Chapter 6: Port Ellery

Alessia's POV

The storm took out the bridge at Port Ellery on the same night my water broke.

I was in the kitchen of Mauro's mother's house, in a nightgown she had lent me.

I stood at the sink with both hands braced on the edge.

It was early November, and I had been dead for seven months.

"Sit," Mauro's mother said. "Sit, sit. It's a first baby, it'll take hours."

She was seventy and no taller than my shoulder.

She had taken me in on the first night without asking one question, and she had never asked one since.

"The midwife is across the river," I said.

"The midwife is on the wrong side of a broken bridge."

"Then who?"

"Me," she said. "I delivered four of my own and half this street. Boil the water."

The pain came again, low and hard.

I bent over the counter and swore in Italian, which made her laugh for the first time in a month.

The wind shook the windows.

The lights flickered once and went out.

She lit two oil lamps and a candle in front of a picture of the Madonna.

By midnight I was on my knees on the bedroom floor, gripping the foot of the bed.

By two I had stopped being embarrassed.

"Mauro," I said into the dark. "I want Mauro."

"He's at the yacht club, in Providence. They'd notice him gone."

"I know. I know that."

"You're not alone, cara."

"I'm so alone," I said, and then another one hit me, and I couldn't say anything for a while.

I thought of Santo.

I did not want to.

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