“I was breech?” Emma asked, having witnessed enough horses birthing foals on the island to know such things. More importantly, it didn’t help her feel any less guilty about her mother’s death.
Her father went pale, and he spoke shakily in a quiet voice, as if talking about it might send him back physically to the horror of that day. “I wasn’t in the room, but I was told that your leg came out first, and Jane had to work hard to deliver you. She did, thank goodness, but it was a long and complicated process, and afterward, your mother ...” He paused and swallowed over the rising of his grief. “I was told that her womb didn’t contract like it should have. When I was finally allowed into the room, there was so much blood ...” He stopped and looked away.
“Take your time,” Emma gently said.
He nodded but charged ahead, speaking fast, to be done with it. “We only had a moment or two together, and she knew she was dying. She told me to take good care of you and that she loved me ...” His voice broke, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Go on, please,” Emma said, desperate to hear the rest of it.
He met her gaze. “What I’m trying to tell you is that childbirth doesn’t always go smoothly. Sometimes there are complications, and I’d like you to consider going to Halifax to give birth in the hospital, where there are doctors who can perform a cesarean delivery—or do whatever else needs to be done if something goes wrong.” He grabbed hold of her hand across the table. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Snow had accumulated on the windowsill, and Emma stared at it pensively. She found herself pondering all the forces necessary to place it there—the drop in temperature, the cloud vapor in the sky turning to ice crystals, and gravity pulling those snowflakes to the surface of the earth. Nature was a mysterious power that she didn’t fully understand, and over which she had no control. Living on Sable Island had taught her that at a very young age.
She sat back, laid both hands on her belly, and rubbed in a wide circle. “It was always such a mystery to me,” she said, “how she died, exactly. I don’t know what I imagined ... it was always something very vague.”
“I’m sorry to tell you about it. I don’t want to scare you, but I felt you should know. And I don’t know if it’s a hereditary thing ... or just bad luck.”
Emma thought of theBelvederesuddenly, getting caught in a storm in the worst possible place, and a man dying. What was that, if not bad luck?
“Where would I stay?” she asked. “Do you think Ruth would take me in?”
“I’m sure she’d love to have you,” her father replied, “and she lives near the hospital. There isn’t anyone I would trust more.”
Emma considered it. “But what about Logan? I don’t want to leave here without him. I could be there for a month or more. Could he come with me?”
Her father pushed his spectacles up his nose. “It’s possible for me to amend his contract to allow for it. I’d suggest going on the next boat in March, a few weeks before your due date, just to be safe.”
Emma nodded. “Thank you for telling me all this.”
That night at the supper table, she and her father, together, explained everything to Logan and outlined the plan for her to give birth on the mainland. Emma assured her husband that they would both be welcome at Ruth Montgomery’s home in Halifax. They would stay until the baby came, then board the next available supply ship back to Sable Island, where they would return to the life they loved and raise their child in this paradise they called home.
Logan agreed that it was the right thing to do, but he was quiet after supper. That night, he stayed up late in the great room. He did not come upstairs to bed until after 3:00 a.m.
A few nights later, after Emma’s father went to bed and left her and Logan alone in the great room, she looked up from the book she was reading. “Have I said something wrong? Or done something? You’ve been quiet lately.”
Sleet pelted the windows like a spray of pebbles, and the rooftop creaked and groaned in the wind.
“Everything’s fine,” he replied.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I’m just tired,” he explained, and went back to his reading. Within seconds, he looked up again and spoke irritably. “Honestly, Emma, I don’t know how much longer I can keep up these early-morning shifts. They’re hell in this weather.”
“Yes, I can only imagine.” Hoping to lift his spirits with a reminder of their passionate summer together, she grinned flirtatiously. “But there was a time when you enjoyed them. Remember?”
“That was different.” His snappish tone caused her hackles to rise.
Emma cleared her throat and dispensed with any romantic inclinations. “Why? Because you were happy then? Are you not happy now? Because you’ve hardly spoken to me the past few days. What’s going on?”
Logan shut the magazine and huffed. “I’m happy,” he said, “but in case you haven’t noticed, it’s the middle of the goddamned winter, and like I said, those beaches are pure hell, frozen over. I don’t seeyouriding Willow at dawn, like you used to.”
Emma closed her book also and gave him her full attention. “You’re right. I don’t ride in the mornings, but do I need to remind you that I’m seven months pregnant?”
He waved a hand dismissively through the air, as if it were nothing of importance, which rubbed her the wrong way, because her nerves were already raw with anxiety about her approaching labor and delivery.
“How can we fix this?” she asked, focusing, as always, on a solution, not the problem, because she didn’t want to argue. “Is there a way you can get a later shift? Could you talk to Joseph?”
Logan responded petulantly. “I’m at the bottom rung when it comes to seniority.”
