Chapter 11: The Birth

I sent them out at three in the morning, one after the other.

Jesse carried Birdie to Lottie's truck without waking her.

He buckled her into the car seat and laid the horse in her lap.

I watched him do it from the porch, because I did not know how to stop watching.

Lottie stood with the driver's door open.

"Tell her the rest sometime," she said to him, loud enough for me to hear. "Before somebody else does."

She smiled at me across the yard.

Then she drove away with her headlights swinging over the barn.

Jesse stood alone in the dark with his hat in his hands.

"Hattie."

"Go home."

"Let me stay on the porch. I won't come in."

"Go home, Jesse."

He looked at the house for a while, and then he got in his truck.

I locked the door behind him and sat down on the hall floor.

I stayed there until the widow's rooster started up down the road.

I went to the ranch at noon.

I told myself it was for the box of Daisy's baby things.

The foreman nodded at me from the corral and said nothing.

The house was quiet, and the door to the nursery stood open.

Jesse sat on the floor beside the crib with his back against the wall.

It was the crib I had painted myself the winter I was pregnant, white with yellow stars.

He had one of Daisy's blankets in his lap.

He did not look surprised to see me.

"I thought you'd come," he said.

"I came for her things."

"Take them."

I didn't move.

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