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“How old was the youngest woman you helped deliver?” I asked. I was curious, but I also wanted to be sure she thought I appreciated her and her experience.

“Woman? Hardly a woman. She was eleven,” she said. “Very bloody delivery and very painful.”

“Did she die?”

“No. Not in the sense you mean, but what sort of a life do you think came after that?”

“Sylvia will have a good life,” I said. “I promise you that.”

“As good as she might have, I expect.”

“Better than she might have,” I insisted. “Better.”

We looked at each other. Her face did soften. There was a surge of warmth in her eyes. I looked at Sylvia. We did need to save all our compassion for her. There was enough tension without my creating any between Mrs. Matthews and myself, especially in Sylvia’s presence.

“Well, I will say one thing for you, Audrina. You have an extraordinary capacity for love.”

I sat back, amazed. A real compliment? From her?

“But then again,” she added, “it’s when we’re most desperate to please others that we’re in the most danger of hurting ourselves.”

“Who taught you that?”

“Life,” she said, and left the room.

I turned back to Sylvia and smiled. I saw no way I could hurt m

yself by pleasing her, not now. She looked at me curiously when I put my hand on her stomach again. Then she turned to reach toward me and put her hand on my mound of wool. I watched her face. Would she realize now that what I was doing was a bald-faced lie? Would that frighten her? Would it make her feel silly and alone?

She smiled. “She kicked,” she said, and lay back. “Baby’s coming.”

I sat holding her hand and realized that the saying of my father’s that Arden had reminded me of was true: deception was sometimes good, especially if the end result brought happiness to someone who desperately needed it, someone as fragile as my Sylvia.

She finally fell asleep. I sat quietly watching her breathe and seeing how her lips moved slightly. Somewhere in her dreams, she was talking. Was she talking to Papa? I envied her for her dreams. They were a way out of the web we were all caught in right now, at least for a few hours.

I didn’t think I had been given more tranquilizers, but I did doze off. I woke when I realized Mrs. Matthews was standing beside me.

“Go to bed,” she said. “I’ll stand by with her. I’ve decided you’re strong enough to contend with what is happening, and I will need your help. So get some rest, and be ready for what lies ahead.”

“Her stomach gets hard for a few seconds, and she cries.”

“This isn’t false labor. I think she might be delivering earlier than anticipated.”

“Oh,” I said, the worry ringing in me like a bell.

She smiled, not coldly, not warmly, just a bland smile. “Look at it this way. It will be over sooner than we thought.”

Birth, a Step toward Truth

Sylvia went into real, full-blown labor three days later. It happened late in the morning. She was screaming and crying so hard I could barely move to follow Mrs. Matthews’s commands after Sylvia’s water broke.

“I didn’t pee!” Sylvia cried. “I didn’t pee!”

“It’s not pee,” Mrs. Matthews said, and turned to me. “Clean it up,” she ordered.

I started out for the mop and then stopped. “I should call Arden,” I said.

She turned and looked at me with such disdain that I could feel the blood rushing into my face. “You want to call your husband? Will you be screaming and crying like she is but over the phone when his secretary answers?”