Garrett rose.
“You can ask one of the nurses where she is,” Beth suggested.
“I’ll find it,” Garrett said, walking away.
Beth removed her boots and propped her stocking feet on the glass coffee table. She fell asleep before Garrett returned.
When she woke, the waiting area was dark, though the lights in the adjoining hallway were on. All three kids snored shamelessly, and when Beth glanced next to her, she saw Rosie Ronan sitting right there, legs crossed at the ankle, eyes closed. Then, suddenly, Rosie’s eyes opened and the two women gazed at each other.
“Beth,” Rosie whispered, as though she were seeing Beth for the first time. “Beth Eyler.”
“Beth Newton,” Beth said. “I haven’t been Beth Eyler for twenty years.”
“In our house,” Rosie said, “you’re always called Beth Eyler.”
Beth didn’t like anything about that statement, and she sensed she wasn’t supposed to.
“Any news about Piper?”
“They gave her the shot,” Rosie said. “She’s sleeping.”
Beth nodded slowly, then tried to close her eyes, as though drifting off to sleep. Rosie allowed it for a few seconds before she spoke again.
“I was very sorry to hear about your husband.”
Beth opened her eyes. “Thank you.”
“David told me what a difficult time you had this summer.”
Beth resented this even more: the thought of the bereaved Newton family as a topic of conversation between the Ronans.
“We’re doing okay now, thanks.”
Rosie uttered what sounded like a soft laugh, egging Beth to look her way. “I was just thinking about the circumstances that led the two of us to be sitting here together,” Rosie said. “It’s extraordinary.”
“I guess it is.”
“To think your son impregnated our daughter.”
Beth thought about telling Rosie that Piper was hardly an innocent in all this. Those halter tops, the way she clung to Garrett-but she had no desire to fight. Instead, she stood up and turned toward the lighted hallway, thinking she would grab a cup of tea if she could find a vending machine-anything to get away!
“You’re leaving?” Rosie asked. A challenge.
“I’d like something to drink,” Beth said, and then to be gracious, “Would you like anything?”
Rosie rested her head against the back of the sofa, her eyes at half mast. “I’m all set,” she said. “But you might ask my poor husband if he wants a Coke or some coffee. We’ve been here since nine-thirty.”
Beth blinked; the heat was drying out her eyes. “Your poor husband?” she said. “You mean, David?”
Rosie answered with her eyes closed. “I mean David.”
It wasn’t the woman’s words, but her tone of voice that informed Beth. It was the slight smile of victory on her closed lips. David and Rosie were back together. Beth was shocked, incredulous, and crushed, a part of her. It wasn’t fair, was it?For them to reunite just as Beth was beginning to glimpse the possibility of moving on, and the desire, if only nascent, to want to move on with David. She brought her hand to her mouth and bit down on the diamond of her “We Made It” ring. It wasn’t fair because Beth was, once again, left alone.
A hand touched her shoulder. Beth turned to see a nurse. Gray-haired, big-bosomed, with the kind of weary and wise face that seemed to answer Beth’s thoughts by saying, You’re right. It’s not fair. But you’ll manage. Everyone does.
What the nurse actually said was, “She’s pushing. We’re very close. Would you ladies like to come watch the birth of your grandchild?”
Rosie followed the nurse down the hall.
The thought of being in the same room with Rosie and David addled Beth, but that baby was the reason she was here. She walked alongside Rosie, love for this new child rising to heat her skin like a fever. Halfway down the hall, she remembered Garrett and she hurried back to the waiting room to wake her son. Her son who, due to the miracle of life, was about to become a father.
Epílogue
O ne person dying is like a single drop rejoining the ocean. If Arch could tell his wife and children-and the grandchild who is about to emerge into the world-anything, it would be this: It’s all going to be okay, even in death, especially in death. But he lacks the power to communicate; he isn’t a ghost, only energy crackling in the air.
At a quarter to three on the morning of March twenty-fourth, he is in a delivery room of Nantucket Cottage Hospital. Piper Ronan is in the birthing chair, Peyton Ronan is moving a wooden rolling pin over Piper’s lower back, David Ronan is sitting in a straight-backed chair borrowed from the cafeteria with his hands covering his eyes because Piper has forbidden him from watching. Carla Hughes, labor and delivery nurse, has been on this ward for twenty-one years and has helped to deliver twelve hundred babies, though this is her first second-generation child. She helped deliver Piper nearly eighteen years ago. Carla isn’t one to pass judgment on the mess kids get themselves into. She has three teenaged sons herself-one of whom makes honor roll every report card, one of whom was arrested for taking a baseball bat to their neighbor’s mailbox, and one of whom has yet to distinguish himself as saint or sinner. Carla will say that this particular seventeen-year-old girl is a model patient. She doesn’t complain, and doesn’t make demands, although she did send her mother out of the room, but this is to be expected from even the most seasoned patient. So far the delivery is going smoothly. Carla imagines it has something to do with the youth of Piper’s body-the muscles are loose and flexible. A teenager’s tolerance for pain is high; just look, for example, at her pierced nose.
The doctor monitors Piper’s progress.
“Three more pushes,” he says to everyone in the room.
Outside the door wait Beth, Rosie Ronan and a barely conscious Garrett. Arch focuses on his son. If he had a body, he would give Garrett a hug. The birth of this baby is confusing him; he doesn’t know how to cope with it. Despite all of his conflicting emotions, Garrett is looking forward to holding his child, if only for a few minutes. Arch remembers holding his own children for the first time. What he remembers most vividly is how grateful he was that God gave him two arms: one for a baby boy, one for a baby girl.
Beth and Rosie Ronan are doing everything in their power to suppress their eagerness. Both are afraid to even poke their heads in. They can hear through the crack in the door the sounds of Piper struggling: the breathing, the moaning. Rosie is ashamed that she has been banished from the room, but that, she figures, is the price she pays for leaving the girls to their father. It will take a while for either of the girls to trust her again, to trust her and David together.
Beth is afraid to enter the room because David waits on the other side. Arch understands the complexity of her feelings. Another thing he would like to tell her is this: Every man, woman and child is entitled to one secret. Arch’s secret is that he knew about Beth’s first marriage from the beginning. During their engagement, Arch clerked for a judge and one day during a lull he checked to see if his future wife had ever appeared on public record. In death, all is forgiven, but in this case, Arch forgave Beth long ago. He hopes that someday she will forgive herself.
Piper bears down, remembering the first time she laid eyes on Garrett Newton, when she went to his house last June for a cookout. He’d looked so sad. Handsome and sad-an irresistible combination. Now she’s the one who’s sad, because twenty-four hours after the birth, this child will be handed into the waiting arms of a couple from South Hadley, Massachusetts, a philosophy professor and her husband. Her own baby whom she’s felt kick and squirm inside of her every hour for months, who stepped on her bladder last week, causing her to leak in her maternity overalls during calculus class. Her baby-for nobody knows this baby yet but Piper-will be carried out the front door of this hospital, leaving Piper alone with an aching body and bleeding psyche. She imagines meeting the child again someday and being asked to explain: Why did you give me up?