Chapter 22: June

My water broke at two in the morning on the nineteenth of June, in Gran's kitchen, beside the stove.

"Anders," I said, to the dark house.

He was down the stairs before I finished saying it.

He had his boots on the wrong feet.

"It's the baby," I said.

"I know it's the baby."

"You're wearing your boots backward."

"I know that too."

The drive to St. Luke's took twenty minutes, every mile stretching out.

Between contractions I held the door handle.

During them I held his arm, and he drove one-handed.

He talked in a low, steady voice about nothing, the grain of walnut, the price of lumber, Gran's workshop door.

"Don't talk about lumber," I said through my teeth.

"What should I talk about?"

"Anything that isn't lumber."

"I love you," he said.

It was the first time he had said it.

A contraction took me before I could answer.

By four o'clock I was in a bed with a monitor strapped to my belly.

Pia had come straight from the restaurant in her whites.

She sat on the end of the bed eating crackers out of my overnight bag.

"I'm not going to say I told you so," she said.

"You didn't tell me anything."

"I told you so about the lock."

"Pia."

"I'm just saying. If you want somebody to kick Nils in the shins, I have shoes."

The doctor came in, checked me, and smiled.

"Seven centimeters," she said. "You're doing fine."

I didn't feel fine.

I felt every minute of it.

At five-thirty the door opened a crack, and Birgit put her silver head in.

She had no pearls and no cardigan set, only a gray sweatshirt with the boatyard's name on it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Made Me Take a DNA Test While I Was Pregnant With His Baby from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.