“I went to hell’s half acre and back.”

“I’m sorry bout that.”

“You might’ve told me what you wanted.”

“It wouldn’t have done no good, I did.”

He nodded. “It was a waste of time, still.”

“Not my fault. Wasn’t me in a panic.”

He looked off across from her to the far wall. Cabbage roses faint and faded on old paper. Each seemed with its own shadow from the lamp. He looked back to her. “I was afraid of losing you.”

Without smiling, her face lit with humor. “It’ll be more than this gets rid of me.”

He shook his head. “You oughtn’t have been alone though.”

She studied him a moment as if making up her mind. Then, her voice lowered for only him to hear, “I wasn’t.”

He took his hands from his trouser pockets and ran them together before him, his fingers muscled and swollen with work. As if he wanted to touch her. As if he wanted to take something up and hold in them. As if he wanted them available, visible, capable, before the unknown of the room. The cabbage roses almost an audience of dim worn past faces. He assumed she was speaking of the child in her belly but did not want to know if it was otherwise. She watched his hands and he watched the depth of glow in her eyes on him. Thinking she understood everything his clumsy hands were reaching for. She reached a hand then and covered his knit fingers with her own: long supple slender hand that gripped hard once and went back down onto the quilt beside its mate, both resting over the heave of belly. Norman turned then to speak to Marthe.

“Snowcrust must’ve been iced up pretty good in the woods tonight.”

She tilted only her head in shrug. “Them bearpaws cut the ice pret good. Sides, it kept me movin.”

“What do you think about this woman lying here?”

She continued working the cat’s-cradle, her eyes off it and on Norman. “A liddle hard to say. What I think, that bleed just a liddle—what?—false nothing just to scare you. She go through the night fine I bet she go rest the way. Maybe she done something more she ought to. I bet she go just fine. But we wait the night to declare that. Dawn come then we can bet she go the last two, three weeks so fine. But she be stay in that bed even then, not up moving round, caring for you, hey?”

Norman nodded and stepped close to her. “Anything I can get for you, Marthe? Anything you need?”

“Me? I’m just fine. Tell you, what you need to do, get that man out the hall something to drink. I sit here, can smell the need coming off him even worse than his fear. It settle ever thing down round here, you do that.”

“I can do that. I was inclined to deny him.”