Chapter 22: Bed Rest

The cramp let go after a minute, and came back worse.

"Hallie," Mason said. "Hallie, look at me."

"I'm fine."

"You're gray."

"It's the cold."

"It's not the cold."

He did not wait for me to argue.

He lifted me off my feet and carried me to the cabin bench.

The trooper took the wheel without being asked.

"Town dock," Mason said. "Call an ambulance to the end of it."

"Already done," said the trooper.

I lay on my side with my knees up and my hand pressed low on my belly.

The baby was not moving.

I waited for her to move.

"Talk to me," Mason said.

"About what?"

"Anything. Tell me the name of your first dog."

"I never had a dog."

"Then tell me what you want to name her."

I tried to laugh and it came out as a gasp.

"I don't know yet."

"You've had twenty-one weeks."

"I've been busy."

His hand came to rest over mine on my stomach, big and warm and shaking.

Under both our hands, something small and hard bumped once against my palm.

I closed my eyes.

"There," Mason said, very softly. "There she is."

The ambulance was waiting at the end of the dock with its doors open.

My mother stood beside it in her one shoe.

She had run the whole way from the bank.

"Don't you dare," she said to me, white-lipped, as they lifted me out.

"Mom."

"Don't you dare, Hallie Winslow, not after all this."

"Mom, I'm fine."

"You'll be fine when I say."

She climbed in after me.

Mason did not.

He stood on the dock with his arms hanging, and he looked at the trooper.

"Go," the trooper said. "I'll bring you."

At the county hospital they put me in a bright curtained room.

They strapped a monitor belt round my belly.

A young woman in green scrubs came through the curtain.

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