thirty seconds. From everything she’d read in her pregnancy books, this was all right for now. If she could just stand the pain. She didn’t think beyond what she would do if they started coming faster and lasting longer. She didn’t think beyond the timings.
“But I have to think,” she said to the silent, creaking cabin. “I have to be prepared. Didn’t I learn that lesson a long time ago?”
Deciding to take matters into her own hands, Alisha managed to get up and gather some clean blankets and sheets and place them on the rocking chair by the bed. She held onto the wall by the window for a while, watching the driving rain just past the tiny porch. The woods and trees looked so angry and full of turmoil as water and wind covered them in a heavy whitewash. Alisha longed to go out into the rain, to be washed clean again. To be pure and fresh again. To find some beauty. Every now and again, the wind would pick up and the rain would blow past the window in a great huffing breath of swirls and water.
As she stood there, Alisha realized that she was utterly and completely alone. After a while, another contraction hit her. She held on to the wall, her gaze on the trees being tossed about out in the forest, her prayers trapped inside her throat as she worked against the increasing pain and fear. Then she went back to the bed and tried to rest.
A few minutes later, Alisha lay back as another contraction passed, her eyes focused on the driftwood-and-seashell cross hanging on the planked wall across from the bed. Her now-deceased mother had given her the beautiful cross when Alisha had gotten married over ten years earlier.
“Never forget who gives us strength, honey,” her diminutive mother had told her in a tear-strained voice.
Keep your eyes on the cross, Alisha told herself now. Don’t think about the bad stuff. Don’t think about him. He’s gone now. He can’t hurt you anymore. He can’t hurt your baby. Keep your eyes on the cross. God will not leave you comfortless.
But she had to wonder, would God help her tonight? Or would He bring about His own certain justice to make her pay for her sins?
“For my child, Lord,” she said into the night. “I’m asking for the sake of my child. He is little and innocent. Please, Lord, don’t punish my child.”
She must have drifted into a moment of sleep. She woke quickly, but lay still, breathing deeply, the pain subsided for now. When she got a bit of energy, she’d have to go to the kitchen and boil some water. And she’d need more towels and some sterilized scissors. She wasn’t sure how she was going to deliver this baby all by herself, but if her contractions got worse, she’d have to do the best she could. She felt thankful that she was in good physical shape from exercising and from walking up and down this mountain every day, come rain or shine. Besides, thousands of women had done the same, hadn’t they?
Frantically, she sat up and searched the small room for one of her baby books. Finding one on the aged dresser, she struggled to step across the space and grab it. She’d just have to follow the step-by-step instructions shown in the book and hope that everything went okay.
Keeping that thought in mind, she stood against the dresser, taking in her haggard appearance in the cracked mirror, then quickly threaded her long auburn hair into a haphazard braid and tied it with a ribbon she found in a drawer. Then she sat back against the bed, her fingers hurriedly turning pages to the spot that listed what to do if you have to give birth alone.
Another pain racked her body, causing Alisha to feel the need to find release. Dropping the book beside the bed, she gritted her teeth and groaned. She wanted to push, but was afraid she shouldn’t do that yet, so she lay back down on the bed and held to the wrinkled spread, trying to remember the breathing exercises she’d memorized from reading her pregnancy books over and over. She needed to pant so she wouldn’t bear down.
Even as she huffed and counted and tried to focus, Alisha felt a lone tear moving down her left cheek. It fell with a big, cold splotch onto the yellow-flowered flannel of her nightgown, just over her heart. It didn’t take long for other tears to follow. She could feel the wetness on her cheeks and neck, at first warm but soon turning icy cold against her hot skin.
“Mama, I’m so afraid,” she said, her eyes trying to focus on the cross through her tears. “Mama, I need you. I need someone to help me—”
Her plea ended in a scream as her water broke and a huge wave of nausea and panic hit her with all the force of the next contraction. Dazed, she glanced down to check for the color of the water. It was pink-tinged amniotic fluid, which meant her baby was getting ready to be born. But…how long would she be in labor? No one could answer that. No one was here to answer that.
She listened for answers, but only heard the hissing of the fire in the nearby den and the now-soft dance of the rain falling outside. That and her own labored breathing.
Alisha gripped the spread, then lifted a hand up to the old iron frame over her head. She was about to give birth, alone in a cabin on a mountainside, in the worst rainstorm they’d seen in these parts this spring.
“Dear God, what have I done?” Alisha asked into the muted light. “Why did I come back here?”
“Now, why did I come this way?” Jared wondered out loud as the wet wind hit him in the face and laughed around his freezing ears. It was bitter cold and icy. The rain wasn’t falling as heavily now, but the temperature was dropping by the minute. From the looks of the debris-strewn road, the wind that had just moved through had to have left some damage.
“Power outages,” Jared thought.
If he was back in Atlanta working, he’d probably be stuck at his downtown office for the duration of this torrential storm that was covering the whole northwestern part of Georgia. When trees started snapping and the roads became flooded, things didn’t go too smoothly in Atlanta. There were sure to be problems all along the many roads to and from the city. He felt sure a tornado had struck somewhere close. The forceful storm that had passed through here had been full of high winds.
Jared’s clients would need damage control, with both site evaluations and press releases assuring their customers that in spite of the dollar amount of damage from the fierce storm, it would be business as usual. But then, it had always been business as usual.
That had been his job after all, making sure that big companies always came out ahead. It was his job to make million-dollar corporations look good, look even better than they really were. It was his job to put a positive spin on any given situation, good or bad, just to keep above the competition. But he didn’t have a job and a company to go back to after this extended vacation, he reminded himself. He’d walked away, too angry and too bitter to keep fighting with his growing restlessness and his partner’s obvious betrayal.
“You figure it out,” he’d told Mack just before he walked out the door. “You got what you wanted. You got the company we built together. I’m done with it.”
And Mack got—no, make that took—something else, Jared thought, his bitterness as moving and liquid as this storm.
“Yeah, but you’ve made a killing,” Mack reminded him. “On both the company and this deal—selling out to me. Not to mention the hefty inheritance your grandfather left you.”
Jared heard the resentment in the other man’s voice. He wanted to remind Mack of what he’d received from this deal—the woman who’d planned on marrying Jared until things got too rough for her.
“Yes, I can finally travel around the world,” Jared retorted, “and you still get to clean up
