_____________________________

Melinda sliced the potato in wild whacks, lifting the butcher knife high overhead and slamming it down against the marble cutting board. The effort felt good, so she raised the knife again, not even fearing the safety of her other hand as the metal whizzed through the air and connected with the vegetable.

Jake opened the door leading to the garage and passed through, blowing into his palms. “Chilly for this time of year,” he said.

“It’s not yet spring,” Melinda said, slicing calmly now that she had an audience. “Easter is a few weeks off still.”

“I know where I can warm my hands,” he said, coming up behind her and sliding his hands across her belly.

Melinda stiffened but disguised it with another hard cut against the board. “You haven’t asked about my meeting.”

Jake released her and leaned against the cabinet, crossing his arms across his broad chest. “Well, how’d it go?”

“I saw that teenager again. The one that was in the hospital the night…the same night we were.”

“Really? She lose her baby too?”

“Yes. Premature labor. He lived three hours.”

“Tough break.” Jake plucked an apple from the bowl on the cabinet and bit it. “Hopefully she’ll take better care of herself next time.”

Melinda set the knife down with a clatter. “Don’t say that. When you suggest Tina lost her baby through her own fault, then it means our baby died because of something I did.”

He tossed the half eaten apple in the sink. “Hey, I’m sorry. You know I don’t mean that. I know you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You seemed to think so that night.”

He embraced her again and this time she didn’t hide her reaction–the stiffening and recoil.

“Baby, I’m sorry. I lost my head. I was upset.”

“If I can’t count on you when things are tough, what good are you?”

Jake let out a long exhale. “Whew, Melinda. I don’t know. That’s quite a thing to say.”

She turned back to the cutting board and pushed the potatoes around with her hand.

“Hey. I know what always used to help. Come on.” He took her hand, then picked up a dish towel and wiped it clean before threading her fingers through his.

He led her out of the kitchen, past the formal dining room in its crystal coldness, across the formal living room in its modern black and silver gleam, and through the tiled foyer to the stairs.

She knew where he was headed. You can do this, she thought. It’s just sex. Just an act. You always liked it before.

But every sentence of her pep talk burst into rebuttal. You’re not on birth control. He might refuse the condom; he hates them so. What if you get pregnant again?

She couldn’t manage it if she did. The wounds were too fresh. Even though the doctor had told her she could have sex as soon as she wanted, she didn’t feel ready. She’d held Jake off since the surgery, but now he obviously felt the sexual disconnect was the root of their marriage problems.

He left the bedroom lights off but their passing kicked on the bathroom motion sensor. The white tile gleamed and the open door threw a rectangular glow across the bed.

Melinda’s pulse throbbed in her throat. She could barely swallow. Relax. Come on. You can do this. He’s your husband.

Jake sat on the bed and pulled her close to him. “See, this is all we need. I know you’ve been through a lot. I’ll be so careful. It will help.”

He kissed her neck and pushed aside the collar of her blouse. She faked it, pretending to relax into him. He worked loose her clothes and pulled her onto the bed. She thought of other things–the cherry crib on the floor of the nursery, the potatoes still downstairs, plans for dinner. She only re-engaged when he was naked and lying over her.

“Don’t forget the condom, please. There’s still a little risk for infection until I’ve had a period.”

It was not an out and out lie, actually, but an exaggeration of something she’d read. Jake stroked her hair and for once, thankfully, didn’t argue but reached into the drawer of the nightstand.

The condoms were lubricated, a secondary benefit, as she worried he’d be able to sense her reluctance if she were too tight and dry. He was mercifully quick since it had been so long, and as soon as he pulled away, she rolled off the bed and headed to the bathroom.

The light had gone out but as she neared, it kicked on again. The sudden burst felt like a flash bulb close to the face. She blinked and her stomach lurched. The white tile blasted its reflection and when she opened her eyes, she saw the trail of blood from her bare feet to the toilet, red and wet, smeared from her frantic crawl across the floor.

She bit her hand, afraid to let Jake know she was afraid, that she was losing it so hard. He couldn’t bear her weakness and would try to argue it out of her–use logic and fear tactics to bully her into admitting it had been a ploy or some confusion. He’d want her to laugh it off.

She blinked again and again but the blood remained. She knew the cleaning service had bleached the grout weeks ago and restored the pristine pearl, but still this vision of it would not go away. She stared at it, her scarlet insanity, until all she could do was turn away and crawl back to her husband.

In this scene, we flash back to when Tina came home from the hospital and discovered Arnie had not just ditched her in the emergency room, but had left her life completely.

_______________________________________

 Tina bumped the door to her garage apartment open with her hip and flipped on the light. She was thankful her parents hadn’t pressed her lately to move back to the main house. She didn’t think she could manage being in such proximity to them again.

She dumped her bag on the ledge between the living and kitchen areas. The handle caught on her wrist, stripping the tape off one of her bandages.

“Owwwie! Crap!” she shouted, pressing the gauze back down against the fiery burn of her stitches. “Don’t ever slice yourself!” she called to the ceiling. “It hurts like a mother!”

She rounded the short wall and braced her arm over the sink as if blood might come pouring out any second. She peeled back her orange sleeve and examined the bandage. Half the adhesive had worked loose.

She tugged at the gauze and tape, revealing the pale swollen skin marred by three clean distinct lines, now crisscrossed with some bizarre mending tape. Steri strips, or something, they had called them. Better than Frankenstein arms, she thought. Black stitches on red welts on white flesh. Ick. Thank God for progress.

She walked down the hall to the bathroom, where the light was better. Leaning her arm against the chipped porcelain sink then spotting her haggard face in the mirror made her vision blur and every emotion she’d felt a week ago crashed back into her.

She lurched for the cabinet where she’d kept the box of razors. They were gone, of course, her parents had certainly scoured the apartment for anything sharp. She sat on the toilet lid, still holding her arm on the sink, and leaned her forehead into the crook of her elbow.

It had been so easy. She and Arnie had always kept razor blades around, as he sometimes painted on glass and needed them to scrape away mistakes.

She had come home from the hospital, clutching the Polaroids the hospital had given her of Peanut. Her parents wanted her back in her room at home, but she’d felt certain Arnie would be waiting for her, and she wanted to show him the pictures.

The baby had been so tiny, so feathery light. He’d actually been able to breathe for a while, each inhale a great movement of his entire body, a gulp of air, a shudder on the way out. They’d wrapped him in a white blanket with a blue stripe, just one small white disk with a wire attached to his chest, and laid him under a heat lamp. She’d touched his tiny cheek, but not stroked, as the doctors said his skin was very sensitive and to over stimulate him would cause pain.

They stayed this way for two hours, her leaning over the glass wall of the crib, hand warm under the light and resting lightly on his back, until the monitor beeped a warning.

A nurse stopped in and said something about apnea and called in a doctor. Peanut still took random breaths, now spaced very far apart. The baby doc came in and removed the disk and handed Peanut to her. “It won’t be long now,” he said. “You can hold him until then. It won’t hurt him.”

She let her mom and dad take a turn, but her mom got too distraught and fled the room. Her father followed her shortly and Tina ended up alone on the bed with Peanut. She pressed him into her neck, her hand on his back, often holding her own breath until she felt the shudder of his. She kissed his small forehead and after a while realized she had continued breathing when he had totally stopped.

She tucked him next to her on the bed and fell asleep then, the stressful hours now passed, labor, delivery, panic and fear, her overbearing parents and Arnie dashing out–all behind her. Peanut was still warm against her cheek as she dozed off. Sometime later a nurse woke her and said she would have to take him away.

Maybe her parents should not have left her alone with the Poloroids, but she had insisted, even when it became clear Arnie had moved all his stuff out.

She’d stumbled to the bathroom and saw he’d left one drawing on the wall, his rendition of what he thought the baby might look like. This image was so different from his others–all Goth women and red streaks on black. He’d outlined the baby in pencil based on the sonograms, then colored in the delicate skins and features with soft chalk.

The one work of his he hadn’t taken with him was their baby.

The world had rushed at her too hard. She felt completely out of control, her future whizzing through her body–back to the old school, the mountain of problems, bad grades, attitude, teachers who didn’t like her, mean kids. She’d been so happy at the alternative school, accepted, unique. She and Arnie were artists and revered over there. Girls without supportive boyfriends were so jealous.

But on that day she came home from the hospital, all she knew was that her baby was dead, her boyfriend gone, and she’d soon be booted back to the horror of public school. She washed her face and hands and the gleam of water on her white wrists seemed too pristine, too pearl. The razors lay neatly in the chest of art supplies and she stopped thinking, stopped rationalizing anything at all. The act wasn’t about killing herself, not in that moment, or about escaping, it was about marring the perfection of her arms. She was tainted, her baby had died, she was unloved and unwanted. She felt she should be marked by this–that her physical body should bear the scars of the death of her happiness.

She leaned her pale arm against the sink and didn’t hesitate once. Three sharp lines straight down from mid arm to wrist. Before she could feel weak or frightened, she switched the blade to the left hand and made three more on the right.

The blood didn’t pour like she thought it would. The lines raised to the surface, first white, then pink, then a thin red etching lifted up. She hadn’t been consistent in the pressure, so some parts bled before others, creating beads that slid down the curve. Then one of the cuts opened wide and pulsed out blood with every heartbeat. It streamed out more like she’d imagined it would. She sat amazed by the color, red on white, so bright and harsh. She still did not feel woozy. Only the sting of the cut felt different than before she’d done it. She stood up and that movement made the blood really come forth, and now it flowed down her palm and off the tips of her fingers.

She realized then she might die. She sat on the toilet lid and tried to decide. Did she call an ambulance and save herself, or did she lie in warm water and let the blood flow sweetly out? She could wake up with Peanut. No one could take him away from her this time.

Her arms hurt something awful now and she did begin to see stars–pinpricks of light. The color was draining out of her vision–everything turning black and white. Some instinct took over and she stumbled into the living room and snatched her cell phone out of her bag, leaving streaks of red everywhere. She dialed 911 and managed to tell them what she’d done and where she lived. When the paramedics arrived, she was still lightly conscious and even smiled at a cute one. He would make a good dad, she vaguely remembered whispering before her memory ran out.

Tina exhaled in an elongated rush and fingered a steri strip. She wouldn’t do it again, no way. The ordeal had been entirely too much trouble–parent freak-outs, another visit to the same hospital, then the sophomoric case workers who insisted she go to therapy and the pregnancy loss group.

Actually, she was glad about that part. She stood and peered into the mirror, tugging on one of her spiked ponies. She felt real grown up there and Melinda was nice. She felt like someone who had been through something, and everyone acknowledged it. Nobody thought she was crazy or a loser. She could say anything she wanted.

The baby’s drawing still hung over the towel rack. Tina lifted it off its hook and hugged it close to her. Peanut had been a real person. He’d actually lived. She had pictures to prove it and he’d even had a dad for a while–a dad who’d been interested enough in him to draw him before he was born.

If only he’d stuck around a bit to actually see him. He’d regret it one day, if he didn’t already. Tina didn’t care so much that he’d ditched her. Boys in high school were a drag like that. But to miss your kid’s entire life. That’s the kind of thing you always end up wishing you’d done different.

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

 _______________________

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.
�

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.”

Barry had handled the news with concern mainly for her. He’d held her hand when the doctors insisted she terminate the pregnancy.

They’d sent her to an abortion clinic, as the regular clinic couldn’t perform the surgery. Barry had shielded her from the others in the waiting room, mostly teens, anxious with their parents.

“They’re getting rid of their babies, when we’ve lost ours,” she said to him as the nurse called back another young woman, this one hanging on to her teenage boyfriend.

He’d squeezed her arm. “It’s hard I know. But they’ve got their stories, their hardships too.”

Dot nodded and leaned on his shoulder. The baby was kicking her. “Hey, feel him,” she said. “We won’t get to much longer.”

He put his hand on her belly. “Hey Bubba,” he said, leaning close to her distended stomach. “You probably can’t hear us, but we’re here. We’re right here.”

Dot pushed his hand hard against her belly. “Please tell me you can feel him. I know he doesn’t kick very hard as small as he is, but tell me you can feel him.”

Barry looked straight at her with his crystal blue eyes. “Here, let’s try this.” He ran his hand beneath her shirt, oblivious to the people around them, the clerk at the desk, the ding of the elevator outside in the hall.

“There it is again,” she said, and shifted his hand. “Please tell me you can feel him, this once.”

Barry closed his eyes and held firm, his hand warm on her skin. “Is it small, like bubbles breaking on the surface of water?”

“Yes.” Dot turned her face into his shoulder. She had told herself she could be strong in this, but she didn’t feel strong. She was afraid to start crying, afraid she couldn’t stop.

“I feel it, Dot. I do. It’s Bubba.”

The nurse called her name. She stood as if in a dream, the scene had gone liquid around her. They couldn’t do this. Bubba was alive, and they were going to kill him. Her knees gave out and she stumbled. Barry caught her and wrapped an arm hard around her waist. “Here, I’ll help you,” he said.

“I see God,” she said. The nurse had opened the door and light poured from overhead. Her wet eyes magnified its intensity and she was momentarily blinded.

“He’s here to watch over you and the baby,” Barry whispered.

“He’s here to carry out his punishment,” she said. “My child is dying for my sins.”

Barry led her into a room behind the nurse and seemed to concentrate on the instructions. Dot quit listening. She could not follow the stream of words. She looked around the room–a table with stirrups on the end, not little ones for feet like at the doctor, but big ones for your knees, like the ones where she’d had her babies. It seemed wrong, somehow, to have those kind here.

The room was partitioned, and beyond the half wall she could see crates of glass bottles with big open mouths. Did they put the babies in those jars? Surely not. Surely they wouldn’t be clear. Surely they couldn’t do that–look at the babies in jars.

The nurse left and Barry helped her undress and settle on the table. “Why won’t they let us just have him?” she said. “Why do we have to do this?”

“Baby, the doctors, I guess they just know. They said it’s dangerous, that you could die. You got all those kids, Dot. You can’t risk it.”

Dot rolled away from him. “I can’t see you no more, after today, Barry. It may be a risk of dying to see this baby, but seeing you another day is risking my burning in everlasting hell. I will have to work hard every day of my life to earn forgiveness.”

“Dot, you’ve been talking this way every since we found out. I love you. I want to take care of you. We’re going to get you divorced and get this all straight. You’ll get right with God.”

She couldn’t see him, facing the half wall and the jars. “You really think those jars are for the babies?” she asked.

He expelled a rush of air. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know.”

The nurse returned. “Here’s Dr. Glenn. He’ll be taking care of you.”

“Hello, Dot,” the doctor said.

Dot turned on her back. “Are we sure I have to do this?”

“Your doctors sent you to me. That means they were sure. We’re going to fit you with some monitors while we do this–blood pressure, heart rate. You should have taken some medications this morning. Did you get those?”

Dot nodded.

“I’m going to check your laminaria,” he said. “Make sure you’re well dilated. They went in okay yesterday?”

“It was a little uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel it once they were done.”

The doctor helped lift her feet in the stirrups. “You might want to lose a little weight before getting pregnant again,” he said. “Not healthy.”

Dot washed cold. They were taking her baby before her eyes and he wanted to talk about her weight? She turned to look at Barry, who sat stiffly in the side chair, his knuckles white on his grip on the arm rests. He wants to punch him, she thought. But he won’t. He’s too good a guy. Buster would’ve punched him.

“It all looks good,” he said. “I’ll be back in just a few minutes. The nurse will start the gas.”

A large woman in pink scrubs fitted her with an arm cuff and checked her blood pressure. Then they placed a monitor over her belly. Bubba’s heartbeat flooded the room, a rapid whomp whomp. The nurse flicked off the sound. The screen still silently showed the pulse of it, a small corresponding number like the one on the sonogram blinking in the corner.

184. 178. 192.

Dot closed her eyes until she felt the nurse touching her face. “Try not to cry,” she said. “It will interfere with the gas.” The woman fitted a rubbery mask over her nose and mouth.

Barry took her hand and she concentrated on that one touch, the warmth, every callus, each rough spot in his skin. Had she just told him she couldn’t see him anymore? It seemed the right thing at that moment. But his being here felt right in this one.

The door opened and the doctor came in again. “Is she prepped and ready?” he asked the nurse.

“Yes.”

He sat on a stool between her knees. She felt the cool slide of metal inside her and the opening of the instrument. She looked over at Barry, who sat on the edge of the chair, leaning hard to hold her hand.

“Does she have to be awake for this?” Barry asked. “I didn’t know she would be awake.”

“There’s no need for a general for this procedure,” he said. “It’s expensive and riskier.”

Barry looked at Dot and drew his eyebrows together in concern. She shrugged.

“Here we go, Dot,” the doctor said. “You’re going to feel a little pressure, but no pain.”

“Is the baby going to come out alive?” Barry asked.

The doctor paused a moment. “No,” he said. “We are not dilating her to get it out whole. That would require labor and delivery.”

“It’s going to be in pieces?” Barry turned ashen.

“Yes.” He and the nurse exchanged a glance. “If you think you’d rather not be here, you can wait outside.”

Barry leaned his head on the arm leading over to Dot. “No, I’ll be here.”

The doctor settled back down and Dot struggled with the rubber pieces on her face. She felt claustrophobic, but the air was hot and sweet. She felt mirth rising, a bubble of funny, and she stifled a giggle.

How could they do this? Make her want to laugh when she should cry? She looked over at the nurse, who scowled slightly, as a warning. She looked past her at the monitor.

186. 178. 182.

The doctor reached beside him for a long tube. She couldn’t see much more, as the blue paper sheet blocked her view. She turned back to the monitor and felt Bubba moving within her, slowly, like a wave.

The pressure began low near her vagina and pushed up, as if she were swelling, then reached higher and higher until she could feel it near her belly button, then even higher by her rib cage. The graph on the monitor began spiking and she couldn’t tear her eyes from the screen.

196.

186.

0.

In chapter one, you go through Melinda’s miscarriage and Tina’s premature birth.

In chapter two you met Stella, the group leader, and go to the first meeting of the miscarriage group, where Melinda and Tina realize they lost their babies the same night.

In chapter three you follow home group member Dot, who lives with her five children in a trailer park. Her philandering truck driver husband has been gone for two years, and she has fallen in love with another man, accidentally gotten pregnant and lost the baby. Now her husband calls saying he’s coming back.

We then turn to Janet’s story. She’s the director of a school for the gifted and about to hurriedly marry her boyfriend to avoid a scandal of her single pregnancy when she loses her baby. Marcus asks her to marry him anyway, but she can’t decide what to do.

Stella’s husband visits her shop and she surprises him with news of a huge sale. They “celebrate” in the back, but as so often happens in their moments of joy, her big bear of a husband breaks down, upset at his role in their never being able to have a family.

Chapter Four opens to Tina looking through her high school yearbook. She’s decided she needs a new boy to father a new child so she can go back to her alternative high school. Her old school is torture, the students are horrible to her. She finally realizes only an older man can help her, so she decides to search for one on the internet.

After this we find Melinda preparing to go to the next meeting of the group, disturbed by her hallucinations where she still sees the trail of blood leading from the toilet.

Here is the second meeting of the group and the introduction of Gabriella.

______________________________________________ 

Stella and Janet had already arrived, dragging chairs into place.

“Hello Melinda,” Stella said. She was breathing hard just from the effort of moving the furniture. Melinda could see she had once been a real beauty–still was, but the fineness of her features were softened with the extra weight. “You been doing all right?”

“Yes!” Melinda recognized the falseness of her automatic reply, and added, “Well, at least everyone thinks so. I can manage to put on a good front.”

“Fronts are good,” Stella said. “Just don’t fool yourself into thinking the front goes all the way to the bone.”

Melinda nodded. Janet paused for a moment, chair in hand, then shook her head and set it down.

“Are you okay?” Melinda asked. She couldn’t remember the woman’s name.

“Yeah. Oh. No.”

“Sit down, girl,” Stella said, settling heavily into her own chair. “Spill it.”

“Marcus–my boyfriend–asked me to marry him.”

“That’s great!” Melinda said.

Janet stared at her hands.

“Or not.” Stella said. “You said no?”

“I didn’t answer. I didn’t say anything.”

“You have misgivings,” Stella said.

“I don’t know what I have.”

“Is he good to you?” Stella smoothed her glittery blue skirt over her knees. “He’s got to be good to you.”

“He is. He is. He’s just so…emotional.”

Melinda glanced at Stella. She seemed to always have wise words, but no one spoke.

Stella sighed. “Babies are emotional things. Men sometimes can be. The good ones are.” She reached over and patted Janet’s wrist. “Give it some time. Your recovery has dragged out, and this is going to affect your thinking. The hormones can do more jacking with your brain than anyone gives them credit for.”

Janet applied a false smile. “Yes, I am sure. And the bleeding goes on.”

“Okay. Now you’ve called your doctor again, right?”

“No.” Janet clasped her fingers together. “Perhaps it is time I found a new one.”

“He’s not listening?”

“They just tell me the same thing over and over.”

The door flew open and Tina sailed into the room. “I’m late, sorry!”

“You’re okay, child. Sit.” Stella motioned to the circle. “We’re just gabbing.”

“What about?” Tina sprawled in the chair, striped legs in every direction. Melinda smiled inwardly. She seemed totally changed from two weeks ago.

“Doctors, mainly. And men.”

“I’m trying to find one of those myself,” Tina said.

“A doctor or a man?” Stella also seemed bemused by the teen’s turnaround.

“A man.”

“Oh?” Everyone turned to look at her now. Melinda felt a niggle of alarm.

“Yeah. I figure my life got thrashed when I lost the baby. The good school. My parents want me to move back in. Arnie ditched me. I want all that back. Well, other than Arnie. He’s a putz. I’m looking for an older man. One who can help me with the baby.”

The heater kicked on, a light roar that blasted a dry wave of hot air over their heads. Stella shifted in her chair. Melinda toyed with her pants leg, finger pressing the crease.

Stella held Tina’s gaze firm and sure. “I think that if this is what you want, you should move forward, with great care and serious thought. Do it wisely, and consider every possibility, but certainly follow your heart on it.”

Melinda’s face burned. How could she encourage her? She wanted to speak up and contradict her.

Stella’s eyes moved around the circle, resting on each of them. She misses nothing, Melinda thought. She knows we don’t approve.

“I know you other ladies may not agree. But there is only one path we can follow and that is the one we ourselves choose. It doesn’t matter if we’re young or if others think we don’t know what we’re doing. To do what anyone else thinks we should do is the big mistake. And in this group, well, sometimes we’re the only ones who know where we’ve been and where we need to go. I will try to never disapprove. This is the one place where you’re safe to speak your mind, no matter what’s in it.”

Melinda shifted back in her chair, trying to release the tension in her back and neck. She did feel better. At least she did have a husband, a family, security.

The door opened again and Dot hurried in. “Sorry, late again,” she said.

She no more sat than another woman tentatively peeked through the entrance. “Is this the pregnancy loss group?”

Stella stood. “Yes, come on in! We’ve just been chatting.” She seemed flushed, as if unsure of what she’d done and said, but ready to defend it. Melinda watched her greet the new woman, comparing her stance and gestures to the ones she’d first seen upon her own arrival.

The woman tugged her brown sweater over her waist and sat down. Her thick hair cascaded in waves around her broad face, high cheeks, and heavy eyebrows. Pretty. Uncertain. Jittery, even. She tapped a high heeled brown boot anxiously on the linoleum.

“We’ve mainly been talking about our situations. I’m Stella, and we have Janet, Tina, and Melinda with us today.”

“I’m Gabriella.”

“Welcome. Traditionally we explain a little bit about ourselves. Just as much as you’re comfortable sharing.”

Gabriella looked at the other women in the circle, pinching her lips with her hand, then suddenly gasped and started sobbing. “I threw my baby in the trash!”

Melinda sat forward, much like the others, stunned silent.

“It’s okay,” Stella said. “Just tell us what happened.”

Melinda admired her calm. Her own panic whistled in her ears and she could scarcely bear to hear what the woman might say.

“I had been bleeding a little. I went over to my friend’s house and she said we should get away for the weekend. My husband packed some things and met us there. We were all ready to drive down to the coast. I went to the bathroom…” She bent over, arms crossed over her stomach.

“Hang in there, Gabriella,” Stella said. “Take your time.”

Melinda glanced at Janet, then Dot, trying to judge if this sort of story was commonplace for the group.

Janet sat immobile and stiff, her head perfectly aligned over her navy pantsuit, ankles crossed. Dot sat hunched much like she had before, face down, hair covering her cheeks and forehead.

“The baby came out right then! I didn’t know what to do! I just put the baby in a plastic bag, then put it in a grocery sac and left it in the trash behind her house!”

Her voice had reached a terrible pitch, almost a shriek. Melinda tried to maintain her composure, but her own breathing was coming fast.

“I don’t know what to do! All I think about, all day long, all night, where is the baby? Is he still in her trash? In a dumpster? Will he get crushed in a garbage truck?”

She sobbed for a moment and the other women looked at each other. Stella walked over and knelt clumsily beside her chair. “It’s all right. It’s okay to worry about this. It’s okay to think about it day and night.”

Gabriella accepted the hand Stella offered and gripped it so tight Melinda felt sure it must hurt, but Stella did not visibly flinch.

Dot sat up and cleared her throat. “I keep my baby’s placenta in the freezer.”

Everyone turned to her.

“I do.” She pushed her hair back. “I often take it out and hold it. I keep it buried underneath a bag of peas.”

Gabriella reached out with her free hand. Dot hesitated, but extended her own.

“See, none of us are crazy,” Stella said. “We’re just surviving. Survivors don’t have the luxury of acting like regular people. We do what we have to do to get by.”

I have, however, written the section where we introduce the woman who runs the Pregnancy Loss Support Group, Stella.

Stella is big, loud, Jewish, opinionated, and funny. She has lost two babies, gone through six rounds of IVF, and at 44, has finally decided cats will be her only kids. Later in the book you will learn the devastating reason why she and her husband Dane can never adopt. When things get far too serious in the book, Stella will step up and remember that we can laugh at anything. We just need some perspective and to fill what we do have in our life with love and joy.

“Look at that baby!” the ex-wife says, pointing across the stands at a high school girl bouncing a toddler on her thigh. “Born to a teenager. Some people just don’t know when they aren’t supposed to be mothers. It might have been better for everyone if she had lost it.”

Melinda grips the edge of the wood stands, biting her lip to avoid crying or screaming, or both. “What a spike!” she says instead, nodding her head toward her step-daughter out on the court. “They really ought to move her up to varsity.”

The scene might continue, but the point comes a little later:

At home, her knee pads discarded in the foyer, the step-daughter says to Melinda, “Mom said she saw my friend Patrice with her baby in the stands. She thinks babies should only come when they are wanted and planned for, and to people who deserve them.”

Melinda snaps at her, hurt that the step-daughter would say that to her, only a few weeks after her miscarriage. “I don’t think any of us know anything about why or when babies come or why they are lost,” she says. “You should watch your mouth or you’ll end up mean and angry like your mother.”

She immediately regrets her words when the girl falls on the sofa, crying. “Mom is happy you lost the baby,” she says, her voice muffled by the cushions. “I don’t know why she’s being so mean. But she forgets I also lost my baby sister.”

Melinda’s knees buckle and she folds up on the floor by the sofa. She wants to take her step-daughter’s hand, but they haven’t ever had that sort of closeness, so she simply clasps them together in her own lap. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know you were sad about the baby. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who ever thinks about her.”

These sorts of scenes just sort of come to me. I’ll start piecing them together soon. All your comments and stories help so much. I can’t even tell you.