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“You are. You’re the most beautiful thing in the world. You’re my life, Clove.”

“He’s our life now. Look at his perfect little fingers! Oh, oh, it’s not over!” Her body arched in pain. “Take him! Take our baby, wrap him up warm, Charlie. It’s not over.”

She shook with the next contraction, her body overwhelmed.

Charlie wrapped the baby, set it in a box padded with blankets and decorated with flowers and peace symbols.

When he came back to her, sweat ran down her face faster than he could wipe it away. And still she shuddered, shivered as if cold.

“I’ll nurse them, nurse them both together.” Breathless, she reached for Charlie’s hand. “Then they won’t cry.”

“We’ll plant the placenta with a tree. Our family tree.”

He dabbed at her face, held her hand while the baby wailed and the recorder played Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”

“Everything’s changing, babe, for us. We’re going to be free, you, me, our kids.” He brought both her hands to his lips, kissing them as she moaned through the pain. “We’ll grow our own food, and we’ll really open this house up to art and music and love.”

“I have to push. I have to push again. Oh fuck, oh fuck! It hurts!”

“I know, Clove. I know.”

“Tell me you know when you have to push a baby out!”

“Okay, okay. I see the head, and it’s coming. This one’s coming faster. Almost here!”

Sonya watched the birth of her father. She couldn’t say how she knew the younger twin would grow up as Andrew MacTavish in Boston, but she knew it.

The dying girl took him in her arms.

“Help me sit up some more, Charlie. More pillows. I can’t nurse them both unless I can sit up more. They’re hungry, and the first milk’s got all the good stuff they need in it. Help me, Charlie.”

He propped her with pillows, dried her face, kissed her, kissed the baby in her arms. “I’ll get our first. We’ve got two sons, Clover. We’ve got two baby boys.”

“So beautiful, so sweet. He’s already latched on. You kinda gotta help him find my nipple, Charlie. Yeah! Like that. Oh my God, it feels so amazing. I’m feeding our babies, Charlie. We’re a family.”

She smiled. She smiled, though Sonya could see the shadows in the room. She could see far too much blood on the sheets, the towels.

“I’m getting cold. I can’t believe it. I was so hot, but I’m getting cold.”

He built up the fire, laid a blanket over her.

“I can change the sheets, or at least take them off if I can lift you to the other side.”

“It’s okay. Look, our sons are sleeping. Can you do the diapers? I don’t think I can get up yet. I’m so tired now. Just so tired.”

“I’ve got it. You just rest. Holy shit, Clover, you’re a frigging goddess. I’ll bring down a rocking chair in the morning from the attic. I’m going to clean up our boys, then go down and get some of that soup you made. I can heat it up in the fire. You need to eat. I’m going to take care of you, Clover. Take care of you and our family.”

“Okay, Charlie. I love you.”

“I’ve never loved anyone like I love you. I never will.”

He used squares of white cloth and diaper pins, then swaddledeach baby and laid them together in the box covered in flowers and peace signs.

He turned the music down, then took a candle and started for the door. “Soup, some of that bread we made the other day. And some goddamn wine. I wish I had flowers for you, Clover.”

“I have everything I need.”

When he left and the shadows in the room deepened, the girl in the bed turned her head to Sonya.