He hangs his head, tugs on his restraints, and then his groan turns into a low, guttural laugh. “Are you serious?” he murmurs. “You’re insane. You’re all insane.” Then he laughs again, that strange awful laugh.

“It’s for your own good,” Elizabeth tells him. “And for Julian’s.”

He looks at her, a trail of unwiped blood snaking slowly from his forehead down the side of his nose. “You won’t keep me from my son.”

Elizabeth steps back, away from him, and hisses as if burned.

“Come back here,” Don commands, but she keeps drifting backward until she has left the room. My mother and I exchange a look and follow her into the hallway, with Don calling behind us, yelling for us to come back.

We find Liz bending over and breathing heavily, making a high keening sound in the back of her throat.

“What is it?” I ask, alarmed by her obvious pain.

My mother’s eyes flare. “You’re having contractions?”

After several long minutes, the wave passes on. Liz, one hand clamped over her belly, looks at my mother with her lips still pressed tightly together and nods. “I’ve been having them all day,” she manages to get out. “But it’s not time yet, it’s not time yet! He isn’t due for another week. I’m not ready.” Her voice rises almost hysterically, as if convincing us will convince Julian to stay put.

Beyond the window, the light-gray sky darkens to a deeper gray. An early night is falling.

“As soon as the snow lets up, we’ll get out of here,” I chatter mindlessly. “We’ll dig out the car. We’ll take you to the hospital.”

But my words fall silently as the snow, cold and without meaning. We may not be able to wait that long.

As my mother helps Elizabeth into the sitting room, I hurry back to the darkening kitchen, where Don is groaning and pulling at the rope, and down the glass of wine my mother poured in one long gulp. How long will it be before Julian urgently begs to be born? How long will it be before Don manages to break free from his flimsy restraints? I admit, I am no expert at tying knots.

He looks up at me. “I’ll kill you for this.”

I set down the glass and back away, leaving him in the growing shadows of the kitchen.

Back in the sitting room, my mother has stoked the fire back to blazing, and it throws its light and shadow and warmth around the walls, closing us in with the flickering glow while Elizabeth groans through another contraction. They are coming more quickly now, and lasting longer. Despite the fire, there is a chill of expectant tension in the air.

When the contraction passes, Elizabeth looks up to where I stand, panting; then her eyes drift behind me, and she frowns.

“Who is that?”

I turn to look.

A faceless boy stands in the shadows—but no, he is not quite faceless, not anymore. Already some detail has begun to etch itself across the blank white egg of him, carving an expectant grin filled with teeth that have the slightest of gaps between them, sharpening his prominent nose into the very shape of Donovan Hill’s, leaving only his eyes like two black pits that have yet to decide what they will be, like the chthonic sockets of a grinning skull.