Maybe they’ll think it was an accident. Another farm boy fallen, caught under the grinding weight of his father’s living, of his future. She pressed at the lumps rising across her belly and wiggled her toes in the shoe that was filling with blood. Pain shot up her leg. She couldn’t run. Not far, anyway. Not fast enough. Her lower back ached. The pain wrapped around her as if embracing her from behind. She shut off the tractor and squeezed the green rabbit’s foot in her fist.

Her foot slid off the ladder rung and she fell into the blood-soaked dust. Shreds of Jake’s white t-shirt, stained the oxblood color of gore and fallow dirt, were scattered around her. His mangled hat, bristled with torn hair, rolled in the wind.

Miranda crawled over the shallow dunes of the field toward the oncoming police car. Dry stalks of long-dead crops pierced her palms. The pain in her middle grew into an insistent pressure. Her thighs and arms shook and she fell into the dirt. Her tongue felt as dry as the grit against her cheek. She waited for Officer Barnes, prayed he’d get to her quickly.

Sorry, baby. I know a girl needs a daddy, but a daddy has no need of a girl, and anyway, I’d have found you a better one if I’d known you were coming. Oh God, you’re coming.

***

Miranda sat in the jailhouse, kneeling by her steel cot, and pressed her palms against her ears to shut out the amplified sound of Pastor Minstrel’s gibberish that streamed from the speakers next door. Her lip curled and bile rose in her throat like a scream. She heaved until blood ran down her chin and her stomach clenched in spasm. The bruises from Jake’s fists and feet had darkened to burgundy, deepening every hour as if they ate through her like acid. Pain wrapped around her lower back, and when it squeezed her, the little flutter inside her would still. When the pain eased, the baby would stretch, fighting back against the tightening of its space.

Waves of contractions washed over her, each one building off the ebb of the one before. She caught her breath and screamed. Too soon. I’m not ready. She’s not ready.

“Sheriff! Officer Barnes! Help!” The squeeze cut off her cry. A flush of warm water slid out from between her legs and washed into the pool of bloody vomit.

No one came. The whole county was crowded into Pastor Minstrel’s church, praying for Jake Griffith’s soul. The shrieking of their holy delirium rattled the thin glass of the jailhouse windows.

Miranda pulled herself up onto the steel cot, rolled onto her back, and gripped her knees. The world spun around the slickness between her thighs.

***