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They honeymooned at the Grand Canyon, admiring the view during the day and each other’s bodies during the night.

Adele wanted to write to Pauline that their getaway had been “painless in every way.” But that wasn’t something ladies talked about—not even sisters—and she thought it might come off as bragging.

Sometimes good things happened and you couldn’t share them with everyone.

Which was a nice balance, she supposed, to all the negative things you were never supposed to share with anyone.

This was the other wonderful thing about her marriage—she felt she could say anything to Charles. And she did.

“Pauline told me it would hurt,” she whispered one night.

He whispered back, “Guess Pauline doesn’t know everything, does she?”

Despite the fact that Adele and Charles frequently and happily fulfilled the physical aspects of their marital duty, every month she bled.

Charles seemed unfazed by this. But Adele’s mother was always dropping by, finding a reason to peek at the laundry pail, and lecturing Adele about “allowing” and “submitting,” about spending more time sitting still and less time rattling around in automobiles, which, her mother insisted, could not possibly be good for—and here her voice dropped to a strained whisper—“the womb.” Adele ought to spend more time with Pauline, who was expecting again.

Mrs. Clemson was certain that this time Pauline would have a girl.

She seemed equally certain that her elder daughter’s condition might spread, as if by contagion, to her younger child.

But before Adele could catch anything from Pauline, her sister’s baby arrived too early, stillborn.

Pauline retreated to her bed, refusing to see anyone at all.

Not Adele. Not her mother. Not even her children.

Adele did her best to help out. Her inability to cook or sew meant she was tasked with minding her nephews while Mrs. Clemson and Claude’s mother battled over the management of Pauline’s household.

“Oh, had you already beaten the carpets? I’d no idea.

There was so much dust in them still.” “Oh, is that blancmange you’re making?

I would have thought a beef broth more restorative.

” The brightness of their eyes and smiles did nothing to conceal the war they waged.

Claude Demmings kept well out of the way. Adele followed suit.

She had, at the insistence of her mother, allowed Dr. Sawyer to examine her.

He reeked of gin, and his hands shook. After the examination he’d thwapped her on the thigh as if she were a horse and pronounced her “sound.” She hated him.

If she was so “sound,” why wasn’t she carrying a child?

Obviously because she wasn’t womanly enough, motherly enough.

Occasionally, rarely, she wondered if maybe Charles was the problem, not her.

On the final night of their honeymoon, a loud sob from her husband had startled her awake.

“Charles?” His eyes were open, glazed with terror, but he didn’t see her.

He hunched into a ball next to her, shaking, weeping.

Adele wrapped herself around him and whispered, over and over, “It’s all right.

I’m here. It’s all right.” Until the shaking subsided and he gave a final moan and closed his eyes.

In the morning, she’d wanted to ask him about it, but something in his manner told her not to mention it.

That they could talk about anything and everything except for that.

It happened again a few weeks later, and every few weeks after that, especially if anyone had mentioned the war.

Perhaps this break in Charles’s mind had broken his ability to father a child too.

Or maybe the two of them combined to create a mutual defect, something that made them unsuitable for raising children.

If Pauline had been her usual self, Adele might have worked up the courage to ask her.

Even though Pauline didn’t know everything.

To distract herself from these worries, Adele took long drives. Finding herself out near the lake one day, she decided to drop in on Mrs. Maggs, who knew more than Dr. Sawyer ever would. She might have some idea about how to fix Pauline.

“You’ve just got to let her do her grieving,” said Mrs. Maggs, who hadn’t stopped weeding her garden when Adele drove up. “Some things can’t be rushed. Why shouldn’t she lie in bed and cry? Makes all the sense in the world to me.”

“There’s nothing you can do?”

“Oh, I’ll stop over. If they let me in—Mrs. Demmings probably won’t—I’ll give her a little something. Not medicine—there’s no medicine for this. Just tea. Something warm. Something that might give her a bit of hope. Or it might not. I make no promises.”

Mrs. Maggs pushed herself up from the dirt and looked Adele up and down. “And what about you?”

“Me?”

“Oh, I see. You came out here just for your sister. Been married a year now, that right?”

“A little over.”

“Mm-hmm. Well, I wouldn’t worry.”

“Who says I’m worried?”

“Well, don’t be. Sometimes things just take a while. Go on about your business and be patient.”

Patience was not one of Adele’s virtues. She drove off wishing Mrs. Maggs had offered her some tea. Something warm. Something that might give her a bit of hope.

Pauline got up from her bed and started eating again, just in time to attend John’s wedding.

A few months later, both she and John’s bride let the family know they were expecting.

Mrs. Clemson could barely contain her delight.

She darted like a dragonfly between their households.

Adele pretended to be relieved, but she was stung by how quickly her mother discarded her.

And then one month she didn’t bleed. If Charles noticed, he didn’t mention it.

Adele said nothing about it to him or to her mother.

She carefully counted the days, trying hard not to hope.

Another month passed and she still hadn’t bled.

She thought about waiting a third but couldn’t bear the idea of keeping the news from Charles any longer.

Adele was tall, but Charles was even taller. He picked her up and swung her around and then, sheepish and concerned, set her gently back on her feet. “Are you all right? Did I hurt you?”

“Of course you didn’t. I’m perfectly fine. Don’t coddle me, Charles. You know I can’t stand that.”

“I’ll try, but I can’t promise I’ll succeed. I’ll be worrying about you every day.”

“Nonsense. Women do this all the time.” But they both knew of women who hadn’t lived through it.

And the ghost of Pauline’s lost baby hovered between them.

“Mrs. Maggs says I should keep moving.” She wasn’t going to be put to bed.

Not like Pauline, who had been told she must rest and do nothing to harm the child she carried now.

He chuckled. “I can’t imagine stopping you.”

The next day Adele drove out to the Clemson property. She barely managed to say she had “good news” before her mother embraced her. “Oh, Adele! I knew it would happen! I just knew it! How are you feeling, dear? Any sickness? Tiredness?”

Adele had felt neither of these things yet, but suddenly she tasted acid on the back of her tongue.

Her mother brought a basin just in time.

She rubbed Adele’s back and cooed that it was all “perfectly natural” and would go away in time.

Adele should eat plain foods and get plenty of rest, and do or not do a whole list of other things that she couldn’t take in because she was heaving over the basin again.

She was sick for weeks. Five months in, the nausea faded, only to be replaced by heartburn, swollen ankles, and utter exhaustion. She felt colonized by some invading force. Why had she wanted this so much? Why had Pauline and Susanna never told her about any of this?

By her seventh month she could no longer slide beneath cars, nor could she easily bend over an open hood.

“It’s just a temporary condition,” Charles reminded her.

But it felt endless to Adele. She drove to visit Pauline often, watched her sister closely for signs so that she would know them herself when her own time came.

Pauline appeared perfectly serene, propped up on the pillows in her bedroom.

She sewed and knitted and directed her household as if she were a queen on an upholstered throne.

“Don’t worry, Dellie,” she said. “It will all go fine. You’ll see. ”

But it hadn’t gone fine for Pauline the last time, thought Adele as her baby kicked and tumbled inside her.

She placed a hand on her belly. This child—she hoped it would be a boy, because a boy would have more freedom in the world—despite having caused her so much discomfort, had already burrowed itself into her heart.

She understood now why Pauline hadn’t gotten out of bed for months after losing her fourth baby.

Adele was in the nursery. She had removed the motor from the sewing machine her mother had insisted on giving her and was working out how to rig it up to the cradle so that it would rock automatically.

She was so absorbed in the problem that she didn’t hear John knocking.

She didn’t hear him open the door and climb the stairs.

She didn’t hear him until he was behind her saying, “Dellie,” in a strange choked voice that told her everything he had come to say before he spoke the horrible words. Pauline was gone. The new baby too.

On the day of the funeral, Mrs. Clemson urged Adele to stay home, preferably in bed, but Adele refused.

She refused Charles’s umbrella too. She stood in the weather, rain soaking her hat, mixing with the tears that ran down her cheeks, and watched them lower her sister and the baby, in their shared casket, into the earth, while her own baby turned somersaults inside her.

No one would tell her what happened.

“Best not to dwell on it,” said Mrs. Clemson.