"Okay," she said, to my surprise. My concern deepened. Easy capitulation was not one of Angel's characteristics. "Let me use the bathroom first." I hovered outside the door.

When Angel emerged, she said, "Today for sure." Her voice was still calm and flat, but I sensed all kinds of suppressed excitement just trying to bubble to the surface. She went to the telephone on the kitchen wall, walking in a kind of tentative way, as if she expected something to grab her at every step. I bounced around her like a rubber ball, anxious to help, trying not to get in the way, scared to death she'd have the baby here.

Angel punched Shelby's work number, waited for an answer, all the while that inner-directed look on her face.

I heard a squawk from the other end of the line. "Jason Arlington, that you? This is Angel. I need to talk to Shelby," Angel said.

I could hear the tiny voice squawk some more.

"Yes, you can sound the siren," Angel said, sounding as if she was holding on to her patience by a very taut leash. The siren's wail was audible from where I was standing.

"Shelby's crew think it's real funny that he's going to be a father for the first time," Angel explained. "They set up this siren to call him if he's far out in the plant when I phone to tell him the baby's on the way." Her face tightened again, and her fingers clenched the receiver until they turned white. Then, gradually, she relaxed. She smiled into the telephone. Her husband was on the other end.

"Shelby," Angel said. "I'm going to leave right now to drive back into town. I'm at Martin and Roe's. Meet me at our house."

This time I could hear Shelby's words. "You stay right there," he bellowed.

"I'll come get you. Don't you try to drive!"

To my amazement, Angel said, "All right."

I think Shelby was startled, too, because there was silence on the other end of the line. Then he said, "I'll be right there," and the line went dead. I caught a glimpse of Rory Brown stepping quietly down the hall. Angel's back was turned, and frankly I don't think she'd have cared if a real leopard went through the house, at that point.

I went to the foot of the stairs and called Martin, who came down with a newly awake Hayden. Martin tried not to look dismayed when I explained the situation. He handed me the baby immediately.

Angel seemed to want to remain standing, so I tried not to fuss over her. I put a bottle in the microwave, and Angel said, "That's not a safe way to heat bottles."

"What?"

"Sometimes they have hot spots if you heat them that way. That's what the baby book said."

Everyone's a critic. "So far, we haven't had any problem," I said. "I'm testing it before I give it to him."

Angel shrugged, as if she'd done her best and it wasn't her fault if I was misguided. I shook the bottle vigorously, tested the formula on my arm, and sat down to feed Hayden, who had just let out a few preliminary "eh" noises. Angel did the face-clenching routine again. This time she propped herself against the wall.

"Are they getting worse?" I asked, while Martin looked as if he wished he were on the moon.

"Maybe I should call the ambulance," he suggested. I noticed he didn't suggest taking Angel into town himself. I had a sneaking suspicion he was worried Angel's water would break in his Mercedes. "No," she said, shaking her head. Martin tried not to look relieved. "I know this is going to take hours. I'm just trying to get used to the feeling. It's like a clamp. Then there's the release. Then, along after a while comes the next clamp."

"Does it hurt?"

"Not yet, but it's on a roll downhill," Angel said. "I hope Shelby doesn't pass out in the labor room. He got sick when I broke my leg a few years ago." A battered car sped up our driveway, and Shelby, tall and pockmarked and burly with muscle, was out of the vehicle and in our kitchen door before you could say "Having a baby." His dark hair, liberally streaked with gray, was dented all around where his hard hat had rested, and his Fu Manchu mustache was going in all directions, as if he'd rubbed his hands over it. Wordlessly, Shelby shook hands with Martin, kissed me on the forehead with nary a glance at the baby I was holding, and took his wife by the elbow to hustle her out the door. Angel gave us a nod and they were on their way, Shelby shepherding Angel as though she were the only woman who'd ever given birth. "Jason said he'd get one of the guys to drive him out here to pick up Angel's car; I gave him a spare key," Shelby called over his shoulder at the last minute. Then he buckled up and headed back into town to the Lawrenceton hospital. Rory came out of the den when Shelby had turned out of the driveway. He was looking amused.

"So, she's gonna have a baby really soon," he said agreeably. Listening at doors did not seem to present a moral dilemma for Rory Brown. "Craig took Regina to a midwife." Then the reminiscent smile faded from the boy's face as he remembered that his friend Craig was now dead. "He told me it was a lot cheaper," Rory added, with no smile at all.

"I have to pack," I said, and both the men looked at me. "Okay," Rory said, after what I could only think of as a pregnant pause, "I'll feed the little fella."

I transferred baby and bottle to the young man, and spent a blessed hour alone upstairs trying to assemble clothes suitable for an Ohio winter. A number of important questions bobbed to the surface of my mind as I folded and figured. Where would we stay in Corinth? The Holiday Inn I'd used before would certainly be cramped with a baby sharing the room. I wondered about the farmhouse Martin owned up there, the one in which he'd grown up. He'd had it restored from its near-derelict condition, he'd mentioned in passing. "We could stay in the farmhouse," Martin said from the doorway, and I jumped in my skin. "I didn't mean to scare you," he said. "I was just thinking about the farmhouse," I said, when my heart had stopped trying to make tracks out of my chest. "You had it repaired?" "Yes... and to confess something to you, Regina and Craig were living in it." "Why should you say ‘confess'?" I asked. I sat down on the end of the bed, two unopened packages of panty hose in my hands.

"I didn't tell you," he said. He wandered across the room to stand looking out the window. His shoulders had an uncharacteristic slump. The bleak view of winter fields couldn't have helped his state of mind much. It was a gray day, and the clouds were full of rain... Pregnant with it, in fact, my brain told me chirpily. I dropped the hose on the floor and clutched my head with both hands.

"Why didn't you tell me, Martin? Why did that have to be such a big secret?" He sat beside me on the foot of the bed. He put one arm around me, carefully, as though he realized there was a good chance I'd sock him in the nose. "Cindy told me you would always keep secrets," I said. "She said you couldn't help it." I'd never told Martin about the conversation I'd had with his first wife, before Martin and I were married. I'd been convinced he'd learned his lesson during his first marriage, that with me he would not repeat the same mistake.

"I've never lied to you about anything," Martin said now, and that was something else Cindy had told me.

I hated her being right.

"Martin, if there's something you know about this that you haven't told me, if there's anything about Craig and Regina and Rory and Cindy or your sister... anything you haven't told me, this is your last free pass." "After this I get penalized?" His face fell into more familiar lines, the uncertainty fading to be replaced with the intelligence and command he normally wore like his suit coat.

"After this, you get thrown out of the game." I looked him straight in his pale brown eyes.

"But I'm still in?"

I nodded.

His mouth only had to move an inch to cover mine. It was different, this time; we'd always been perfect together in bed, and this morning he still had the magic to make me lost in the act of love; but now he was rougher, more demanding. It was as if he was reasserting his exclusive right to me, daring some cosmic force to just try to separate us. You woman, me man, his body said: and mine gasped, Hoo boy.