All Fall Down (27 page)

Fleur’s white blouse has long sleeves and lots of buttons. Her skirt is long, with more buttons down the front. Her belly pushes out the front of it, because Fleur’s going to have a baby. Her hair was all down around her shoulders, but now she ties it on top of her head as she tells all the kids to get in line. She’s sweating.

Sunny’s tummy groans and twists. Fleur looks at her. “Sunny, what’s wrong?”

A burning bad taste rushes up Sunny’s throat and out her mouth. She spews the chocolate all over the grass, almost on Fleur’s bare feet. Even over the sound of coughing so loud in Sunny’s ears, she hears Patience laughing. Fleur shouting something. A couple of the other kids start to cry. River throws up, too.

“Oh, Sunny,” Fleur says when Sunny blinks up at her. “What did you get into?”

With that bad taste still in her mouth, Sunny can only shake her head and wait for Patience to tell about the chocolate. But Patience has a liar’s tongue and a thief’s hands, and she doesn’t say anything.

Neither does Sunny.

Chapter 43

L
iesel didn’t ask her husband where he’d been or why he hadn’t answered her calls. She looked at him standing in the kitchen with a kitten in each hand. Pets, he said. For the kids. Then she turned on her heel and left the room.

Three hours in the emergency room. The doctor had said it could be food poisoning or a virus, but either way she’d given all three kids shots of some powerful antinausea medicine as well as a prescription for some antibiotics for what she’d diagnosed as a previously untreated and chronic ear infection for Peace. An hour after that they were home, the kids showered and in clean pajamas, finally asleep. On the couches in the den, still set up with fresh towels and plastic-lined cans just in case, but resting comfortably. Sunny was with them in a sleeping bag on the floor between them, but Liesel doubted she was asleep.

And then there was Christopher, hours late without apology or explanation, bringing two more creatures into the house for Liesel to deal with. More mess. More poop. More of everything. It was too much.

She ignored him calling her name and went upstairs to their bedroom, where she stripped out of clothes that reeked of hospital and sickness. She left them right there on the floor and turned on the water as hot as she could stand. It was her third shower of the day, and she didn’t even care. She just got in under the spray and turned her face up to the water so it would pound away the urge to cry.

It didn’t work. Liesel crouched on the floor of the shower as the world spun. For an awful few minutes she thought she might be coming down with whatever the kids had, but the sickness in her stomach settled with a few slow breaths. She was just tired. Exhausted, as a matter of fact.

Heartsick.

Liesel gave in to the tears. Let them well up and out of her, less painful than a sickness but just as powerful. She pressed her forehead to the floor of the shower, thick with soap scum because she hadn’t had time to scrub it in weeks. The water pounded her back, and her fingers slipped on the floor as she gripped it, trying to find something to hold on to so she wouldn’t just fly away.

“Liesel?”

“Go away.” She didn’t want him to see her this way, didn’t want to have to talk to him. She might sick up everything inside her, all the words she’d been biting back, the feelings she didn’t want to admit.

Liesel didn’t want to have to tell Christopher she’d been so, so wrong to ever think this could work.

The shower door rattled open, letting in a burst of cool air. Christopher stepped in, fully clothed, and shut the door behind him. Blinking, Liesel looked up at him, but before she could say a word, he crouched down next to her.

“Talk to me.” Christopher didn’t seem to notice his suit was getting ruined. The expensive tailored shirt, the silk tie she’d bought him several years ago for his birthday. The water sluiced over him, soaking into the fabric. His hand rested on her naked back, the pressure of his fingers light but insistent. “Please, Liesel.”

It all came up and out of her, rushing, the words tumbling over one another in a jumbled, incoherent babbling she could barely keep track of but which Christopher seemed to follow just fine. She clutched at the front of his shirt, hating everything she said and yet overwhelmed with relief as it all spilled out of her. The story of the food she’d been finding, Sunny’s reasons for keeping it. How angry Liesel had been that Sunny would think she needed to be prepared for starvation. How the kids had gotten into the spoiled pudding and eaten it while Liesel had been selfishly taking time for herself, even though she’d known better.

How it could have been the poison under the sink they got into, or stairs they fell down, a knife in an unsecured drawer.

“I can’t do it,” she said finally. “I can’t do this, Christopher. I thought I could. I wanted kids so much, I thought I could just become some sort of…I don’t know. Supermom. Superwife. Whatever. But I can’t do it. Everything is dirty, they need something from me every second, and I just. Can’t. Do it.”

Christopher sat on the floor, long legs stretched out, and cradled her to him. “You’re a great mother, Liesel.”

“I’m not anyone’s mother!” A fresh spate of weeping shook her.

He held her for a while, saying nothing. That turned out to be the best thing he could’ve done, because a lot of times when they had discussions, Christopher focused so much on figuring out ways to “fix” her that he didn’t really pay attention to what she wanted, which was simply to tell him how she felt.

Liesel pressed her face to his sopping shirt. “I thought I would just…love them. And that would be enough. But it didn’t work that way, Christopher. I’m an awful person.”

“No. You’re not.” He kissed the top of her head.

“They should be so easy to love!” She shook her head, eyes closed, letting him hold her while the backbeat pounding of the water somehow made everything easier to admit.

“Love isn’t always enough,” Christopher said.

Liesel pushed away to look at him. “Do you love me?”

He looked surprised. “Of course I do.”

More tears, just a few, but somehow hurting more. “Do you love me as much as you loved her?”

Christopher didn’t say anything for a long, quiet minute. “I could never love any woman the way I loved Trish.”

Liesel let out a single sob, finally hearing what she’d feared all along, broken but not destroyed. But before she could say anything, he’d tipped her face to his.

“Look at me.”

She did, blinking, eyes swollen.

“But I could also never, never love any woman the way I love you.” He kissed her slowly with the water running over and between them. “Don’t you get that?”

Liesel looked at his clothes, then at her own nakedness, and the ridiculous juxtaposition of it made her laugh. It surprised her to find any humor in this at all, but she did. It seemed to surprise Christopher, too, but he laughed along with her. Then he kissed her. He held her tight. Harder. Within minutes both of them clung to each other, heaving with laughter that sounded suspiciously like sobs. Or maybe it was the other way around. All she knew was when they tapered off, the water had started to cool.

She still felt like she might fly away, but now it was from the weight that had fallen from her rather than the world spinning desperately out from underneath her. She held her husband’s face in her hands and kissed his mouth. When she looked at him, both of them blinking away water, she remembered how it felt to want to be with him instead of always hoping he’d walk away.

Together they managed to get out of the shower, and she helped him get out of his wet clothes, too. He hung them over the edge of the tub and stood in front of her. Both of them naked now, it seemed like the simplest and most natural thing to step into each other’s arms. To kiss. Liesel thought there was no way she’d be interested in making love, not after the day she’d had.

She was wrong.

Chapter 44

S
unny’s gone through this before, but it’s no better the second time around. The pain ripples across her back, down low, then circles around her belly. She puts her hands on it, feeling the muscles tense, tense, tense…release. She lets out the breath she was holding. It’s not quite time, but it will be soon.

The floor isn’t clean enough yet, and there’s no telling how long it will be until she’s in actual labor, so she bends back to the bucket and the scrub brush. The hot, soapy water has turned her hands bright red and softened her nails so that when she presses too hard on the scrub brush, one bends back.

More pain, smaller and yet somehow worse than the rising and falling ache in her back and belly. She can’t even suck at it, since she doesn’t want to put her finger in her mouth after it’s been on the bathroom floor and also in the bucket of filthy water. The nail is now hinged like a piece of paper that’s been folded. The crease is low enough that if she pulls it off, her skin will tear, too. There’s no choice for it, though, and she steels herself to hurt when she does it.

If only babies were born as fast as that, she thinks as she drops the torn nail into the toilet she’s been scrubbing around.

She already knows this baby is a girl. Her mother did all the little tests, checking to see which eye had the reddest veins, which way the pendulum swung when hung over her belly, what foods Sunny was craving. There’s a whole list of them, silly things, and Mama said of course not to say anything about them to John Second because he’d be angry they could even think they might be able to determine something the universe had been so careful to make a secret. But Mama was right about Happy and right about lots of other babies, so Sunny believes she’s right about this one, too.

She’s going to call this baby Patsy, after her mom.

But for now, Sunny scrubs. She wipes down the toilets, too. The doors of the stalls, both of them. The sinks, the mirrors. By the time she gets to that part, she has to stop every ten minutes or so to cling to the sink and pant her way through an ever-increasing round of pain.

Now it’s centered almost inside her. Deep inside. The baby’s head, pushing down on her, opening her. Getting ready to push its way out into the world.

When she steps into one of the three showers, the timing’s perfect. Her water breaks. Hot fluid splashes down her thighs and legs, hits the tile floor. Soaks her underpants and her dress, too. It’s tinged with blood.

The pain that comes next is instantaneous and somehow furious. A knife, stabbing. Sunny clutches at the shower curtain and tears it from the rings, which clatter to the floor as she stumbles forward. On her hands and knees, she feels another wave of pressure and pain building up inside her.

The baby is coming. Fast. She tries to find the strength to scream, but all that comes out is a whistling gasp. It chokes her. She turns her head to the side, trying to cough, but all that comes up is a thin runner of spittle.

“Mama…” Her mother is out somewhere, maybe the garden or doing some sort of yard work.

Where is anyone else?

Sunny, groaning, manages to get to her feet. Careful not to slip in the puddle on the floor, she makes it to the sink.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
She pants through another wave of contractions, but the urge to bear down and push is overwhelming. She can’t stop it. She squats, her body huge and unwieldy, and everything inside her stretches and surges, trying to get free.

Sunny puts a hand between her legs. She feels the softness of hair, not her own. The firm lump of a baby’s head. Another pain cycles up and up and up, and from someplace inside her she finds the voice to scream.

She screams as loud as she can, and her voice echoes off the tile walls. It tears out the bathroom door, down the hall. There is the sound of running feet, loud cries. The bathroom door flies open, startled faces appear, there is someone on her knees beside Sunny, and on the other side, too. Joy and Willow. They each take an elbow, trying to help her, but Sunny can’t move.

“I want my mother.” This is what she thinks she says, but in reality all she manages is a series of grunts.

They are women, though, and they understand. Willow shouts out for someone to go get Trish. Joy gets a thick pad of wet paper towels and presses it to Sunny’s forehead.

Sunny does not want to have her baby on the bathroom floor, but there’s no stopping it. The women of her family, her sisters and finally her mother, crowd around her. They bring towels, a blanket, some cool water to bathe her face. They bustle around her, each of them with a purpose. This baby is not the first to be born here in Sanctuary, and they all know how to handle it.

“Sunny, hold on, one more time and you’ll have to push,” her mom says.

It’s all she can do. There’s no holding it back, even if she didn’t bite her bottom lip and bear down, this baby would come. But Sunny waits as she breathes through the pain for her body to tell her its time, and she works with the contractions, not against them. Her body does what it’s meant to do.

Something tears. More pain. There is blood, lots of it, but nobody seems alarmed even though the heat of it, the sudden bright red gush, has Sunny choking on her breath.

The baby is not coming out.

She can’t stand the pain any longer, and the world grays out for a second or two. When she’s clear again, Josiah stands in the doorway. Far enough away that his white shirt is at no risk of being stained, but even so…men don’t usually attend the births. Even Papa wasn’t there when his true sons were born.

Nobody else notices him.

They’re all talking to her. Urging her though this. Wiping her brow. Joy is between Sunny’s legs, fingers probing.

Sunny should be embarrassed; from his vantage point in the doorway, Josiah can see everything. He is silent, watching, but his gaze snares hers.

He smiles.

And Sunny finds the strength inside her to push again. To push hard. She bears down, pushing the baby inside her out into the world. First the head, shoulders, and finally in a great, huge gush of fluid, the entire body. The baby slips from inside her and into Joy’s hands so fast she cries out, startled.

No fear, though, she’s delivered babies before. She doesn’t drop Sunny’s newborn. There is an instant relief, the pressure gone at least for a minute or two. A certain grateful numbness.

Then the pressure of Joy’s fingers inside her again, her palm pushing on Sunny’s belly. Push again, she says. The afterbirth has to come out.

Someone has taken Sunny’s baby to wipe her off at least a little bit before she’s handed to Sunny. It is a girl, just like she knew all along. Sunny holds her brand-new daughter to her chest, not caring that her dress is stained or that the baby is still slippery with blood and that white coating.

The women around her are crying, the way most of them do when a baby’s born. The baby is silent, wide-eyed. Sunny doesn’t cry either, she’s too tired. She has nothing more to give but this. She wants to close her eyes and sleep forever, but she can’t. They have to take her out of this bathroom and into her own room.

Later, when she’s been cleaned up and stitched—it’s her second baby but the first time she tore—Sunny rests in her bed with the baby tucked up firmly against her. Her milk hasn’t let down yet, but that doesn’t stop the infant from suckling greedily. Her nipple is already sore, just one more ache along with most of the rest of her, too. Bruises on her knees she didn’t notice until now. Pulled muscles in her arms and shoulders.

Sunny dozes, but wakes when a shadow falls over her bed.

It’s Josiah, and he smiles again. His hand touches the baby’s head softly, softly, fingertips barely brushing the head of soft blond fuzz. He touches Sunny’s head, too.

“What’s her name?” he asks.

“Patsy. I want to name her after my mother.”

Josiah’s smile doesn’t falter, but he does shake his head. “You should name her Peace. Because that’s what she’ll bring you.”

And that was what Sunny named her child, because Josiah, Papa’s second true son, had said she should.

It had not occurred to her that Josiah would remember that story, but when he asked her how Peace was doing, Sunny said, “You named her.”

He was silent for a moment, only the sound of his breathing through the phone. “I remember.”

“Now that my mom’s gone, I sort of wish I’d named her Patsy the way I’d intended.”

“Because you think it would be honoring your mother?”

“Yes.” Sunny turned on her back in the cool, smooth sheets. With the window open the temperature in the room was perfect. She could hear crickets from outside. Occasionally a firefly flashed.

“Because she’s gone,” Josiah said.

Sunny hesitated, then thought there should be no point in lying. “Yes.”

“Your mother’s not gone,” Josiah said. “Not really. I mean, you know that, don’t you, Sunny? None of them are really gone. They’re just on another plane.”

Josiah had called her every night since he’d driven her home. Always when everyone else was asleep. Josiah had turned out to be the one thing she could count on to make her feel better.

“That boy. From the coffee shop,” Josiah asked. “How’s he?”

She was ashamed Josiah knew about Tyler. “He doesn’t talk to me anymore.”

“Not at all?”

She was silent for a moment, thinking of how he barely even looked at her now. “No.”

“Why not?”

“He wanted me to be like those girls he talks to in the shop, the ones who go to college and wear their hair loose. They wear jeans. Lipstick. They don’t have children. He wanted me to be like those girls,” Sunny said. “And I’m not.”

But it wasn’t Tyler who wanted her to be like those girls, she thought. She was the one who wanted to wear eye shadow and glittery earrings and slim-fitting T-shirts. To paint her nails. To be someone she wasn’t.

“I’d say I’m sorry, but you know I’m not.”

She thought of Josiah’s touch, his kiss, the warmth that had spread through her, and it made her feel hot now, though the breeze from her open window was cool enough. “I shouldn’t have gone with you the first time. Liesel and Christopher wouldn’t like it.”

“Because they don’t understand. I don’t blame them. You could bring them, too, Sunny, you know we always have room at our table for more.”

Sunny tried to think of her father and his wife sitting with Josiah and talking about going through the gates. Or anything, for that matter. She shook her head, her hair pulling softly against the pillow. “I’m sure they wouldn’t want to.”

“People are usually afraid of what they don’t know. And believe me, I understand why anyone would have a bad opinion of us because of what my brother did. But you know…you’re an adult,” Josiah told her. “If you want to go out with me or spend time with your family, they can’t stop you. And if you just told them a little bit about who we are and what we believe, I’m sure they wouldn’t want to.”

“My children got into trouble the last time I was with you,” Sunny told him. “Because I was off with you, I wasn’t there for them. They got sick, and it was my fault. They were hurt because I wasn’t there to make sure they were okay, because I did something stupid…”

“Your children are as welcome as you are, Sunshine. You know that. You wouldn’t have to be away from them at all. And you’re young. You could have more babies. As many as you want, and you wouldn’t have to leave them to work. We’d take care of you.”

Sunny was quiet. “Josiah. Do you still listen with your heart?”

A pause. “Sure. Of course.”

“For the voice that tells you when it will be time to leave?”

“Oh, Sunny…” Josiah coughed. “I told you before, I think there’s so much more work to do here in this world that it will be a long, long time before any of us have to leave. Maybe not even in our lifetimes.”

She listened to the low murmur of the ever-present stone angel. It reminded her of everything she’d ever been taught, all she’d ever believed. “My mother had cancer, Josiah, did you know that?”

She expected him, of course, to say no.

“I did,” he said instead. “I’m sorry. She came to me once when my brother was starting to lose control. She begged me to come back to the family and try to make him see that he was hurting the people he was supposed to love, but…honestly, I didn’t have anything left to give my brother.”

“But my mother…”

“She looked sick. I’d known your mom for a long time, you know. I was just a kid when John brought her home. And she was so funny, so full of life and faith and belief, and when she had you, you were so much like her. She looked bad. Complained of headaches, dizziness. One of our new brothers was a doctor, and he convinced her to let him check her out.”

“She knew.” Sunny swallowed hard. “I thought she did. It’s why she sent us away but didn’t come with us. Isn’t it?”

Josiah sighed. “I don’t know. I wish I did. But I know your mom loved you very much. And she’d have wanted you to come to me. I’m sure she’d be so happy if you did.”

Her mother couldn’t be happy for anything, because her mother was gone. Nothing left in her vessel, nothing left to go through the gates, whatever that meant. The angel’s voice whispered this, but Sunny already knew it.