“Marthe Ballou’s. She’s up with her.” She looked to her brother. “She made me go after her. She’s fine; she’s all right just now. She threatened to go herself if I’d not; I had no choice.” She ran eyes toward the doctor and back. “She knows what she wants.”

“You left her.” His eyes not hatred but swollen bright as an animal’s. She feared him.

“You’ve made a grave error.” The doctor lifted his bag and looked to Connie, his swollen features monkish, jowled, purulent. The veins of his eyes a red lichen. He said, “A hard job multiplied without need. I’ll want the brandy with the coffee. Not in but alongside. A woman bearing or in labor is not within reason. You’ll learn that firsthand yourself one fine day.” And strode to the hallway where his bootheels diminished on the runner there and then resumed up the stairs and fell away again meeting the upper runner.

Connie took up the coffee and poured out a cup and then a second and handed one to her brother. He’d not turned his outrage from her while the doctor spoke. She said, “Marthe says she’s fine now. Nothing going on at all. I didn’t know what to do. She was lathered up but the bleeding had stopped. It seemed best to do’s she asked, to calm her. It was a risk. There was no one here but me and she said Jump. I did. I’d dare you do otherwise given the same. And you know she don’t like that man.” Glaring hard to meet his stare, her whole body trembling.

Norman balanced the cup and saucer on the smooth worn rim of the soapstone sink, his fingers deliberate, trembling just away from the cup, still burning her with his eyes. “I trusted you. Trusted you to do’s I asked.” His teeth set, the words coming through them.

“Do as you asked.” She mocked his words back at him. “You think to ask what anybody else wanted? You think to ask what she wanted?”

“Goddammit!” He swept the coffee into the sink. The rupture of cup and saucer as a physical blow to Connie, running through her. Norman said, “I did what I thought best.”

“You! Always you! I know you. You came running down the hill and scooped her up and carried her back to bed and raced off after the doctor. Didn’t pause for a minute but racing around like you know just the right thing. The first simple thing comes into your mind, now that’s the right thing. And expect everybody else to agree with it, not question it. Just like you’re God or something. But I’ll tell you what, Norman. You was God you wouldn’t have had to run after that doctor. You would’ve known how to stay right here and make things right. Maybe even, you was God, you’d have had those other babies too. Maybe everything you ever thought or did would’ve been perfect, right as rain, instead of hit-or-miss like the rest of us. That’s how it’d be, wouldn’t it? Tell you what, you think about that.” Was shaking, her mouth twisted, anger contorted around the words. Her lips wet as if the words were the liquid gush of her fury.