Read the book summary if you need catching up to this point of the book.

Stella patted her purse. She was well armed for the party. Fifth of vodka. She could spike most any drink with Smirnoff and no one would be the wiser. No way to get through a baby shower without it.

She rang the bell. Another newborn in the family. Each one felt like a fist in the gut. But she could handle it. Her loss in life was no reason to resent others who got what she had once longed for.

“Aunt Stella!” Kayleigh herself opened the door, her belly preceding her by at least three feet. Stella smiled and hugged the girl, all of twenty years old and already popping out puppies.

“You look mighty fine, little Kayleigh!”

“I’m so glad you’re here!” She turned, no more than a mite with a basketball attached to her front, and announced. “Aunt Stell is here!”

Stella followed her into the room, where a dozen other women sat around on furniture and folding chairs. Her sister-in-law Patty, Kayleigh’s mother, watched her through narrowed eyes.

She knows, Stella thought, once again touching her bag. She remembers.

She would not get drunk this time. Just a few nips to take the edge off. She normally didn’t drink much at all, but this added to the glory of the alcohol in these moments. I’m a cheap drunk! She stifled a giggle. Patty cleared her throat and Stella straightened her expression.

“I think everybody’s here now!” Kaleigh chirped. An engagement ring on her hand flickered in the light from the sliding glass doors. Not quite going to make it to be legit. The party was actually a combination baby/wedding shower but since the groom had a fully outfitted house, everyone had gone the baby direction.

Other than Stella. She laid her silver package amidst the pink bows and pastels. The crystal frames could be used for either purpose, she reasoned. But no need to step foot in one of those torturous baby superstores.

She lowered onto the overstuffed chambray sofa. The room was so Patty, she thought. Shabby chic, trendy, but cheaply outfitted. Borderline tawdry, actually, with its fraying white lace cloths and bleached muslin drapery.

“Time for games,” Kayleigh said, bouncing from chair to chair with a roll of toilet paper. “Mama isn’t much for silliness, so I’m spearheading the fun at my own shower!”

Everyone glanced at Patty, who sat stiffly in an armchair, lips pursed. She nodded at the crowd and then waved her hand dismissively. “You guys go on and have your fun.”

Kayleigh gestured to the roll in game show host prize style. “Okay, the object of this game is to figure out how long a string of toilet paper it would take to go around my belly.” Kayleigh turned, model-style, her hand on her hip, so everyone could assess her girth.

Stella sighed. She’d get through this one game and then steal away for her first bathroom break. She eyed the punch bowl and other drinks on the far table. Ah, good. Plain punch without any of that nasty sherbert inside. It will work quite well with vodka.

Kayleigh bounced from guest to guest, passing the Charmin. Stella recognized the quilting as she held the soft white roll in her hand. Stella stood, comparing her bulk to her niece. “Well, I think you might have me beat for the time being,” she said loudly, her voice echoing off the wood paneling. Too much, she thought. And she hadn’t even started drinking.

She wrapped a length of tissue around her own belly, then tore off the strip. “I guess we’ll find out for sure in a minute,” she said, softening her tone. “It’ll be a good laugh.”

“Oh Aunt Stell, you’re too much.” Kayleigh tucked a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear and accepted the roll back.

Too much of many things, she thought as she plopped back on the sofa, folding the toilet paper into squares.

When everyone had taken a turn, other than Patty, who sat like she was impaled on a corn cob, Kayleigh danced around the room, allowing each woman to encircle her with their guess.

Titters rippled through the room at the outrageous length of tissue that wrapped the girl two times over. The next ended well before reaching all the way around.

Kayleigh paused before Stella. “Okay, Auntie Stell. Let’s see how we compare.”

Stella stood and pinned one end of her stream of toilet paper beneath Kayleigh’s palm. She walked around the girl, tugging lightly on the strip to pull it taut without tearing the squares apart.

She made her way back to the front. The last square landed neatly with one inch of overlap on the end.

“Wow. Look at that! I think you won!” Kayleigh dropped the tissue on the floor to wrap her arms around her.

Great. She and the pregnant girl had the same waistline.

“Get her prize!” Kayleigh said, waving at another young woman by the food table drenched in pink cakes, pink cookies, petit fours with pink bows, and strawberry tarts.

The girl presented her with a baby bottle festooned with Elmo. Stella placed it in the gift basket for Kayleigh, as was expected.

“Let’s do the one-handed diaper race!” Kayleigh called, snatching a life-sized doll and a stack of Pampers.

Stella slapped her hands on her knees. That was enough for her. She picked up her purse and stopped by the drink table, splashing a touch of punch into the tiny cup. Damn, they wouldn’t have anything bigger.

She stepped into the kitchen, smiling and nodding over the bar as she flipped open her purse and pulled out the flask. Patty’s back was to her, fortunately, or the old shrew might actually walk over and call her out. If so, she’d just go to the bathroom. But no use starting that number early in the party. She might need that escape later.

She drained the cup and poured another half glass before replacing the flask and stepping back out. Another hefty splash of punch tinged the vodka pink enough to pass muster. She settled back on the sofa only after Grandmother Ellen was declared the winner of the diaper race.

“Who knew you still had that in you, Grandma!” Kayleigh said, her cheeks flushing red. “I know who to call in the dead of night!”

“Don’t even try it!” Grandmother said. Stella smiled at her, Dane’s stepmother. His real mom had died when he was twenty, but his dad had done right by the family by bringing on Ellen. Her feisty no nonsense pared with to-the-bone compassion has served them all well during those hard years with the infertility, and certainly the decade before, when all their troubles had really started with the miscarriage of baby Angelica.

Yep, she was a fine woman and Stella was glad to have her around. Ellen glanced over at Stella, as if catching a whiff of her thoughts, dropped her eyes to the drink in her hand, and winked.

Stella smiled at her. She’d been better than Stella’s own mother, who’d spewed every trite expression ever taken down in Bartlett’s little quote book. “It’s God’s will,” was a favorite. So was “All good things come to those who wait.”

If she’d told her just relax and she’d get pregnant one more time, Stella would have shoved the basal thermometer up her mother’s nose. They hadn’t dropped ten grand per IVF round because she needed to cut back on her work, or stay home more, or get a massage.

When Dane suggested they move to Texas to be near his family and put a little space between them and her mom, she’d agreed. Best decision they ever made. So much of their past had been tied up in Minnesota, none of it good.

“Who’s starving? I’m starving!” Kayleigh announced, bouncing back toward Stella. “I got to see if I can beat Aunt Stell’s waistline before the baby comes!”

Stella crossed an arm over her stomach in the flowered tent-like dress and downed the rest of her drink. Good God, she loved that kid but this was getting to be too much.

The women filed past the pink pastry parade. She’d skip the sweets in favor of liquor. She needed to get her buzz on to manage the ooohs and ahs of gift opening.

“So, Kayleigh,” Ellen asked. “Did you ever decide on a name for the baby?”

Kayleigh swallowed a forkful of cake and said, “Yeah, Grandma. I think Paul and I finally agreed on one.”

The murmuring in the room quieted down.

“Well, do tell us,” Patty said, her frown deepening. She’s irked, Stella thought. She wanted to be the first to know.

“Well,” Kayleigh said, flushed with delight in the attention. “At first we thought something like Patricia, for mom,” she gestured to her mother and smiled somewhat patronizingly. “Then we tried various combinations of Kayla and Kelly and Lee like mine.” She glanced around the room, savoring the stillness, all eyes on her. “But we’ve decided on Angelica!”

Stella stomach heaved and she felt certain she’d throw up right there on the shabby chic armrest. Her face burned and what started as panic quickly sizzled into rage.

“How dare you!” She stood, sputtering, and her cup fell to the floor. “How could you do that?”

She looked around, but no one seemed to know what she was talking about.

“Oh do sit down, Stella. You’re drinking again.” Patty crossed her arms across her chest. “Don’t wreck another family event.”

Kayleigh’s doe eyes filled with tears. “Aunt Stell, we worried you’d be mad. But we really loved the name. And it’s not like you really got to use it.”

Stella stumbled through the room, clutching her purse with one hand and the amethyst on her necklace in the other. Several of the women were mumbling to each other.

“What is she talking about?”

“What in the world?”

“It’s the name.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

Grandmother Ellen stood, wavering over a cane. “Kayleigh meant no harm,” she said. “We’re dreadful sorry you’re upset about it. Stella, we love you and recognize your distress. I think you naming your first lovely child that when Kayleigh was small probably put some impression in her head and she just came to love the name without thinking about it.”

Kayleigh bent over her belly, full on crying now. Stella paused. “I trust your wisdom in this, Ellen,” she said. “But that doesn’t make it any easier, or any less wrong to me.” She looked around the room, women all casting their eyes to the floor. “But none of you ever treated my babies like they were real or that I might consider myself a mother. And I done sat around and took it for ten years. But this here just beats all.”

She opened the front door and stepped through.

The world spun in a whirl of blue sky and green grass. She couldn’t drive. She knew this. She opened her car and sat, leaning her head on the steering wheel. Maybe she should call Dane to pick her up. She checked her watch. An hour until he got off shift. Damn.

Someone tapped on her window. She turned, bleary eyed, and peered out.

Grandmother Ellen. “Let me in, you twit!” she said, but her eyes were merry.

Stella couldn’t roll down the window without putting the key in, so she opened the door.

“Scoot!”

Stella moved over on the broad front seat of her Cadillac. The diminutive woman settled behind the wheel. “So this is what it feels like to drive a Caddy,” she said. “Your father-in-law never gave me anything bigger than a Volkswagen.” She held out her hands for the keys.

Stella raised her eyebrow. “I intended to sober up before the end of the party.”

“I know. I seen you do this a dozen times. Now give the keys to an old woman.”

Stella passed her the chain. Ellen tossed her metal walking cane in the back and started the engine. “Nobody’s going to say I’m too old!”

They rocketed across the street and Stella clutched the door, grabbing for the seatbelt. “I feel like a cheeseburger!” Ellen called over the roar of the radio. “They didn’t have anything fit to eat at that lame party!”

“It was all pink!” Stella called back, finally snapping the belt into place and turning down the radio.

“Those girls get a theme and they run with it,” Ellen said. “What is WITH all those worn out draperies?”

“Shabby chic.” Stella stared out the window at the houses whizzing by. Ellen knew where the gas was.

“Shabby crap. That son of mine sure did pick a doozy,” she said. “Hopefully Kayleigh’s not too late to save.”

They rode on for a spell. Stella tried not to wince as Ellen slammed on the brakes for red lights and floored it on green. “Where we headed?” Stella asked.

“I already called that husband of yours.”

“Oh?”

“He’ll be out to meet us.” Ellen glanced at Stella, then faced the road again. “You know, Kayleigh asked me if she should name the baby Angelica. She was pretty darn worried about it.”

“Then why’d she do it?”

“She couldn’t explain it. She just felt like it was special somehow, like the baby told her to call it that.”

The light shone straight through the old woman’s thinning hair and edged her in white. Stella could see every wrinkle, each smile line, deep creases thinning out until they disappeared into her pores. “I guess I’ll have to live with it.”

“That’s what we do. For family anyway. Husbands we can do without. Totally ditchable if they’re no good. But kids, aunts, nieces. They’re keepers.”

They pulled into the main parking lot of the refinery. Dane stood by the front entrance, leaning against a metal column.

“Isn’t he the most beautiful thing?” Stella said. He walked toward them, a lanky off centered stride, his hair gold red on his head and face.

“Yes, he is. I’m glad to call him a son of mine, even if I got him late. And I’m glad for you. You two would have made fine children.” Ellen reached to clasp Stella’s hand. “But you two are fine anyway.”

Dane dropped Ellen back off at the party and they drove home in silence. Stella stretched out on the flat broad seat, her head in his lap. He twirled her hair between his fingers as he always did.

“You gonna say what happened? Ellen just said she needed me.”

“I’m sorry you had to take off.”

“Just half an hour. Larry went on shift early for me. He was already there.”

Stella watched the minute tick by on the clock in the dash. Silly Caddy had an old fashioned analog clock. It seemed out of place. She sighed. “Kayleigh is naming her baby Angelica.”

“Whew.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t seem like too good an idea, naming your kid after a dead one.”

“No, it don’t.”

“She sure about it?”

“Ellen said Kayleigh thought the baby was telling her to call it that.”

“Good Lord.”

“I know.”

“It’s been ten years since then. You think we’re ever going to get over that?”

“Doesn’t seem like it.”

“Yeah, I don’t reckon we will.”

“Dane?”

“Yeah?”

“I want to go to the shop.”

“What for?”

“I just need to.”

He drifted across the lanes of the highway to exit early. The strip mall was deserted on a Sunday afternoon, all small stores that stayed closed to give their owners a rest day, like her.

She opened the back door and headed straight for the cabinet where her bracelets lay. The worktables were strewn with amethyst and peridot in varying shapes. She’d made the first shipment on the big order but had many more pieces to make for the second.

She opened the little doors and slipped both bracelets on her wrist. Dane came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “What’s up, Pell Mell?”

“I don’t know. I feel this unsettledness. This anxiety.”

“The booze?”

“No.” She pulled away and circled the tables, fingering random beads. “Maybe I’m worried I’ve crossed the line.”

“What line?”

“With the babies. Maybe I shouldn’t be exploiting them.”

“How do you mean?”

Stella picked up two fists full of beads. “This! I started with each piece as a little monument to them. Every bead was a moment of their lives, every finished piece a monument. I prayed over them, cried over them, set them aside with love and hope and some sort of belief that the women who bought them carried my babies around with them, that they had somehow broken into little pieces and got to meet other people, maybe even people they might have known as they lived.”

She sat on the work chair, letting the beads trickle wildly through her fingers, many rolling and dropping to the floor. “I would assess each person who bought something–maybe that would have been Angelica’s kindergarten teacher, or this one was the lady who’d have cut her hair.” She pushed beads into a pile.

“Now I’m doing it for money! Nothing but money! I’ve taken the very thing I once did out of love and turned it into profit! I’ve sold them out! I’ve sold their souls!”

She swept her arm along the table, knocking everything onto the floor.

“Stella!”

“I’m awful! I used them! I used my babies!” She reached into the basket of finished pieces carefully packaged in plastic bags. “I can’t believe it! I’m horrible! I’m awful! I didn’t deserve them!” She tore at the bags, ripping them open and smashing the jewelry against the tables. Beads flew across the room, bits of silver and clasps disappearing into the dust in the corners.

Dane grabbed her arms and pressed them against her sides in a full body hug. “Stell! Stop! You didn’t! It’s not like that!”

“It is! It is! And now nobody cares enough about them any more to even leave their names alone!” She leaned over the table, forehead to the hard surface. Dane still held her down, pulling her close to him.

“You loved them, Stell. You did. Nothing you do now can change that, and nobody can take that love away.”

She sobbed then, a rare thing, embarrassing and loud. He relaxed his grip and turned her to him, pressing her head into his chest. “It’s okay, Stell. It’s okay you made the bracelets, and it’s okay you’ve done well by them. It’s not what you do with your hands here that matters anymore. It’s what you keep in your heart.”