LITMIR.BIZ

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with cancer. After this last time, her hair grew in curly and full and snow-white. When I greeted her before the service, I noticed how healthy she looked. Her huge round blue eyes always made me think of an awestruck little girl and it was hard to look at her without smiling, even in the days when she was sick and bald from chemo. Those eyes would hold you captive.

      I’d imagined that all the women who had been Noelle’s patients would have turned out for this service, but when I glanced over my shoulder I saw that the small church was less than half-full. I put my arm around Noelle’s mother, willing her not to look behind us. I didn’t want her to see that the people Noelle had touched had not cared enough to come.

      The mayor was giving the eulogy and I tried to pay attention. He was talking about how they’d tried to give Noelle the Governor’s Award for Voluntary Service for her babies program and she’d refused to accept it. So like Noelle, I thought. None of us had really been surprised. Noelle didn’t think helping others should be treated as anything special.

      I felt a tremor run through her mother’s body as we listened to the mayor and I tightened my arm around her shoulders. At Sam’s funeral, I’d sat with my arm around Grace. We’d been like two blocks of wood that day. Her shoulders had felt stiff and hard and my arm had simply gone numb—so numb that I’d had to pry it from her shoulders with my other hand. I remembered sitting so close to her that day, the length of our bodies touching. Now there was nearly a foot of space between us on the pew, nearly two inches of distance for every month Sam had been gone. Too much space for me to reach across. I couldn’t put my arm around her now if I tried.

      I wondered if, like me, Grace thought about the what-ifs. What if Sam had left the house five seconds later? The three of us had been rushing around the kitchen as we always did in the morning, not talking much, Sam pouring coffee into the hideous striped purple travel mug Grace had given him for his birthday years ago, Grace scrambling to find a book she’d mislaid, me straightening up behind them both. Sam forgot the mug when he raced out the door. I’d glanced at it on the counter, but figured he’d already pulled out of the driveway by then. What if I’d run out the front door with it? Would he have seen me? Then he would never have stopped at Port City Java for his coffee. He never would have been crossing the Monkey Junction intersection at exactly the wrong moment. Would he be sitting next to me right now if I’d tried to catch him?

      If, if, if.

      To my right, Emerson was sniffling, and the tissue wadded up in my hand was damp with my own tears. Emerson glanced at me and tried to smile, and I wished Grace and Jenny had not been between us so I could touch her arm. Emerson and I were a mess. When it came to Noelle’s suicide, the what-ifs that tormented us were huge and haunting. Maybe there really had been something we could have done to change the course of things for Noelle. Noelle had killed herself. Much different than the freakish collision of two cars at an intersection. Much more preventable if one of us had only seen the symptoms. Yet what symptoms had there been? Noelle committing suicide made no sense. She’d always been so life embracing. Had we missed an emptiness in her? I wondered. She’d never married after breaking off her engagement to Ian years ago and she’d delivered baby after baby with no babies of her own. She’d seemed content in her choices, but maybe she’d put on a game face for all of us. I remembered Noelle comforting me as I grieved for Sam that Saturday night in July. I’d thought only of myself. What small, telltale ache had I missed in her that night?

      I’d known Noelle since my freshman year in college and I had thousands upon thousands of memories of her since that time. Yet the one that would always stand out in my mind was the night she helped me give birth to Grace. Sam had agreed to a home birth only reluctantly, and frankly, if the midwife had been anyone other than Noelle, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable about it myself. I had total confidence in her, but Sam was afraid we were taking unnecessary risks, and the truth was, things did not go smoothly.

      Noelle had been coolheaded, though. There are people whose presence alone can lower your blood pressure. Slow your breathing. Keep you centered. That was Noelle. I’ll take care of you, she told me that night, and I believed her. How many women had heard those words from her over the years? I’d known they were the truth. The lamp she’d aimed between my legs lit up her electric-blue eyes, and her wild hair had been pulled back from her face, damp tendrils of it clinging to her forehead. In the lamplight, her hair glowed nearly red. She’d walked me around the moonlit room. She gave me brandy and strange teas that tasted like earth. She turned me in odd positions that, given my big belly and shivering legs, made me feel like a contortionist. She had me stand with one foot on the kitchen stool she’d dragged into the bedroom and told me to rock my hips this way and that. I’d cried and moaned and leaned against her and my worried husband. My teeth had chattered even though the room was very warm. I’d hated feeling so out of control, but I’d had no choice but to turn myself over to Noelle. I would do anything she said, drink any brew she gave me. I trusted her more than I trusted myself, and when she finally said something about calling an ambulance, I thought, If Noelle says we should, then I guess we should.

      But she never did call for help and the rest of the night became a blur of pain to me. I woke up in the darkness to find Sam sitting next to our bed, a fuzzy silhouette against the lamplight. For a moment I didn’t know where I was. My body ached and I felt raw and empty.

      “You’re a mom, Tara.” He smoothed his fingers over my cheek. “You’re an amazing, brave and beautiful mom.” I couldn’t see his face, but his voice held a smile.

      “Am I in the hospital?” All that I could force from my throat was a whisper. I had no voice. My mouth felt dry and scratchy.

      “No, Tara. You’re here. You’re home. Noelle pulled it off. She thought for a while she might need to take you to the hospital, but she was able to turn the baby.” He smoothed my hair, held his hand against my cheek. I smelled soap.

      “My mouth.” I licked my dry lips. “Feels like sand.”

      Sam chuckled. “Cinders.” He held a glass toward me, guided the straw to my lips, and I felt the scratchiness ease as I sipped.

      “Cinders?” Had I misunderstood him?

      “You passed out after the baby was born. Noelle cut off some of my hair—” he touched the dark hair above his forehead “—and burned it and put the cinders beneath your tongue to bring you back.”

      My head spun a little. “Did it work?” I asked.

      He nodded. “I’m sorry everything was so hard on you, but our baby’s beautiful, Tara. You held her. Do you remember?”

      All at once, I recalled the mewing cry of my daughter as I reached for her. I remembered the soft flannel-wrapped weight of her in my arms. The tug at my nipple. The memories were dreamlike and I wished I could recapture every minute detail.

      “Where is she? I want to see her.” I looked past him toward the bassinet near the window.

      “Noelle has her in the kitchen doing some midwifey thing to her. I told her I thought you were waking up and she said she’d bring her in.” Suddenly, he leaned toward me, resting his cheek against mine. “I thought I was going to lose you,” he said. “Lose both of you. I was so scared. I thought we’d made a terrible mistake, trying to have the baby here at home. But Noelle … no obstetrician could have done a better job. We owe her everything. She was so good, Tara.”

      I felt the heat of his cheek, the stickiness of his damp skin against my own, and I rested my hand on the side of his face. “The baby’s name.” I whispered. We’d felt so certain the baby would be a boy, another Samuel Vincent, that we’d never settled on a girl’s name. Grace, Sara, Hannah had all risen to the top, but we hadn’t made a firm decision. “Noelle?” I suggested now.

      He lifted his cheek from mine. For a moment, I thought I saw a flash of doubt cross his face, but then he smiled. Nodded.

      “Here she is.” Noelle walked into the room carrying the tiny bundle. “Your mama’s waiting for you, darlin'.” She leaned her head close to the bundle and I felt a hunger unlike anything I’d ever known. If I could

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