Gracy tied the cord of the sweet baby she’d just birthed—a girl who reminded her of Emma—then handed the stork scissors to young Jane. “You cut it,” she said.
“Truly?” the girl asked, her eyes wide with excitement and a little apprehension as she took the scissors. She carefully cut through the flesh, then returned the scissors to Gracy. “Did I do it right?”
“Perfect.” Gracy wiped the scissors on a soft cloth, then placed them in her bag. She watched as Jane touched the tiny wet cheek with the backs of her fingers. It was clear the girl loved babies.
At fifteen, Jane had promise. She already had helped with three deliveries, and they had gone well. But she’d need seasoning, Gracy knew, before she could tell if the girl really would make a midwife. It remained to be seen whether Jane could cope with a mother dying or a new baby who never took a breath. Gracy had hopes for her, however.
Jane was the daughter of the oldest Richards sister, Martha. Gracy had been surprised when the woman sent for her to deliver her seventh child. But after the trial was over, the Richards sisters and others who had doubted Gracy’s innocence had rushed to her side to tell her they’d believed in her all along. And as proof, Martha Richards had sent for Gracy when her time came.
Jane had been at the bedside when her mother delivered that last child, had stood transfixed as her baby brother slid out into Gracy’s hands. Jane had held the infant while Gracy cared for the mother, but had kept an eye on what the midwife was doing, too. Later, the girl asked, “You think I could have the learning of this?”
“It takes a love of women and babies,” Gracy replied.
Jane nodded. “I have it. Am I too young? I’m fifteen.”
“I delivered my first at ten.”
“Then I best get started.”
So Jane had come to Gracy’s cabin during the winter months to learn about herbs and potions, to study Gracy’s books, and to talk to the old midwife about childbirth. When Gracy was sure the girl was serious, she took Jane to a lying-in.
The girl had performed well, then and later. She distracted the small children who were bewildered by their mother’s cries, rubbed the mother’s back, brewed tea for the woman to drink (and for Gracy, too). She seemed to know just which herb or implement Gracy needed before the midwife asked. Maybe Jane would take over for her, just as she had replaced Nabby so many years before. Gracy had once hoped that Mittie McCauley would follow in her footsteps, but Mittie hadn’t been interested, especially not now. What with the two boys to care for and a hint that she might look for a girl to adopt one day, Mittie was almost too busy to quilt.
Of course, it would be a while yet before someone else was needed as midwife. Edna Halleck’s confession had lifted Gracy’s malaise. Gracy had thought her midwifery days were coming to an end. But when the charge against her was dropped, she felt such joy—joy not just that she was no longer accused of killing the Halleck baby but joy that she could return to the work she loved. She had been given a chance to start over. Not that she didn’t feel her age these days. Her step was slower now, and her bones ached after standing all night beside a childbirth bed. She would have to give up her work one day. But not yet. If Jane worked out, there would be someone to help her as she grew older and to take her place one day. She wouldn’t be the last midwife on the Tenmile.
The birth that day had taken place in Swandyke, and now, the old woman and the young girl walked together through town. May had come on, and the snow had melted, although there would be a heavy, wet storm that bent the willows to the ground before winter truly passed. Still, the winter storms that howled down off the peaks and filled the mountain bowls with silence were done. Already the leaves on the aspen trees were budding and growing things sending up shoots through the earth damp with snowmelt.
“Spring births are the best ones,” Gracy told Jane. “The baby will have a chance to grow strong before winter comes on again.”
They walked slowly, because Gracy’s leg still troubled her, and because the day was too fine to hurry. They passed RICHARD ERICKSON, M.D. painted on a window, and Gracy waved, although she did not know if the doctor was inside. After the trial, Little Dickie had told her stiffly, “I guess I misspoke.” It wasn’t much of an apology, but Gracy knew what it cost the man to give it. She was a forgiving woman and thought that with a little compassion, he would be a good doctor one day. Swandyke needed someone with book-learned medicine. And so she encouraged young mothers to take their babies to him. He returned the courtesy, sending a pregnant woman to Gracy.
The two went on, Gracy silent as they approached the Halleck house. It was closed up the way it always was, but Gracy knew that no one lived inside anymore. Jonas Halleck had moved to a shack at the Holy Cross and had let it out that the mine was for sale. People said he ought to be in jail, but Ted Coombs told her that what the man had done with his daughter surely was a sin, but he wasn’t sure it was against the law. So Halleck hadn’t been charged.
Neither had Edna Halleck. Gracy wasn’t surprised. Ted had said that after the licking the prosecutor had taken, he wasn’t likely to want to go after Edna Halleck, who had the town’s sympathy. What’s more, folks believed that being married to Jonas Halleck was punishment enough. At winter’s end, Edna and Josie moved away from Swandyke, but not before Edna asked for a divorce. She appeared before the same Judge Downing, who gave her a good settlement. Gracy was glad to see them go. There were those who blamed Josie for the baby. It was best the girl was gone, best for everyone. Gracy was relieved.
She and Ted had talked about Edna’s confession. Had the woman really strangled the baby? Or had Josie done it and Edna taken the blame to protect her daughter? Ted didn’t know. But then, Ted hadn’t been convinced that Gracy wasn’t the killer. Gracy had seen it on his face when he turned to her after Edna said Jonas Halleck hadn’t murdered the boy. Gracy’d seen the questioning look and knew that everybody in the courtroom—everyone but Daniel and Jeff and maybe John—wondered if Gracy were indeed guilty. But she hadn’t remarked on it to Ted. It was enough that she was aware that her husband and son knew her heart.
The two midwives reached the trail to Gracy’s cabin, and Jane left to return home. “You did finely,” Gracy told her, and the girl smiled, happy but a little embarrassed at the praise.
Gracy started up the trail alone. Off in the distance, she saw Daniel with the old dog, Sandy. They had found him on a mine dump years before when Jeff was a boy, and the dog’s face now was white with age. Daniel’s back was to her and Gracy thought as she had so many years before that it was Daniel’s hips. She’d always had a liking for hips. Hips was what she was after, Nabby told her once.
She would miss him when the snows higher up melted and he left her to prospect in the high country. The cabin was warm. The boy Abraham had chinked it before the winter storms. Still, she dreaded to sleep alone. But Daniel would no more give up the search for precious metal than she would midwifery. Come snowmelt, he would tell her he could smell the ore. He’d pack a burro, and Gracy would send him off, holding her tongue, because she knew the summer’s work might amount to no more than a few nuggets in the peach can.
Daniel turned and saw her, and his face lit up. He hurried down the trail to his wife, then put his arms around her, right there in the sunlight where anyone might see them. He took her arm, and the two old people continued up the path. They reached the cabin, but they didn’t go inside. Instead, they sat on the bench in the light that came through the tree branches.
“There’s a letter from Jeff. He’s coming home.”
Gracy turned to her husband, and the smile lines on her face deepened. “Truly?” she asked.
Daniel nodded. “He doesn’t say for good, but he’ll be back. I knew he would.” He frowned. “You’re glad, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am.”
“But you sent him away after the trial. I think he might have stayed then, but you pushed him out. You told him he’d gone west and that it was time for him to see what was east of the mountains. I never understood it.”
Gracy shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. There’s not a reason now for him to stay away.”
“I pondered on it. You must have had a reason then. What was it, Gracy?”
“Best be kept a secret.”
“From your husband?”
Gracy thought that over. She picked up a stick and threw it for Sandy, who got up slowly and fetched it. The dog was as old as they were, she thought.
“We don’t keep secrets from each other. Haven’t for a long time,” Daniel said.
Of course they did. Or at least, Gracy did. She kept the secrets told to a midwife. But this secret was different. This wasn’t about one of the women.
“If there’s a thing to know about our son, you ought not to keep it from me.” Daniel had been after her for months asking why she’d encouraged Jeff to leave.
He was right, she thought now. In the years since Jeff was born, the two of them had grown so close that they were a part of each other. If Daniel’s heart had stopped beating, Gracy believed hers would, too. She had no right to keep this secret from him, although the knowing of it would pain his soul. She had thought to protect him, but he was right. The secret was his to know.
She watched as a dead aspen leaf drifted in the wind, landing in her lap. She picked it up and smoothed it with her fingers. The leaf had made it through the winter. The veins stood out like a line of fine stitching. It was too brittle to be pressed in her Bible, but she would save it because it had survived, just as she and Daniel had survived. And the leaf would remind her of the day she shared with Daniel the secret that was on her heart.
“Well, God, Gracy?” Daniel said. “Tell me.”
She dropped the leaf into her lap and fingered the dime she had worn around her neck for more than fifty years, the coin Daniel had given her the day she first laid eyes on him. She thought again of Jeff and how she had risked prison rather than let his life be ruined. She remembered the Halleck baby, his strange eyes with bits of amber that shone like quartz, his pale hair the gold of winter sun, the way his ears curled. He was the spit of the baby she had delivered so many years before.
“I couldn’t let Jeff stay while Josie was here,” she began.
Daniel frowned, then as if he had a presentiment of what his wife was going to say, he reached for Gracy’s hand.
“What I couldn’t let you know,” she said, looking out at a snow skiff on the range. “What Jeff didn’t realize until I told him after the trial…” She paused for a moment, then turned to her husband. “You know I can always tell who a baby’s father is?”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed, and he nodded slowly.
Gracy smiled, then pressed her husband’s hand. “The Halleck boy was our grandson, Danny. Jeff was the father of Josie’s baby.”