Chapter 23: July

The baby came on the ninth of July, in the worst storm of the summer.

By then Declan had pleaded guilty and a court order kept him a mile from me, and my name on the mailbox said Lund again.

Joelle ran my breakfast at six every morning, for wages, under a signed contract.

We were not friends, and she knew it.

We were two women who knew where the other kept the good knives.

At a quarter past one, the power went out.

I was lying awake in the white iron bed, enormous and hot, listening to rain hit the sea window.

Jude was asleep beside me with one arm over the quilt.

The first pain was low in my back, and I thought it was the heat.

The second one took my breath.

"Jude," I said.

He was sitting up before I finished the word.

"How far apart?"

"I don't know. Six minutes. Maybe five."

"Okay."

He was already in his jeans.

He lit the lantern we kept on the dresser, and I saw his hands, and they were steady.

"Okay," he said again, to himself, and he picked up my bag.

Frances met us at the foot of the stairs in her bathrobe with her glasses on their cord.

"I'll call the hospital," she said. "You go."

"Frances."

"I'll be there in the second car."

"Wait," I said.

The pain came again, and I held the banister and breathed through it.

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