The underlying delight in her face at being home didn’t ebb, but she shook her head with a small frown of sympathy.

“Poor William. He’s such a good guy, but my God! How does anyone that young manage to have such a complicated life?”

“Your life wasn’t that simple in your early twenties, as I recall …” I untied the ribbon of her shift and placed the flat bell of the Pinard against her chest. “Poor choice of parents, I expect. Deep breath, darling, and hold it.”

She obliged, and I listened. Listened again, moved the Pinard, listened … Lub-DUB, lub-DUB, lub-DUB … Regular as a metronome and a good, strong sound. I put a hand on her solar plexus, feeling the abdominal pulse, just in case, but that was just as strong, the firm flesh of her belly bouncing a little under my fingers with each beat.

“Everything sounds good,” I said, looking up—and thinking as I saw her face how very beautiful she was in this instant. Home. Safe. Alive.

“Are you all right, Mama?” she said, looking at me suspiciously, because my eyes had gone slightly moist.

“Certainly,” I said, and cleared my throat. “Have you had much trouble with the fibrillation?”

“No,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “It happened two or three times on the way to Charleston, and once or twice while we were there. Only twice in Savannah, at least bad enough that I noticed. But I don’t think it’s happened at all—or if it has, only for a few seconds—on the trip back.

“I kept taking the willow bark,” she assured me. “Only after a while, I started grinding the leaves up and making pills out of them with cheese, because the tea made me pee all the time, and I couldn’t stop painting every fifteen minutes to go find a chamber pot. I don’t think cheese would neutralize the willow bark, do you?”

“No,” I said, laughing. “Congratulations—you’ve invented the world’s first cheese-flavored aspirin. They didn’t upset your stomach?”

She shook her head and pulled up the neck of her shift.

“No, but I figured that the cheese might buffer the acid—don’t they tell people with ulcers to drink milk?”

“Yes, that or an antacid. Honey actually works quite well for—” I stopped abruptly.

She’d just tied the ribbon of her shift and I’d reached for the laces to hand them to her, but my left hand was still resting on her abdomen, a little lower down. And I was still feeling the heartbeat.

A faint, fast heartbeat. Tiny and busy and very strong.

LubdubLubdubLubdub …

“Mama? What’s wrong?” Bree had sat up, alarmed. All I could do was shake my head at her.

“Welcome home,” I managed to say to the newest resident of the Ridge. And then I burst into tears.