Page 16 of A Winter's Miracle

Anna’s eyes glinted. “What was it?”

Smith laughed gently, and his shoulders shook. “She was doing a cross-country trip,” he said. “Hopping from here to there, doing the best she could to make a buck or get something to eat. She was eight months pregnant at the time, but she didn’t show very much, and many of the men who helped her along the way didn’t know she was pregnant at all.”

“That hasn’t been my experience at all,” Anna quipped, her face scrunching. It looked like another contraction was on its way.

“My mother had started hitchhiking with a trucker,” Smith said. A kind fellow but someone who did the bare minimum of driving per day and always ended up at a dive bar along the highway. Mom always said he was one of the nicer guys she traveled with. She never had to stand up to him or remind him to respect her. And when he got drunk, he always got sweeter rather than meaner, like my father. But I digress.”

Julia had never heard Smith even mention his father. With the hospital lights shining on his face, he looked as though he sat in a cell, spilling his secrets.

“When Mom went into labor, she was at one of those highway bars outside of St. Louis,” Smith went on. “The trucker was out of his mind, drunk, and very difficult to reason with. He couldn’t understand why she had to go to the hospital right that minute. Mom always said he wanted to dance the night away to a jukebox. But Mom was adamant that she wanted me to be born safely. So when the trucker was distracted, Mom stole the keys from his pocket and raced out into the parking lot. She stole the eighteen-wheeler and drove it to the hospital! By the time the trucker tracked his truck down the next morning, I’d already been born. The trucker was hungover and soft around the edges, and he could do nothing but wish my mother well. He even gave her a one-hundred-dollar bill to get started with.”

Smith laughed and wiped a tear from his cheek. Julia’s heart opened at the story. This version of his mother was every bit the mother of his darker stories—reckless and borderline insane. But it had worked out differently in this tale. Smith had been born safely. She’d done everything in her power to make sure of it.

Julia could understand why the story was so dear to his heart. It was one of the only examples of his mother’s love.

As Anna peppered him with questions, another contraction fully took hold, and she grabbed Julia’s hand as though her life depended on it. Julia’s fingers crunched together. She whispered loving words to her daughter, anything to get her through the dark cloud of pain. And when Anna emerged, they turned to find that Smith had slunk out of the hospital room.

“Where did he go?” Anna gasped as Julia filled a glass with water.

“I’m sure he wanted to get home, sweetie,” Julia said. “You know how Smith is. He doesn’t do well in public.”

Anna sipped the water, her eyes ponderous. “That was quite a story,” she whispered. “It made me realize I’ve never heard my birth story.”

Julia remembered only bits and pieces of that fateful day: flashes of pain, Jackson hovering over her, urging her on, her body becoming a stranger unto herself. She’d been blisteringly frightened, going through labor without her own mother or either of her sisters. It felt like the world no longer had gravity. She’d ached to call them back home in Nantucket, yet she hadn’t been strong enough to bridge the barrier between them. And when Anna had burst into the world, Julia had been so overwhelmed with responsibilities and love that she’d allowed years to drift by.

Chapter Seven

In hindsight, Anna would block out so much of her labor and delivery. This, she would read, was a coping mechanism—a way for her mind and body to prepare for another baby, should she ever want one. Years later, she would remember amorphous pain, her mother’s hands, and the nurses bursting in and out to measure her or assure her of something that made little sense to her when she was this deep into the physical transformation. In some ways, the entire event felt like a horror movie. In others, it was the most rapturous fifteen hours of Anna’s life.

When the contractions were hardly a minute apart, Anna’s mother seemed to get up the nerve to ask the question that sizzled between them. “Why did Smith bring you to the hospital?”

“I was lucky he was there,” Anna responded, wincing into another contraction. “I mean, can you imagine if I’d been alone?”

“But you weren’t alone,” Julia pointed out. “You were at The Copperfield House. At any one time, more than ten people live there. All of them have licenses.”

But Julia was too late. Anna huffed into another contraction, closing her eyes as a wave of pain flowed through her. Julia got the hint that Anna wouldn’t reveal more, so she dropped it.

It wasn’t like there was much to say, anyway. Being curious and slightly reckless, Anna had left her room to speak to Smith on the beach. It wasn’t every day you decide to go flirt with a boy, only to have him take you to the hospital to deliver someone else’s baby moments later. It was embarrassing. It was also a pretty good story.

Only twice did Julia find time to leave the hospital room for a cup of coffee and a bathroom break. As she sped through the waiting room, she spotted Charlie, Greta, Alana, Ella, and Scarlet, who had formed a circle around a box of donuts and many coffee cups. Flowers ladened the table, and balloons floated overhead. Everyone looked exhausted. Julia wondered if anyone had mentioned Anna’s delivery to Violet on their way out of the house. She imagined Violet wandering aimlessly through The Copperfield House, wondering where everyone had gone. Perhaps it was up to Julia to contact her? But then again, she didn’t want Violet’s anxious energy around the hospital wing. She wanted Anna to deliver her baby in peace.

Around the corner and down the glistening white hall, Julia was surprised to find Smith curled around his cell phone, reading what looked to be an e-book. Julia’s mouth was dry in surprise. All at once, the story of Smith’s mother stealing the eighteen-wheeler filled her mind. The publisher side of her brain ached to run over to him and tell him, “That deserves space in your memoir!” But maybe he already knew that?

Anna gave birth to a baby boy at three thirty that afternoon. Julia was the only other person in the room besides the doctor and a nurse. She had the remarkable privilege of welcoming her first grandchild and holding him only a few minutes after Anna held him for the first time. In her mind, she made a silent promise. “I will protect you and love you forever.”

Anna named the baby Adam. She whispered it to him first, allowing him to try it on. And when it seemed to fit, she raised her chin to her mother and breathed, “What do you think?”

Julia touched the little boy’s arm gently as her eyes filled with tears. “I love it, honey.”

Throughout Anna’s pregnancy, she’d created list after list of baby names, which she’d never shared with anyone. In another reality, she and Dean would have talked endlessly about baby names, having arguments about the best ones or pitching silly options. That had been the nature of their relationship.

With Dean gone, “Adam” had fallen from the sky and landed on one of her lists, striking her with its simplicity and its meaning. Adam had been the first man in Genesis. This suited her. After all, she and Adam would have to forge a new, Dean-less reality. They would have to be brave and strong, as the first Adam had been.

After little Adam had been a part of the world for more than an hour, Anna drifted off to sleep. It was impossible to know how long she was out. But when she heard angry voices outside her door, her eyes burst open, and she turned over in bed, searching for Adam. These were the first hours they weren’t connected physically, and that fact had formed a dull ache in her throat.

Nobody had told her how painful it would be once you were separated from your child.

It took a moment for Anna to realize who bickered outside the hospital door.

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