Page 129 of The Frozen River

Sally’s forehead is beaded with sweat, and her eyes are scrunched closed. She does not see the curious glance I throw in her direction.

“Are you saying this child was forced upon her?”

Bonnie laughs. “Not to hear her tell it. From what I can gather, my daughter was an enthusiastic participant.”

A stone settles to the pit of my stomach.

Mentally, I turn back the clock. The last time I saw Sally was at the hearing at the end of January. Her father had forced her to testify—again—about all she’d overheard the day I was in Rebecca’s sitting room. The blizzard was howling in from the east, and I thought nothing of the fact that she’d worn her riding cloak during the hearing. Half the people in Pollard’s had done the same that day. Six months. She would have been roughly six months pregnant. Give or take.

How did I not know?

And at the Frolic a week earlier? I only remember thinking that she’d looked rather buxom, that her dress had been cut to accentuate that part of her figure. Had it been loosened elsewhere? There was nary a whisper in that room about her changing figure. Because no one had noticed.

Because no one has seen her since. Because.

Because…

All five of the Pierce girls inherited their looks from their mother. The auburn hair and the hazel eyes and the full lips. The height they got from their father, however, and this, I think, more than anything else, has enabled Sally to keep her secret. A long body, coupled with a long torso and a generous bosom, can hide a multitude of sins. Especially early in a first pregnancy.

“Sally?” I ask.

She ceases writhing on the bed and looks at me, then shrinks back, her pretty eyes clouded with pain. She is afraid. Both of what is happening to her and of me as well. When I set a hand upon her bare foot, her flinch confirms this suspicion, and this saddens me nearly to the point of tears. I have never had a laboring woman respond to me this way. I have only ever seen relief in their eyes.

“There is something I must ask you.”

“No.” She shakes her head.

“The father,” Bonnie whispers. “She thinks you’re asking about the father. I’ve done the same, a hundred times at least, and she’d tell me nothing other than that she loves him and went to bed willingly. If you can get it out of her then you’re more of a miracle worker than people say.”

“I am not asking you about the father,” I tell Sally.

Not yet, I think.

Sally visibly relaxes. “What then?” she pants.

This conversation would have been far easier three hours ago, before transition, and the otherworldly sense of agony it brings. The brain ceases to function. The body knows nothing but pain and the desperate need for survival. Lucy, my oldest daughter, has three times forgotten her own name in transition. Names and numbers cease to exist. Reality shrinks to a pinpoint of primal existence.

“I need to know if this child is early or late. I need to know when you last bled. The life of your baby may depend on it.”

It is a miserable thing I am asking of Sally Pierce as she lies on her bed, head thrown back, sweat beading on her lip. I do not think of myself as an unkind person, but this is perhaps the cruelest thing I have ever done, asking a laboring woman to do math.

“Summer.” The word is hissed out between clenched teeth, and I wipe a bit of spittle off my chin with a wrist. “Mid July, I think.”

I count backward and am relieved to determine that we are well within the window for viability. She’s at term.

Bonnie Pierce clears her throat. “I stopped keeping track of their cycles years ago.”

“It wasn’t your job to do so. I know nothing about motherhood other than children will do what they will do and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.”

So far as I can remember, my mother never cursed in all her sixty-eight years. And I’m by no means a sailor, but I find that every year that passes, I grow more comfortable with the art. And if I never really liked Bonnie Pierce before now, I am sorry, because she laughs at that.

“Every one of my girls has found themselves in this position.”

When I look at her in surprise, she laughs again. “Didn’t know that, did you? None of them hid it nearly this long, but yes, all of them took a turn around a hayloft once or twice and ended up thick at the waist before their wedding. I just didn’t…” She pauses to gather her thoughts. “With the others I knew what they were up to.”

“My oldest daughter as well,” I say, and if two women can become friends with one admission, we just have. “Time will tell with the others.”

Bonnie Pierce shrugs. “I’ve always wondered if it was a trait I passed on to them. William married me quickly, of course, but I wasn’t much of a maid when he did.”