She would fall to her knees when the pains began. And moan with Ralph whimpering beside her.

Finally, too exhausted to do anything more, she put out food and water for Ralph and spread a blanket over the mattress by the fireplace. It crossed her mind that she might be preparing her deathbed. And that of her son.

If she thought she was about to die, she would try to open the door so that Ralph would at least have a chance of surviving. But probably he would be eaten by wolves or coyotes if he didn’t freeze to death first.

Before she gave herself over to the mattress, she tried to think. Was there anything else she could do?

She remembered a movie she had seen about a woman having a baby alone on an island in the far north country of Canada. The woman had tied a rope to a bedpost to give her something to pull on while she was in labor. But Jamie had no rope and no bedpost. What she wanted was someone’s hand to hold. Someone’s soothing presence and voice to get her through this.

The only sounds she heard came from the howling wind.

At the end of each pain, Ralph would lick her face and put his head on her shoulder. And she would fall asleep thinking what a good little dog he was. A perfect dog for a little boy.

Then she would awaken to another pain. Terrible, agonizing pain. Pain that took over her body and her mind. Pain that took away her self-control and brought forth frantic thrashing and scream after scream. Pain that made her not care if she lived or died.

She would look at her watch and immediately forget what she had seen. Time lost all dimension. She never knew if the time between pains was seconds or hours. She forced herself to check the fire after each one. And she would reach between her legs, hoping to feel the top of the baby’s head. Then she would sleep until the pain began again.

She knew that it would end only if she could push the baby out of her. Out of desperation, she grabbed hold of her knees and pushed with all her might. Which only increased the pain.

She let go of her legs but felt such an urge to push that she pulled them back again. Toward her chest. It felt as though her insides were being pushed out of her body. She was being turned inside out. But the pushing was no longer a choice. It was something she had to do. Along with screaming. She pushed and screamed. Then dozed. And then she repeated the cycle. Again and again.

After each pain, she reached down between her legs.

He was stuck in there. In the birth canal. They were both going to die. Sooner rather than later, she hoped.

If they didn’t survive, she wondered how long it would be before they were found. Would their deaths even be reported, or would they be secretly buried and forgotten? It really didn’t matter, she supposed. Dead was dead. And with every pain, she felt closer to death. With every pain, she wondered if it was time to open the door so that Ralph could escape.

She grabbed her legs once again. And this time she felt something happening. Something moving. When the pain ended, she reached down once again and felt the top of the baby’s head.

She pulled her legs back and pushed with all her might.

This time when she checked, she felt his neck and a tiny shoulder.

Again she pushed, with all the strength left within her body. “I will not die,” she screamed. “I will not die.”

She felt the rest of the baby slide from her body. He was born.

She rolled onto her side and scooted her body around him. The baby wasn’t moving. His arms and legs were blue. His lips were blue.

She pulled his wet, slippery body toward her and shook him. Then she put her mouth over his and blew air into him.

And again. But to no avail.

“Breathe, baby,” she implored. “Please breathe.”

She stuck a finger in his mouth, which was full of mucus. She suctioned it out with her own mouth, spit out the mucus, and breathed into him again.

Then his little chest moved up and down.

And he cried. A thin, weak cry.

She clutched his slippery, bloody body to her chest. Only then did she realize how cold it was. She was shivering. The fire was almost out.

But there was more stuff happening down there. She pulled a corner of the blanket over the baby’s wet body and waited until she felt the afterbirth come sliding out.

The baby’s crying grew stronger as she tied off his umbilical cord. Then she cut the cord and wiped the blood and mucus from him with a towel, wrapped him in another towel, and laid him on a corner of the mattress. Then she wrapped the afterbirth in the blanket she had been lying on, carried it outside, and shook it into the snow.

A new day was dawning, and the storm was over.

She covered the mattress with a fresh blanket, wrapped a quilt around her shoulders, and turned her attention to the fire, leaving a trail of blood with every step she took. She stuffed the towel she had used to clean the baby between her legs, knelt in front of the fireplace, and blew on the coals. The blowing took such effort. And she felt so weak. But somehow she found the strength to blow again and was able to ignite a fresh wad of cotton batting. Then she continued blowing until it was safe to add more wood.

She closed her eyes, relishing the blessed heat that the fire emitted and worrying that the smoke from the chimney could be seen from the road.

She couldn’t stay here long. Just a few hours to get her strength back.

With the fire going, she turned her attention back to the baby. His eyes were open. “Hello, little guy,” she said. “I’m your mother.”

Chapter Twenty-three

GUS WAS BACK at Victory Hill sitting at his desk when the phone rang. He grabbed it and barked, “Yes.”

“Montgomery is dead,” Kelly’s voice reported.

Gus closed his eyes and slumped back in his chair. “Dead?”

“Yeah. Sorry it took so long. We searched the house from top to bottom. Then we spread out over the grounds, but the weather’s turned bad. A regular blizzard. One of the gardeners finally found her in the family cemetery completely covered over with snow. All she had on was a nightgown. She was lying with her arms around the marker for the stillborn baby.”

So that’s whose baby was buried there. Montgomery’s. But he couldn’t think about that now. At some later time, maybe he would process the information. Right now he had to deal with the situation at hand.

“And the girl?” he asked.

“I sent two men out in a truck with snow chains. They managed to get all the way to Alma and didn’t see a sign of her. The service station was closed but they asked at the truck stop. Lots of truckers and travelers are holed up there. No one had seen her.”

“How bad are the roads? Could she have even gotten that far?”

“I suppose, but I don’t see how she could have gotten any farther. The interstate and state roads are closed.”

“Who says?”

“The highway patrol. They aren’t allowing any traffic onto the interstate. Apparently there’re dozens of jackknifed eighteen-wheelers. I’m thinkin’ maybe she headed north, in which case she might have beat the weather. Hard to say.”

“Send men out on horseback. And get hold of someone in that little town north of there.”

“Monroe?”

“Yeah. Monroe. Call law enforcement in any town where she might be holed up, but tell them not to approach the girl. Tell them she’s a psycho and may be armed. They’re to keep her under surveillance and notify you.”

Jamie cleaned the baby with warm water from the pot by the fire. Then she cleaned herself as best she could.

She had torn down there, and blood was flowing. More than when it was her period. A lot more. She tore a blanket into sections that she could fold into pads.

She winced as she wiped the blood off her buttocks and thighs, which were covered with bruises from her slips on the ice while unloading the car and gathering wood. Her shoulder also was badly bruised, and the lump on her forehead was excruciatingly tender.