Chapter 12: The Nursery

The kitchen window had a broken latch.

Roz slipped it with the blade of her pocketknife and eased the sash up an inch at a time.

We went in over the sill, one after the other, into a pantry that smelled of flour and cold tea.

The crying had stopped.

In its place, very soft, I heard a woman humming.

We went down the hall in our socks.

The nursery door stood half open, and lamplight lay across the floorboards in a long gold stripe.

The room was cream, with a little silver on the trim.

Two bassinets stood side by side under the window.

And in the rocking chair beside them, with her back to us, Vera sat with a bundle in her arms and sang.

Her belly was not on her.

It sat on the footstool, a round pad of foam stuffed into a cream cardigan with the buttons still done up.

I stopped breathing.

Vera rocked, and hummed, and shifted the blanket under a tiny chin.

The pup in her arms had one tiny fist out of the blanket, pale silver.

"I wondered how long it would take you," Vera said, without turning.

Roz moved before I could stop her.

She crossed the room in three steps and put both hands on the nearest bassinet.

Inside lay a baby asleep on her side, with a cap of silver-white down, one hand curled against her cheek.

A freckle sat under her left eye.

It was Roz's freckle.

"Oh," Roz said. "Oh, you stupid, stupid girl, you have my face."

She picked the baby up, and the baby woke and squalled, and Roz folded over her and made a sound that did not have words in it.

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