Dr. Rice explained: a miscarriage is often “nature’s way of correcting a mistake.” For instance, a “malforming” fetus.

A blessing in disguise, sometimes.

Dr. Rice explained: “Of course, the pregnant woman can experience grief almost as if she has lost an actual baby. And grief can linger, into the start of a new pregnancy.”

Grief! Rebecca wanted to laugh at the know-it-all doctor, an obstetrician, in angry dislike.

Dr. Rice of Chautauqua Falls. Examining Rebecca like a slab of meat on his examination table, prissy yet crude, fussy yet hurting her with his damn rubber-gloved hands and cold metal instruments like ice picks, she’d had to bite her lip to keep from screaming and kicking him in the belly. Yet afterward in his office, when Rebecca was dressed again, and trying to regain her composure, he offended her worse by telling her this crap.

“Doctor, I’m not ”grieving‘! I sure am not. I’m not the kind of woman to grieve over the past. See, I look forward to the future like my husband Tignor does. If this new baby is healthy and gets born-that’s all we care about, doctor.“

Dr. Rice blinked at Rebecca. Had he underestimated Mrs. Niles Tignor, mistaking her for some wishy-washy weepy girl? Quickly saying, “That’s a very wise philosophy, Mrs. Tignor. I wish that more of my patients were so wise.”

Home! By the time Niles, Jr. was born, in late November 1956, Rebecca would come to love it.

“It’s beautiful, Tignor. It will be special to us.”

She’d uttered these words more than once. Like words of a love song, to make Tignor smile and maybe hug her.

The old Wertenbacher place the farmhouse was called, locally. About two miles north of Chautauqua Falls in a hilly area of small farms, grazing land, open fields and marshes. It was at the western edge of the Chautauqua Mountains, in the foothills. By chance (Rebecca did not believe in coincidences, she believed in pure chance) Chautauqua Falls was an old canal town like Milburn, eighty miles west of Milburn. Unlike Milburn, it had become a small city: its population was 16,800. It was an industrial city with factories, clothing and canning mills on the Chautauqua River. There was canal traffic. The largest employer was Union Carbide, that had expanded its facilities in the boom years 1955 and 1956. One day, Rebecca would work the assembly line at Niagara Tubing. But it was the countryside outside Chautauqua Falls to which Tignor brought her, a crossroads settlement called Four Corners. Here at the juncture of the Poor Farm Road and the Stuyvesant Road were a small post office, a coal depot, a granary, Ike’s Food Store with a large Sealtest sign in its window, Meltzer’s Gas & Auto Repair. There was a two-room schoolhouse on the grounds of the former poor farm. There was a volunteer firemen’s station. There was a clapboard Methodist church and a cemetery behind the church. Walking sometimes past this church Rebecca heard singing inside, and felt a pang of loss.

Edna Meltzer attended this church and several times invited Rebecca to come with her. “There’s a joyful feeling in that church, Rebecca! You smile just stepping inside.”

Rebecca murmured vaguely she would like that, maybe. Someday.

“When your baby is born? You’ll want it baptized.”

Rebecca murmured vaguely that would depend upon what the baby’s father wanted.

“Tignor, he’s religious, is he? Nah!”

Mrs. Meltzer surprised Rebecca, the familiar way she laughed. As if Tignor was well known to her. Rebecca frowned, uneasy.

“Your own people, Rebecca: what kind of religion were they?”

Mrs. Meltzer put this question to Rebecca in a pleasant, casual manner as if she’d only just thought of it. She seemed wholly unconscious of were.

Why were and not are? Rebecca wondered.

For a long moment she could not think how to answer this question. And there was the woman waiting for her, Tignor had warned her against.

They were in Ike’s. Rebecca was just leaving, Mrs. Meltzer was just entering. It was mid-September, dry and very warm. Tignor was away in Lake Shaheen looking at “waterfront property.” Rebecca was seven months’ pregnant and did not want to estimate how many pounds she’d gained beyond twenty. She was all belly, that hummed and quivered with life. Her brain had ceased to function significantly, like a broken radio. Her head was empty as an icebox tossed away in a dump.

Without saying another word to Edna Meltzer, Rebecca walked out of the store. The bell above the door rang sharply in her wake. She was oblivious of Mrs. Meltzer staring after her and took no heed for how her neighbor would speak of her to Ike’s wife Elsie behind the counter. That girl! She’s a strange one ain’t she! Almost you could feel sorry for her, what’s in store.

Through the autumn, as the days began to shorten, the air sharpened, it seemed to Rebecca that the farm was more beautiful than previously. Everywhere she walked, everywhere she explored was slovenly and beautiful. The canal: she was drawn to the canal, to the towpath. She liked to watch for the slow-moving barges. Men waving to her. As she stood flat-footed, balancing her weight on her heels, big-bellied and smiling, laughing at how ridiculous she must seem to them, how unalluring. Anna Schwart would not warn her now Something will happen to you for no man would want a woman so visibly pregnant.

And the sky, that autumn. Marbled clouds, thunderhead clouds, high pale cirrus clouds that dissolved even as you watched. Rebecca stood staring at these for long dreamy minutes, hands clasped over her belly.

The next one, you can keep.

…in their bed, in the old Wertenbacher house on the Poor Farm Road. Tignor pressed his face against her hard, hot belly. He kneaded her thighs, her buttocks. He kneaded her breasts. He was jealous of the infant who would suckle those breasts. When he returned to the house he did not wish to speak of where he’d been, he told her he hadn’t married her to be questioned by her. She had asked him only how long he’d been driving, and was he hungry? She felt his dislike of her, the big belly that interfered with lovemaking. Yet he wanted to touch her. He could not keep his hands from her. Kneading her pelvis, the bristling public hair that radiated upward to her navel. Pressing his ear against her belly so hard it hurt, claiming he could hear the baby’s heartbeat. He’d been drinking but he did not appear to be drunk. He said, aggrieved, “They cast me out when I was a baby. I had these thoughts, I would find them someday. I would make them pay.”

In Troy, in the hotel room where she’d bled into a thick wad of towels, toilet paper, and tissues, Rebecca had been the one to comfort Tignor. It isn’t your fault. It isn’t your fault. She’d peered into his soul, she’d seen what lay broken and shattered there like glittering glass. She believed that she was strong enough to save him, as she had not been strong enough to save Jacob Schwart.