Sheila stopped in the doorway, struck by the comment. Another agonized groan from the living room got her moving again, reminding her why she was here.

Pauline ran the sink until the water was warm, turned it off, then asked for Sheila's help to connect the hose Sinjin had hauled in. It was still cold from being out in the shed. They unspooled it carefully, streaking their hands with cold mud.

Pauline told Sheila to wait there, then dragged the hose through the dining room into the living room, leaving clods of mud and pine needles in her wake, all the furniture moved by the men to make room for the pool.

"All right, youse can turn the water back on now, hon!"

Sheila did. Water dribbled out from around the connection so she tightened it until it stopped. Then she returned to the living room, where everyone stood wearing looks of nervous expectation, watching the pool fill agonizingly slowly.

While they waited for the other midwives to arrive, Geraldine held Laura's hands and offered whispers of encouragement. She looked to be in her late-seventies, maybe older. Sheila wondered who else among these women had been delivered by her. Besides Laura and Pauline there were two other women, Darla and Dianne. They'd been calling themselves Double-D all night. Sheila assumed it was meant to be ironic, since neither of the bottle-blondes looked to be above a B-cup. Like calling a fat guy "slim." Darla was the mother of the little blonde girl from the stairs.

The doorbell rang. Double-D Dianne hurried to get it.

"It's colder than a witch's tit out there," came a gruff woman's voice. She stepped into the living room doorway, removing her coat. Dianne took it obsequiously, practically bowing as she slipped away and hung it on the coatrack with the others.

This woman's hair was done up in a perfect silver beehive. Her cheeks were rosy and quite chubby, though she appeared slim, as if she'd lost a fair amount of weight and her face hadn't gotten the memo.

She went straight to Geraldine's side, though she remained standing while the other woman sat. "How far apart?" she grunted.

Geraldine said something Sheila couldn't hear and the woman with the beehive nodded. "Good, good." She turned to dip a finger in the pool and slosh it around. "Let's get you in that pool, lady."

Pauline and the woman with the beehive helped Laura to her feet and raised her top over her head. Below her heavy, freckled breasts straining within the confines of her black bra, her belly was pale and round. A dark pregnancy line rose from below the waistband of her stretchy, flower-print pants to her distended belly button.

They slipped down her pants—she wore a pair of loose granny panties underneath—and walked her to the pool while she breathed through her teeth, as if the baby might burst out of her like some alien parasite at any moment.

"That's Helen Birch," Pauline whispered, nodding toward the second midwife. "She used to run the hair salon downtown when my mom was just a girl."