Chapter 9: Heartbeat

Linnea's POV

The baby's heartbeat was fast and steady and much louder than I expected.

I heard it on a Thursday in October, in a dim room at St. Brendan's with cold gel on my stomach.

The technician turned a dial, and the sound came out of the speaker so loud that Elin gasped.

"That's it?" Elin said.

"That's it," the technician said. "A hundred and sixty. Perfect."

I looked at the gray screen.

There was a curved white shape with a flicker in the middle of it, and the flicker was quick and sure.

I had been tired for weeks, and I had been sick every morning.

I had not felt like anyone's mother.

Now I did.

"Twelve weeks," the technician said. "Due the second week of April."

I put my good hand over my mouth.

Elin held the other one, the left, lightly, so as not to hurt the splint.

"Look at it," she whispered. "It has a nose."

"It has a spine, Elin."

"It has a nose, too."

I laughed, and I was crying, and the technician handed me a tissue without a word.

Elin was reading the form on the front-desk clipboard.

"Lin, the insurer mails the statements to the policyholder's address."

"That's the Isles house."

"So one comes for today."

"Soren doesn't open his mail. Astrid sorts it."

"And if she doesn't? Or he does?"

"Then he finds out the way I would have told him," I said. "Late."

I signed the form anyway.

When I got dressed, Dr. Koski was waiting in the corridor with a folder under his arm.

He leaned against the wall and pretended he had just happened to walk by.

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