“Yes, and more. She became close to me. She even invited me to stay with her, saying I’d need help when I got bigger—farther along in my pregnancy. I’m from Des Moines, and I don’t really get along well with my folks. To show up back home pregnant and unmarried…I’d never hear the end of it. I felt so alone. Marie was just great! No one could have been as kind as she was to me. She was one of the few people I know who practiced what they preached.”

“Did you move in with her?”

She shook her head. “It turned out it wasn’t necessary. I miscarried at four months.” She smiled through wet eyes. “My ex-boyfriend sent me flowers in the hospital. Can you imagine?”

“Nice guy.”

“A very expensive lesson in life, I suppose.” She sighed. “At least I felt better losing the baby from miscarriage than from abortion. Truthfully, I was going to get an abortion. But Marie talked me out of it.”

“Marie was against your abortion or any abortion?”

“It wasn’t black and white, Detective. But she did have feelings about the subject. She asked me if I could live with my decision—terminating my own child’s life. It made me evaluate who I was.”

“Did Marie belong to a specific religion?”

“She just considered herself a decent Christian woman. But that wasn’t the reason for her views. I think she had lost a baby a long time ago…when she was very young. I don’t know whether it was a stillborn or the baby died at birth. Whatever it was, it was a tragedy. She said it changed her life.”

Marge was scribbling furiously. “How so?”

“I don’t know. She never got any more specific.”

“How old was she when she lost her baby?”

“She just said she was very young.”

It was Marge’s turn to hesitate. Very young. Marie’s chart claimed she’d had a D and C a couple of years back. Had Marie had another miscarriage or stillborn? No, it couldn’t be a stillborn. Someone would have recalled Marie pregnant. So maybe it was a miscarriage. Maybe this was the tragedy that Marie was referring to. She could have told Paula it had been many years ago when in fact it hadn’t been. And she might have embellished the severity of it to make Paula feel better.

“Do you know if Marie was married at the time of her tragedy?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know. Marie didn’t get into specifics, and back then, her problems weren’t utmost on my mind.”

“But she told you she had actually lost a baby.”

“Yes.”

“Not just miscarried.”

“She used the term lost.”

“Paula, did Marie seem unusually preoccupied with babies lately?”