I brought my eyes back down to Mrs. Alvarez and put my hand back at the small of her back.
"Okay," I said. "Now you can push."
She pushed. Twenty-three minutes later, her daughter was on her chest, screaming hard. Her husband was crying in the chair. I had a hand on Mrs. Alvarez's ankle, telling her she had done it.
I didn't look at the window again.
Sunday morning, I drove to my mother's house.
The house was on Birch Hill, set back from the road behind the stone wall my grandfather had built when the property was new. I'd grown up here. I knew the creak on the third step, the draft in the upstairs hall, the smell of the kitchen when my mother had been cooking since seven—butter, herbs, the iron skillet she refused to replace. I parked in the drive and let myself in through the side door because the side door was the door we used.
She was at the stove with the frittata on, the good plates already out—the blue ones with the gold rim that had been her mother's—and the linen napkins folded in thirds on the counter. Coffee was made. The kitchen smelled like Sunday.
"Hi, Mom."
"Hi, sweetheart. Sit. It's almost done."
I poured myself coffee and sat at the counter. She had her hair up in the tortoiseshell comb and a cream sweater I recognized fromThe Yarn Room'sfall line. She looked good. She looked rested. I was glad.
"How's Marcie?" I said.
"Marcie is wonderful. She's been pushing me on this Wednesday class idea—a beginner knit-along, two hours. She thinks we could fill it."
"You should do it."
"I'm thinking about it. She wants me to teach the cable stitch in week three, which is ambitious for beginners, but Marcie has always been ambitious."
"How are the regulars?"
"Mrs. Parisi came in on Thursday with that granddaughter of hers. The one who crochets. She made a blanket for the baby. It was gorgeous, Audrey. The edging was perfect."
I listened. I asked follow-ups. I wanted to know that her week had been good, thatThe Yarn Roomwas busy, that she had enough people coming through the door to keep her days full. I'd been checking on my mother in small ways for as long as I could remember—not because she asked me to, but because I'd watched what happened when nobody checked, and I wasn’t going to be the person who didn't show up.
She slid the frittata onto the good plates and sat across from me. She ate neatly, with attention, the fork set down between bites.
"How was the wedding?" she asked.
"It was beautiful, Mom. Astrid looked incredible."
"The dress?"
"The one with the low back. She was right about it."
"And Mrs. Matthews?"
"Cried from the first toast. I think she started during the processional and never really stopped."
My mother smiled. "That woman. I saw her at Stewart's in May, and she teared up at the deli counter, talking about the rehearsal dinner."
"That sounds right."
"How was Easton?"
"He couldn't get through his vows. He got two lines in and had to stop."
Her face softened. She set her fork down. "Good for him," she said. "Good for both of them."
She meant it. She had always liked Astrid, and she had liked Easton from the moment Astrid brought him to the house—because Easton was a man who came home, who stayed, who had a house, a job, and roots in a town that knew his name. Easton passed the inventory without knowing he was being inventoried. Most men didn't.
