In a way, it’s true. The Allbrights vanished into nothing.

At night I talk to you and Lily now. Does that mean I’m crazy or just lonely? I imagine all three of us huddled in bed, with the northern lights putting on a show outside our window while wind taps on the glass. I tell our baby to be smart and brave. Brave like her dad. I try to tell her to protect herself from the terrible choices she might someday face. I worry that we Allbright women are cursed in love and I hope she will be a boy. Then I remember you saying that you wanted to teach your son the things you had learned on the homestead and … well, it makes me so sad I crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head and pretend I’m in Alaska in the winter. My heartbeat turns into wind pounding on the glass.

A boy needs a father and I am all Lily has.

Poor girl.

*   *   *

“THOSE LAMAZE CLASSES were bogus,” Leni yelled when the next contraction twisted her insides and made her scream. “I want drugs.”

“You wanted natural childbirth. It’s too late for drugs now,” Mama said.

“I’m eighteen years old. Why would anyone listen to what I want? I know nothing,” Leni said.

The contraction ebbed. Pain receded.

Leni panted. Sweat itched and crawled across her forehead.

Mama picked up an ice chip from the plastic cup on the table by the hospital bed and popped it in Leni’s mouth.

“Put morphine in it, Mama,” Leni begged. “Please. I can’t take this. It was a mistake. I’m not ready to be a mother.”

Mama smiled. “No one is ever ready.”

The pain began building again. Leni gritted her teeth, concentrated on breathing (like that helped), and clutched her mother’s hand.

She squeezed her eyes shut, panting, until the pain crested. When it began—finally—to subside, she sank back into the bed, spent. She thought: Matthew should be here, but she pushed the thought aside.

Another contraction hit seconds later. This time Leni bit her tongue so hard it bled.

“Scream,” Mama said.

The door opened and her doctor came in. She was a thin woman wearing blue scrubs and a surgical cap. Her eyebrows were unevenly plucked, which gave her a slightly askew look. “Ms. Grant, how are we feeling?” the doctor asked.

“Get it out of me. Please.”

The doctor nodded and put on gloves. “Let’s check, shall we?” She opened the stirrups.

Normally Leni would not be relieved when a relative stranger sat between her spread legs, but right now she would have splayed herself at the observation deck of the Space Needle if it would end this pain.

“It looks like we’re having a baby,” the doctor said evenly.

“No shit,” Leni shouted at another contraction.

“Okay, Susan. Push. Hard. Harder.”