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“Husband stealer.”
“Harlot.”
“Whore.”
“Two-bit floozy who couldn’t get a man of her own.”
The mayor’s wife was leaving the Back Forty restaurant right next door and heard the whole exchange, so by the very next day, the whole town knew what Sally had done. Even Paul came to check on her later that day while she was sitting on her front porch nursing a glass of lemonade. It was the first time she’d heard from him in over a month. He didn’t have to tell her that he heard what she did, too.
“How you doing, Sally?”
“Doing just fine, Paul.”
A stilted exchange thick with meaning. Paul hadn’t been trying to pry; Sally knew he was genuinely concerned. But his concern always stopped short of laying everything down for her, and she had long since grown tired of his leftover scraps. If it wasn’t real, it wasn’t worth it. She’d just forgotten that during the brief encounter with the nameless man. But some men knew, didn’t they? Could smell a woman deep in a sad state like a dog can smell the scent of home from thirty miles away. The man took an interest, and Sally accepted what he offered: an hour of comfort when she was at her lowest.
In her one and only defense, he hadn’t been wearing a ring. She’d looked and couldn’t even spot the tell-tale tan line where a ring should be. That counted for something, didn’t it?
Oh, it counted all right. Nine months and one week later, it added up to a whole heck of a lot, and she was scared to death. Even more so when she realized she had no one to call for help. She hadn’t spoken to Paul since that day on the porch. She’d seen him staring as her belly grew bigger. From his car. From his kitchen window. From his own front porch rocker as he sipped his own glass of lemonade, likely spiked with whiskey. She’d seen him stumble home late at night once or twice. At its best, misery loves company. At its worst, it searches for a way to cope. She hated the idea of Paul coping with alcohol, same as her dad. But she had more important things to think about now.
“Alright, little one. It’s you and me. Let’s get ourselves to the hospital and get you out safely.” She was afraid but also excited. A baby to love and care for. A family of her very own. She hadn’t been part of one of those in nine years, so far removed from it that she barely remembered what it felt like to belong to someone. But God willing, in a few hours, she would belong to her baby, and her baby would belong to her. She would be the best mother anyone in these parts ever saw. She already had a crib tucked in the corner of the house and had stacked more firewood outside the door than a person could need in two seasons. Her baby would be warm and toasty, held often and cared for, and she was ready. She had mostly forgotten her own momma, but this baby would remember her. Sally would make sure of it.
She still used her papa’s old car to drive herself, having cranked it up a couple weeks back to make sure the engine worked. Somehow the half tank of gas hadn’t dried up in the years the car sat dormant; Sally supposed the few times she’d driven the thing to town had helped keep it from calcifying.
The aches and pains around her mid-section grew stronger with each mile, so it was a blessed thing she only had to drive five. The stop signs got to her, though, with the sudden jerky stops and one maddening traveler who treated one like a stoplight that he sat through until she beeped her horn.
She pulled into the hospital and parked under the Emergency entrance, cutting the car engine and seeing herself inside. A receptionist helped her into a wheelchair and guided her down the hall, all the while wearing a sour expression like she’d drawn the short straw having to help Sally at all. Nurses had a code, so the lady didn’t have a choice. Besides, Sally didn’t need someone to roll out the red carpet and take pictures. She needed someone to kill the pain and coax her baby into the outside world. Sour or not, this nurse was as good as any other.
She spotted him at the end of the first hallway, standing at the nursery window and peering inside. The years melted away in an instant, and a painful jolt went through her midsection that had nothing to do with the coming birth. She didn’t love him. She knew that. But she did love the memories, and sometimes that felt like the same thing.
“Jack?”
He turned at the sound of her voice, a look of surprise and something she couldn’t name crossing his expression. Guilt? Shame? Fear? One or a mix of all. The wheelchair stopped moving, the nurse instinctively giving them a minute.
“Sally, what are you doing here?”
She smiled her best through familiar heartache and pointed to her stomach. “Having a baby, same as you from the looks of it. Did you and Laura…?” She let the words hang, afraid to go on. Jack and Laura had lost two babies already over the four years since they got married. As removed from society as she was, the rumor mill still spun her direction in Silver Bell. A person couldn’t shop at a market or stand on a street corner without hearing the latest gossip being spread from person to person. After Sally heard of the first miscarriage, she asked Paul. His relationship with Jack fell apart in high school over some misunderstanding Paul never discussed, but he told her about Jack’s loss the week after it happened. Stillborn, Paul called it. Sally looked up the term in her dictionary and shuddered at the meaning. A couple years later, it happened again.
“We had a baby boy just this morning.” Even in his weary state, Jack couldn’t keep the pride off his face. It must have been a long night with a great outcome. “His oxygen is a little low, but they’re monitoring him in the nursery now to check that he comes out of it okay.” Jack glanced through the window again at a nurse across the room working over a bassinet. In the distance, you could hear a baby cry, a good sign, she supposed.
“Then let me be the first to congratulate you.”
He hesitated like he wanted to say something but, in the end, settled on, “Thank you, Sally.”
“You’re welcome.” Their brief exchange did little to erase the past or ease the future, but Sally was glad for it. Jack had moved on, and it was time she did too. When another contraction seized her midsection, she took it as a sign and glanced back at the nurse. “I think I need to get to the room.” The wheelchair moved again, taking her toward another life entirely.
“How do you know Jack Hardwick?” the nurse asked, her curiosity more than a little piqued. She left off thesomeone like youeven though her tone implied it.
“We grew up next door to one another.” That’s all Sally would offer. Like most people in her world, Sally left the nurse to fill in her own blanks. When it was clear she was done talking, her caregiver’s tone grew frustrated.
“I’m afraid your room is a little smaller than most, Miss Gertie.” Emphasis on theMissas though Sally wasn’t aware of her own single-mom status. “Down a couple more hallways at the end.”
“Does it have a bed?”
The nurse sniffed at her sarcasm. “Yes, it has a bed.” They walked a few steps in silence. “You know, my father worked for Washington Plastics back when your dad worked there. He was fired because of your father’s crazy accusations.”
Sally winced through a painful grip on her midsection. “Well, my papa was fired too, so I guess we have that in common.”
The nurse laughed, but it was absent of humor. “Our fathers had nothing in common. And only one of them should have been fired.”
