“Talk to me,” she whispered, her eyes closed. When he made no sound, she realized he probably didn’t know what to say. She whispered, “Who decorated your chambers?”
“My sister, my mother and my grandmother. Does it show?”
She smiled, again the epitome of diplomacy. “My grandmother made this pillow for me before she died,” he said. “She made one for my sister, my brothers, and all our cousins.”
Kelly felt him taking the pins from her hair. She focused on the heat in his fingertips. She lost her concentration during the next pain, but he was still there those interminable minutes later, when the contraction subsided.
“What do you say we get you out of your boots?”
She reached for her ankle, but he took over, sliding the right boot off easily. She didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or scared out of her wits. Placing a hand on her belly, she thought about the baby and said, “I can do this.” She said it six times in all.
The next thing she knew, her other boot was off, too. While he placed it against the wall with the first one, Kelly said, “Women used to have babies at home all the time. We’ve all heard stories of women who gave birth, then went back to work in the rice paddy.”
“It’s not quite as bad as that,” he answered.
“Exactly.”
She brought her legs up, and groaned.
Grey raked his fingers through his hair. “You’re going to have to remove some clothes, Kelly.”
Her eyes were round all of a sudden. She swallowed her panic admirably. “Would you mind turning around?”
He stared at her for a moment before giving her the privacy she’d requested. “Giving birth is no time for modesty.”
“I know, but the only people who are supposed to see a woman like this are her doctors and her lover.”
Grey had no business thinking what he was thinking at a time like this. It was the way she’d said lover.
The quiet rustle of fabric on leather was punctuated by an occasional catch in her breathing. “What was your grandmother’s name?”
Grey didn’t comprehend the question. “What grandmother?”
“The one who made you and all her grandchildren a pillow like this one?”
He turned around again, and saw that Kelly was covered up with her coat. She was still wearing her green dress, but her undergarments were folded neatly on the floor near the couch.
“Her name was Gloria WhiteBear Colton. Her husband, my grandfather, died before she gave birth to twin sons, my father, Tom, and my Uncle Trevor, who died a long time ago. My grandmother raised my five cousins, but she had a hand in raising my brothers, sister and I, too.”
Kelly gripped his hand as another pain gripped her. Grey tried to decide what he should be doing. In the movies, somebody always boiled water at times like these. That was the extent of Grey’s medical training. He wet some paper towels at the small sink in his lavatory, then smoothed them across her face. “Did your prenatal classes prepare you for what’s going to happen?” he asked.
“More or less.” Her eyes were closed, her breathing deep and even. “You should have heard me proclaiming how I was going to have my child naturally. What I wouldn’t do for an epidural or some other painkilling drugs right now.”
“You have your sense of humor. That’s good.”
Another pain took her. When it was over, she said, “Keep talking. Even when I don’t seem to be listening.”
“I’m not much of a talker.”
“Oh.”
“It’s one of the downfalls of growing up in a large family. It isn’t easy to get a word in edgewise.”
“I have one older sister. It was never easy to get a word in edgewise in our house, either.” There were a few seconds of silence. And then she asked, “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
He ended up naming and describing all four of his brothers, his sister, as well as his five cousins. He wasn’t sure she heard half of what he said, but it didn’t matter. He sat on a straight-backed chair pulled close to the leather sofa. His chambers were in the interior portion of the old courthouse, which meant there were no windows. The only light came from hundred-year-old fixtures on the paneled walls and a lamp he’d turned on on his big, mahogany desk.
He reminisced about simpler times, and what it was like growing up in a loud, boisterous family. She was breathing quietly when he started to tell the story of the time he, Billy, Jesse, Sky and their cousin Willow had been visiting the family ranch.
“We climbed up a rickety ladder nailed to the wall in the barn. At the top was a window with no glass where barn swallows and doves roosted. From there it was an easy climb out onto the roof of a lean-to that housed straw and machinery and little animals that scuttled, heard but rarely seen. We all knew that roof was forbidden territory. That was half the allure. The other half was the view. We sat up there in a row, smugly enjoying our adventure. Our grandmother’s voice carried around to the back of the barn, calling us in for lunch. Being the oldest, I went last, the others climbing down ahead of me. We could smell the homemade soup and fresh-baked bread before we reached the house.”
“What kind of soup?” Kelly asked.
So she was listening. “Vegetable beef. My mother was stirring it on the stove when we got there. My grandmother, who had been raising my cousins ever since their parents died a few years earlier, looked at each of us in turn. Tossing her gray braid over her shoulder, she said, ‘Willow, would you like your spanking now or later?’
“All five of us froze like antelope trapped in the glare of headlights. How could she have known? My ever-wise grandmother nudged my mother and said, ‘Are you going to line yours up for spankings, too, Alice?”’
“Not exactly good appetizer talk, huh?” Kelly whispered.
Grey shook his head at the memory. “My mother said that she would prefer to wait until our father got home.” He leaned ahead in his chair, quietly adding, “And you’re right. None of us ate much at lunch that day.”
“Did your father spank you when he got home?”
“I don’t think my mother ever told him. I doubt she’d planned to. That six-hour wait was our punishment.”
Kelly grew silent, panting through another pain. It lasted almost two minutes. Deep lines cut into the corners of her mouth; her face was wet with perspiration long before the contraction was over. Exhausted, she slumped back. Without opening her eyes, she said, “Do you believe in spanking children?”
“Most of the time, no.”
“But?” she whispered.
“If they climb out onto a rotting roof forty feet off the ground, when one wrong move could get them killed, or worse, then, yeah, I believe in spankings. Not beatings, or whippings, but a swat on the seat of their pants, or the threat of one, was very effective.”
Kelly thought about that. Grey’s mother sounded like a wise woman. The “wait for your father to get home” ploy had worked, probably because she hadn’t overused it. Kelly’s baby wasn’t going to have a father. It was all up to her. She didn’t want to think about that right now.
“Tell me more. About that big family of yours.”
Grey Colton, a man who’d professed that he wasn’t much of a talker, told her about the years his family had moved around while his father had been in the army. He talked about his great-grandfather George WhiteBear and his spirit quests. Sometimes she whimpered. Sometimes she squeezed his hand so hard he