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“It’s my house.” She scooped him up. “It’s our house.”
But because the dog trembled—or she did—she shut the door again.
“It’s all right.” As she walked away, she kissed Yoda’s head. “Everything’s all right. Let’s go downstairs. You can have a treat.”
He didn’t manage a howl, but more of a whine. Still, she took it as a good sign.
In the kitchen, all the chairs at the small table lay on their backs on the floor.
“Somebody’s trying to scare us, but they won’t.”
She put Yoda down, righted the chairs.
Then rewarded the dog with a treat, and herself with a glass of wine.
The dog brought comfort, a sweet little warm body to share her space. After their last-round walk, she decided to skip Poole family history for a night, and went back to her novel with Yoda curled in his own bed by the fire.
And slipped into sleep with the book sliding out of her hands.
Did she dream?
She stood in front of the mirror, the mirror from her father’s dreams. The predators framing the glass seemed to snap and snarl.
But rather than her own reflection, she saw a room beyond, shadowy movements, as if the glass was a window and not a mirror at all.
The shadows began to shift, and the light grew brighter.
Firelight, candlelight illuminated a bedroom.
Hers?
Not the same bed, no, and the walls were covered with full-blown flowers with pink-tipped petals over a field of the palest gold. But she recognized the room she’d claimed in the manor as her own.
A woman lay on the bed, obviously in labor. Though Sonya had never seen a live birth, what she saw through the glass was unmistakable.
Two women attended her—midwives?—one bathing her face, the other kneeling between her legs.
And through the glass, Sonya heard voices, cries, muted at first, then growing louder and more distinct.
Not now, Sonya thought, through the glass wasn’t now. The woman who stood at the head of the bed wore some sort of cap on her head, a long gray dress with a kind of apron over it. And she could see the button-type boots on the woman who knelt on the bed.
A dream, it had to be a dream, she thought as she lifted a hand to the glass.
And passed through it like she would a doorway.
They took no notice of her, the three women, as all their focus and energy centered on the work of bringing life into the world.
“The babe’s coming! You must push! Draw up your strength, Mrs. Poole, and push!”
The woman in bed braced on her elbows. Her face a mask of exhausted pain as she bore down. Her scream, so primal, so fierce, lanced through Sonya’s bones.
“There’s the head, and a bonny one. One more push, dearie. One more now.”
As the mother sobbed, the midwife turned the baby, drawing its shoulders free so the rest of him slid into her hands.
“You’ve a son, Mrs. Poole. A fine lad. Here we are, here we are now,” the midwife said as she used a cloth to clean the newborn’s face.
He let out a whimper, then followed it up with an insulted cry that had Sonya clutching her hands to her heart.
