I’m dazzled by the display of searing anger and frustration rocketing and ricocheting around Sarah Spenser’s head. Against the backdrop of sunset, it looks like she’s burning and sizzling in her own self-made hell, and I can’t help but laugh. Which makes her rage burn even brighter.

“Tommy Murray, isn’t it? He’s the minister supposed to sign them papers?” Peggy sidles over, half-laughing to herself. “His wife was in that really bad car wreck. Over twenty years ago, now. Night of Crow’s graduation, I recall.”

“Your point?” There’s that frothy spittle in the corner of Sarah’s pouty mouth.

“No point,” Peggy says. “Just sayin’. His wife made quite a miraculous recovery from that accident.” Peggy links her arm to mine, with a wink and a nudge. “Effie met her once. I wonder if they’d remember. I should ask him.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse us,” I say, rubbing my giant belly and grinning at the way strands of pink in Peggy’s aura are stoking Sarah’s rage into a smoky blue confusion, “we’re having a celebration here.”

Peggy and I turn away, without even waiting to see her and her storm clouds off. I find my new husband, and my two best friends, all of whom are already three sheets to the wind, and we laugh and cry and dance and eat squares and casseroles beneath the stars, held snug in the warm embrace of family and friends and the place that needs us.

Oh, but it’s all fun and games until the chick in the off-white silky muumuu and flower crown goes into the porta-potty to take a long-overdue piss, and comes out set to have a baby.

“Labour? Are you shitting me?” Willy slurs as he takes my face in his hands, his eyes filling with tears, mirroring back the bonfire’s glow.

“Shut up before I tear your lips off,” I growl, as I slap his hands away and brace for more bone-shifting agony. I put my hands on his shoulders and lean hard on him, trying to sway with and through the pain as it builds, spreads, peaks, and retreats over the span of a few minutes. I look up to see a wall of my drunk friends form behind Willy, feet planted firmly to brace and keep him upright as my weight and my wails push against his soused and unsteady frame. Willy’s arms — the good one and the bad one — are wrapped around me tenderly as Char, Allie, and Wendy hold us all in place.

“This is totally your fault,” I say through teeth clamped tighter than a vice, which makes him weep and smile even more.

A guttural cry surges from my throat as my legs tremble and I buckle forward. Heads turn and stare, but the faces are blurred by shades of soft pastel concern. A bigger crowd of faintly shimmering shadows forms around me in the moonlit clearing, until a booming voice bosses them back to tending the fire, singing some songs, and having another drink. Peggy comes hustling over.