the power.

Joy wondered, again, about George’s daughter.

She wondered why the girl had wanted an abortion.

She wondered if the girl was watching the news, if she felt responsible.

She wondered what it felt like to have an act of violence committed because someone loved you too much, instead of too little.

—

WHEN SHE WAS LITTLE, WREN had believed her father knew everything. And she had asked him thousands of questions: Are there more leaves in the world, or blades of grass?

Why can’t we breathe underwater?

If your eyes are blue do you see everything in blue?

How do you know you’re real and not someone else’s dream?

How do you get wax in your ears?

Where does the water go when you let the bathtub drain?

Why don’t cows talk?

Once she had asked, Are you going to die?

Hopefully not for a long time, he had answered.

Am I going to die?

Not if I can help it.

There were so many things she had not asked her father, that now she wished she had. What it is like to see someone die in front of your eyes?

What do you do when you realize you couldn’t save them?