Chapter 21: Tara

In April, Tara's water broke at ten past three in the morning, on the floor of my old Fishtown kitchen.

She had been living there since November.

I had given her the lease the week the uncle left, and she paid the rent from a stylist's chair and her own savings.

She called my cell, and then Silvio's, because she couldn't remember which of us was closer.

He answered first.

"Four minutes," he said, and he was there in three.

He carried her down the stairs in his arms, and she complained the whole way that she could walk.

"You can't," I said, in the back seat.

"I can."

"Tara, your contractions are two minutes apart."

"They're not."

"Count."

She counted, and she stopped, and she grabbed my wrist so hard it left marks.

At Mercer General, the labor and delivery floor let me through without a badge check.

Tara's nurse was a woman with kind eyes and a braid, who told me I could stay if I stayed quiet.

I stayed.

Silvio and Bruno took the waiting room.

Bruno had a faint hitch in his breath now, from the lung, and he'd insisted on coming.

At five, Tara was nine centimeters and swearing.

At six, she began to push.

"I can't," she said. "I can't, Claire, I can't."

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