Candace turns to me and her cheeks are wet. “It was a little boy. So tiny. I don’t know why he came too early. I wanted to shove him back inside me when he slipped out. He was so tiny. So beautiful.”

“I’m so very sorry,” I say, because I am. Because I know. I know what it’s like to hold a miniature life in your hands, one that was knit together inside your own body. And I know what it’s like to feel it grow cold in your embrace. I reach out to hold her hand. In compassion. In solidarity.

“I was so sad after that,” Candace says, a moment later. “I loved that little baby. Martin thought I would grieve less if we had another child. We were living in his little cottage on the stable grounds and I was watching all my old friends in their beautiful clothes having riding parties and laughing and being happy. I didn’t think I could ever smile again. I had only one person who seemed to care about me. Martin. So I believed him that another baby would fill the horrible emptiness inside me. I was overjoyed when I was with child again. I carried my second little boy until the very end, but he never took one breath. Not one.”

I squeeze Candace’s hand to remind her I am there, as she seems to be reliving the moment again, that abysmal moment when she realized another baby she’d labored to bring into the world had already left it. I can hear in her cracking voice this ache that does not lessen with time but rather hides in the shadows, this relentless specter that is always right there, just over your shoulder. One little twist and you’re staring at it again. It is an ache that is as heavy as marble, as cold, as colorless.

“I am so sorry for your losses. Truly, I am,” I say.

In the next moment Candace seems to pull away from the terrible memory. She continues as if distanced from what she is telling me, as though it happened to someone else.

“I fell into an abyss then,” she says tonelessly. “I didn’t care about anything. I didn’t care that we finally had money every month from my grandmother’s trust and could move to a nicer house. I didn’t even care when I became pregnant again, and God help me I didn’t care when I gave birth and this time the child lived. I didn’t care that I had a beautiful little girl. I didn’t care. I didn’t care that Martin often didn’t come home at night. I didn’t care that I smelled other women’s perfume on him.” She looks over at Kat sleeping like an angel across from us. “I was a terrible mother to my little Kitty Kat.”

I stroke her hand. “Surely you weren’t.”

“No. I was. All she wanted from me was love, but I felt like I had nothing to give, so that is what she got.”