Let me warn you. This is probably the hardest section in the book. We’re about 2/3 through the story, and the main plot is about to unfold. This is the last section of background on the ladies, and part of how Stella got where she is, childless, without hope for a family.

Don’t read it if you aren’t ready, in a calm situation, and prepared to be a little upset.

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The door cracked open with a loud pop. Dane looked up from the sofa, where he sat watching television and drinking a beer.

“Hey baby. How was the emergency meeting? You doing okay?”

“Yeah.” Stella dropped her bag and keys by the door and flopped on the sofa. “Swig?”

He passed her the bottle. “Must have been a rough one. You never ask for a drink.”

Stella drank then screwed up her face. “Piss water. It’s because you drink piss water.”

Dane laughed. “Beer snob.”

“Alcoholic.”

He pulled her head to his cheek and they rocked together lightly. “You want to tell me what happened Pell Mell Stell? Did you tell everyone what happened?”

“Not at the meeting. Everyone had so many troubles.”

“They always do.”

“But Dot talked!” She sat up. “She told us so much!”

“But what about you baby? How many years you going to do this supporting other people before they help you?”

“I get my help by helping them. Besides,” she punched him in the chest. “I got you.”

“You do have that.” He set the bottle on a side table. “Let me hang on to you a minute.”

Stella felt her false brightness, her control, fall away as soon as he wrapped his arms around her. The sobs came again–damn–second time in a week! What was happening to her?

“Ah, Stell. You going through something? Is it the jewelry still?”

“No–I don’t think so. The babies just seem so very far away. And Kayleigh will have her Angelica soon. Any day.”

“I think we need to make a pilgrimage.”

Stella relaxed against him, the warmth of his skin seeping through to her cheek through the flannel shirt. “Really? We haven’t in a while.”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

They stood and held hands, heading to the back bedroom of the house, which they kept for storage. Dane flipped on the light and they looked over the stacks of boxes.

“Geez, where is it?” he asked.

“It’s in here somewhere.” Stella waded through stacks of magazines and lifted a blanket. “Yeah, here it is.”

“You got them both?”

Stella lifted a pink fabric-covered box. “Yes. The other is below it.”

“Hand them over.”

She passed the pink box, then a blue one over to his outstretched arms.

“Back in the living room?” he asked.

She nodded, already feeling the downward tug of emotion.

They walked through the hall. “Music too?” he asked.

She still could only nod.

He set the boxes on the coffee table and searched a moment through a case of CDs. Even though she sat on the sofa, out of view, she knew the one he was taking out. Country stuff. Reserved for this. Normally she couldn’t stomach the sap.

The first notes came out the speaker and she shifted down again. But the pilgrimage was purifying, reset them in a way.

“You ready, Pell?” Dane sat beside her, knees wide, hands clasped together.

“Yeah.”

“How far back you want to go?”

“Just to Angelica.”

“Okay.” He slid the pink box nearer and lifted the lid.

The pregnancy stick lay on top. Stella reached for it and lifted it out.

She remembered ripping the protective plastic off and making Dane hold it between her legs as she peed.

“This is kind of kinky,” he said, looking up at her with his crinkling eyes. He hadn’t had a beard then, smooth faced, young, although hard then, already, with all he’d been through the last decade.

But they were together again and got married in a flash despite her family’s uproar. Stella was 33 and they wanted to get on top of the baby plan after such a long wait, so she never even bothered with the Pill.

“This is it!” she said. “Pee a’comin’!”

The stream fell cleanly and hit the water. “I’m missing it!” he said, laughing. “How do you aim this thing!”

Her laughter made her pee jiggle, she could hear it splashing. “Keep trying or you’ll have to fork over another ten bucks for a new one!”

“Ack! We’re too poor for that!” He shifted his hand between her legs. “Got it!”

“Good thing you like water sports!” she said.

Her thighs had been so thin then, small and perfect even splayed out on the seat. She touched them self-consciously now, broad beneath her flowered dress, and passed the stick to Dane, who leaned against her on the sofa. “You peed on me!” he said.

“You loved it.”

He kissed her forehead. “I did.”

“God we were so happy when that line showed up.”

“Look, it’s still there.” She tapped on the test stick.

“Yep. Some things are permanent.”

Dane reached into the box. “Ah, your attempt at booties.” He pulled out a tangle of pink yarn.

“Now now. I tried!” Stella examined the bungled knitting. She’d started the booties the same day, sitting with a how-to book and beginner needles.

Seven glorious weeks passed between when she took the home test and when they went to the doctor for her first checkup. Dane made okay money at the refinery; they had good insurance. She didn’t mind her job as a clerk at a department store. They weren’t rich or anything, but it would be okay.

The doctor didn’t do a sonogram back then at the first visit, but he felt her belly, checked her urine, and said everything looked fine. They drew some blood to check her pregnancy hormone levels.

Two days later the bad part began.

“Your hCG level is a bit low,” the nurse said on the phone. “It’s not anything to worry about, as you may have just gotten your dates wrong. We’d like to check you again, today if possible.”

She’d gone in and given more blood. She had no idea what they meant about her dates. Two days later, another phone call. They sent her to a radiologist for a sonogram.

Dane took off to go with her and held her hand as they watched the screen. No heartbeat. Baby measuring at six weeks instead of ten.

They had walked out in a daze. The world whizzed by in a blur of color and sound, but the two of them moved in slow motion.

“I don’t want to go to work tomorrow,” Dane said.

“I don’t want to go home,” she said. “All the things we’ve already done.” She thought of the booties, the blanket, some stuffed animals they had already bought. Dane had come home every few days with something new.

“Let’s just drive,” she said. “See where we end up.”

“You okay with that? Don’t we need to see the doctor again?” He unlocked the car, but they stood outside it still.

“There will be time for doctors. Let’s just take a trip together. You, me, and the baby. Before she’s gone.”

“She?”

“Yeah. She’s a girl. I know this somehow.”

“Okay. I believe you. And yeah. Let’s go.”

They took off through Missouri and into the Ozarks near Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

They turned off the highway and into Lake Leatherwood Park. The bumpy road jolted them as they peered out the dusty windows into the lines of trees. You could only see a swath of sky above. Eventually they came to a clearing where empty RV hookups led to a circle drive, an office, and a dock with rental boats.

“We can just sleep in the car,” Dane said.

“That’s fine.”

They paid $12 for a spot in the circle meant for tents near the shore. Stella felt the first cramps around dusk.

“You okay, baby?” Dane came up behind her as she bent over. She felt like something was compressing her insides.

“No. I think something’s happening. Maybe the baby is coming.”

“Should we go to the hospital?”

“I don’t want to. I don’t want some strangers around me. I like it here. The sky. The lake. Trees.”

“Well, here, sit on my shirt.” Dane took off his flannel and spread it on the ground. Stella curled up on her side.

“Are you in pain, my poor Stell?”

“Not exactly.” The cramps came in waves, but none of them were unmanageable. “I will bleed though, I can feel it coming.”

“You got anything?”

“No. I didn’t think it would happen so quick.”

“Maybe knowing about it somehow makes it happen. Like your brain admitting it to the body.”

She began to cry then, tears spilling over her wrists. “I admit nothing.”

Dane rummaged through the trunk and found a picnic blanket and a roll of shop towels. She watched him from the ground as he pulled off the soiled outer layer and stuffed it back in the car.

“This might help.” He knelt beside her and set the roll within easy reach. Dark was rapidly falling. “I’m going to scavenge for firewood before it’s too dark to see.”

Stella was afraid to move. Each shift of her body brought her closer to some end. Dane returned with an armload of kindling, then crumpled some junk mail from the backseat to light.

He spread the blanket and she crawled over to it. He lay next to her and curled her back into his chest. She felt safe then and fell asleep.

The crunch of wood dropping on the fire woke her. Dane had moved away from her to put more wood on.

“Sorry, Stell. I tried to be quiet.”

She felt sore and stiff from sleeping on the hard ground. She moved to a sitting position. Immediately she felt a thickness pushing from her vagina.

“Oh God!” She stood and held her hand between her legs.

“What, baby!” Dane leapt over the fire to get to her.

She unfastened her jeans and yanked them down. “It’s coming!”

He knelt before her as she pulled down her panties. “Is it there?” she asked.

“I think so.” He helped her out of the clothes, carefully cradling the panties as she stepped out.

“Is it there?” They held the underwear close to the fire.

“Yes.”

She looked at him, his face tight and full of fear in the orange-red glow of the fire.

She reached behind her for the roll of shop towels. “Here, wrap her in this.”

They separated the small ball from the underwear. “I can’t make anything out,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

“I don’t know either.”

Hysteria rose in her. Crickets chirped. The fire snapped and crackled. Everything was disjointed, a shattered puzzle. Blood flowed out of her and she just let it drop into the dirt as she squatted by Dane, who peered at the black mass in the blue towel.

He sobbed, a big hard sound in the night. “What do I do with her? What is right to do?”

“Cover her,” Stella said. “Wrap her up tight.” Together they folded the corners of the square over baby.

“Should we bury her?”

“No! What if some animal digs her up?”

“Take her to the hospital? Shouldn’t we go now?”

Stella let go of the bundle and Dane pulled it to his chest. She tore off a section of the shop towels and stuffed them into the crotch of her jeans, then pulled them on.

“No. I don’t want that either.” She sat on the blanket without fastening her pants. “Here, give her to me.”

Dane moved close to her, resting against her side and shoulder. He passed her the bundle back again. She pressed it against her cheek. The towel was both soft and abrasive. It smelled of car oil and exhaust.

The weight of it comforted her. The baby had heft, thickness, and fit into her hand. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she said. “I think we should send her into the sky.”

Dane rested his head against her cheek. “Okay.”

“Is the fire hot enough?”

“I think so. I got some pretty big logs.”

“Let’s just sit here a minute.”

And they paused, stars overhead and the firelight washing them in orange, a far off sound of geese and the occasional snap of some small animal scampering through the trees beyond the clearing.

And, a while later, when they felt ready, they crept over to the fire, and set their baby in it. The fire burst into heat, red and orange and white and bits of blue. The shop towel curled up and charred and fell away. For a moment they heard a sizzle, then the flames calmed, settled back into the wood, and the night fell quiet and still.
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