When she took her hands away Marthe was watching her. Not moved in the chair but for her eyes open. A faint gray light smeared the window and the room was cold. Leah wiped her nose with the back of her hand and felt the pain reach and sear deep in her and went through that all the while looking back at Marthe. When it was done for this time Marthe leaned forward in the rocker and said, “You all right there, you?”

“I guess so. Seems like this baby wants to be born.”

Marthe stood. “I thought maybe so.”

It was a gray day. Dawn brought vain thin color to the underbelly of low rolled cloud and the wind turned and it was warm. Time to time spits of rain or sleet fell. Norman and Connie did morning chores together and in silence, each with their own aches from the night before and each with their ears strained, leading their whole bodies through the work, listening as if striving toward the silent house. The faint ping only of rain on the tin barn roofing. A little after nine Glen Clifford arrived in a high-wheeled gig to fetch the doctor for a man with both legs crushed during the night when he slipped standing too close on the heaving riverbank beside the bridge in Randolph, the man trying to watch out for ice lodging against the bridge abutments. Glen back in an hour without the doctor, who found the man dead and repaired then to his home to sleep away the night’s long nurse at the applejack, sending message with Glen he’d come if needed. Glen and Connie sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee while Norman sat and fiddled or stood to pace, the house holding so easily the drifting down of drawn groaning and small choked-off cries. Midday Connie warmed food that none ate save for Norman, who ate a whole loaf of bread sliced and spread with butter. Then terrible cries rose and rose until they seemed to be only one long-drawn pitch of a soul fighting to escape itself and Norman bounded the stairs to the room where Leah drove him out with her cursing of him: God damn you Norman What’d you do to me Goddamn you. Marthe catching him at the door to stroke his arm, telling him to pay no mind, it was the pain of it; she needed that fight; it would pass. He went back downstairs through the kitchen to the cellar to draw a pitcher of cider but when he carried it back to the kitchen Glen was gone again and Connie was over the range, pushing back and forth the copper boiler and the big kettle and several smaller pots all filled with water, as a commander keeps all craft standing to in formation before a stout wind. All she sought was each at a constant simmer. He sat alone with a mug of cider but could not stand the cries and rose and carried the cider with him to the barn, where he sat in the small shop room on the south side and sharpened tools and watched out the window at the spring weather rolling in. And so missed when Glen returned carrying Mrs. Pelham with the fey Breedlove woman as familiar or shadow or simple reinforcement but when Norman stepped forth from the barn midafternoon he saw the livery’s best covered carriage, the wheels caked with mud and the underside coated above the axle, and knew then not only who had arrived but also that Glen would one day soon marry his sister. The carriage was no vehicle for weather thus. He wondered if the use of it had been approved by Clifford the elder or if the son had taken it upon himself. Either way the meaning of it was clear. And went to the house to find the women silent in the parlor balancing cups of tea on knees drawn together, each listening not only to the rising and falling of life searching up the stairs but also to their own memories or hopes. Glen twisted from his stance at the window to duck his head at Norman. Norman spoke to the women and left them there, taking Glen to the kitchen to pour him cider. Now on the stove alongside the simmering pots was the great lard kettle, bubbling. As the men sat silent Connie came in and began to turn doughnuts into the lard and out again with a wire hook. She piled a plateful and carried them into her mother and Breedlove. Norman and Glen stood beside the stove and ate them as they rose and were drained on brown wrapping paper, the grease on them scalding the roofs of their mouths. The broken open sweet steam rising of sugar and yeast.