She pulled on the same maternity jeans and top she’d been wearing, then let Ralph outside and closed the door.

In a few minutes, Ralph announced his return. She put out food and water for him and drank some water herself and ate a couple of crackers. Then she put more wood on the fire, curled up with her baby in her arms, and closed her eyes. Soon she would have to decide what came next, but right now she did not have the strength.

She slept off and on, waking to put more wood on the fire, change the makeshift pad between her legs, and make sure the baby was still breathing before surrendering once again to sleep.

Midday, the baby began to cry.

Probably he needed to be nursed. But how did one do that?

She wrapped him in a fresh towel, then bared a breast and propelled her nipple into his mouth, but he did not take hold. She changed positions and tried again, speaking words of encouragement. Still no luck. In desperation, she rubbed the nipple back and forth over his lips. He would suck a few times and then stop. She tried the same maneuver again and again, hoping he was getting something. Then she held him in her arms and surrendered herself once again to sleep.

It was dark when she nursed him again, this time with seemingly better results. While he nursed, she tried to plan.

She hoped that Kelly and Montgomery hadn’t discovered that she was missing until morning and assumed she was already hundreds of miles away. She doubted if anyone would be looking for her this close to the ranch. Maybe she should just stay here for another day or two and give the roads a chance to clear.

Except she needed to find someone to stitch her up and either reassure her that the heavy flow of blood was normal or do something to stop it. And she needed baby clothes and diapers. Needed to buy a book on how to take care of a baby. Needed to find a place to stay. And a computer. A new name. And a cup of hot coffee would be really nice.

What choice did she have but to press on? Just the thought of loading her things back into the car made her exhausted, but she really should leave while it was dark. If she waited until tomorrow evening, she would have to find more firewood, and she had already scavenged most of the wood around the house. To find more, she would have to go farther out and leave the baby here alone. Besides, eventually someone was going to notice the smoke coming from the chimney.

Leaving the baby on the mattress, she ate a couple of granola bars and drank a bottle of water. Then she bundled up the bloodied towels and bedding and stuffed them into the trunk. After carrying her other possessions out to the car, she tidied up the house as best she could, collecting the trash in bags and putting them in the car to be discarded later.

By the time she was finished, she was exhausted and the baby was crying.

Once again she offered a breast to him. This time he grabbed hold like a little piglet. And Jamie laughed out loud.

“We learn fast,” she told him. How beautiful he was, she thought as she looked down at him. How perfectly beautiful. Her baby. She was a mother now. Not a surrogate mother. An honest-to-gosh mother. She would die before she let anyone take him away from her.

When he seemed to have finished nursing, she put the baby in a nest she had made for him among the items piled on the backseat. Ralph jumped into the front seat.

She got in the car and took a last look at the house, thinking of the long-dead family that had once lived here. Their house had saved her life and that of her baby.

She drove with her headlights on low beam, crawling along at a snail’s pace, almost sliding off the road several times. Once, she saw headlights up ahead and panicked, but the vehicle turned and headed toward a cluster of lights a half mile or so off the road.

At dawn she met a pickup truck. She could tell that the driver was an elderly person with frail, hunched shoulders.

The sun had cleared the horizon when she met a second pickup, this one driven by a man wearing a cowboy hat. He raised a finger from the steering wheel by way of a greeting. Jamie nodded then watched in the rearview mirror, half expecting him to turn around and chase after her.

She drove a bit faster now that it was daylight. The roadbed was covered with loose snow but not icy. After an hour or so, she reached the intersection with U.S. 54. Just a few more miles and she would be leaving Marshall County. Forever.

The lone service station in the tiny town of Monroe was closed, but it took less than an hour to reach Stratford, where she stopped at a convenience store. She filled the gas tank and purchased diapers, baby wipes, Kotex, and a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Back in the car, she diapered the baby and wrapped him in the last clean towel. Then she drove around to the back of the store and deposited her trash bags in a Dumpster.

From Stratford, she drove northeast on Highway 54. In less than an hour, she crossed the state line into Oklahoma. Will Rogers offered a smile and a wave from a billboard, welcoming her to the Sooner State. She took a deep breath and gave a prayer of thanks.

Just minutes later, she was driving into the town of Goodwell, population 1,192, according to a sign posted at the city limits. She pulled abreast of some children waiting for a school bus and asked for directions to the local cemetery.

It looked as though considerably more people had been buried in Goodwell’s cemetery than now lived in the town. She drove up and down the lanes, hoping she could spot a suitable grave marker from the car. She could not. So she tucked the baby inside her jacket and, with Ralph following along behind, walked up and down the rows until at last she found what she was looking for.

Janet Marie Wisdom had been born the year after Jamie’s birth and died at age three. Jamie took note of the girl’s birthday then touched the tombstone, thinking of the grieving parents who had buried this child here. “I hope you don’t mind if I borrow your name, little Janet,” she said. “I’d rather your family name was Smith or Jones, but Wisdom is a fine name.”

Then it was on to Guymon. The town was considerably larger than Goodwell, with a downtown clustered around a courthouse square. She stopped at a service station and looked in a phonebook for midwives. Only one was listed. Mae Vandegrift, certified nurse-midwife. She dialed Mae’s number and explained that she had had a baby unattended yesterday morning and was bleeding pretty badly.

“What’s your name, dear?”

Jamie hesitated. “Janet,” she said. “I can’t go to the hospital. I don’t have any insurance. I can pay some, but not much.”

“You on the run?”

“Yes,” she said. “From my boyfriend.”

Mae explained how to find her house.

It was a one-story brick dwelling set well back from the road. A pair of horses watched over the fence as Jamie turned into the driveway.

A middle-aged woman with graying hair answered the door. “You and that baby get yourselves in here out of the cold,” she ordered.

Jamie stepped into a cozy living room warmed by a gas heater installed inside a flagstone fireplace. Family pictures smiled from the mantel. A large and well-worn Bible sat in the middle of the round coffee table.

“The boyfriend do that to you?” Mae asked, pointing at the lump on Jamie’s forehead.

Jamie nodded.

Mae sighed and shook her head as she reached for the baby. “And no one was with you when you had this baby?”

Again Jamie nodded.

“You poor child. Where are your folks, honey?”

“Dead,” Jamie said, blinking back tears. The kindness and concern in the woman’s voice threatened to erode the force of will that had kept her going until now. She squared her shoulders. She was strong, she reminded herself. She would always be strong. She had to be for her baby’s sake.