Angela’s in labor.
I have a pretty hard time concentrating on my test. I keep thinking about her face when she said, I don’t know how to be a mother, her face after Phen disappeared and left her standing in the courtyard, the way the fire in her seemed to burn out right before my eyes. When I talk to her lately she always sounds sleepy, and she always says that she’s fine, gives me some little detail about how she’s preparing for the baby—took a Lamaze class, bought a bassinet, stocked up on diapers—but she’s not her fierce and fiery self. She thinks her life is ruined. Her purpose over with, irrelevant. Lost.
I check my phone after I turn in my final, but there’s no update.
Is he here yet? I text. I try not to think too much about all that might entail.
She doesn’t answer.
About an hour later I’m pacing around my dorm, chewing my fingernails, when Christian knocks on my door.
“Hey, I finished my last final. Do you want to grab some sort of celebratory dinner?” he asks.
“Angela’s in labor!” I burst out.
I almost laugh at the aghast look on his face.
“She texted me a few hours ago, and I don’t know if it’s happened already or not. She told me not to come to the hospital until she called me, but …”
“You’re going to go anyway, aren’t you?”
“I’ll stay in the waiting room or something but … yeah. I want to go.” I put on a coat, because it’s March in Wyoming and probably still freezing. “Do you want to come with me?”
“You mean, you’d take us both to Wyoming? You can do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried to bring anybody along with me before.” I hold my hand out to him. “Dad does it, though. Want to try?”
He hesitates.
“The waiting room. Not the delivery room,” I emphasize.
“All right.” He takes my hand, and my blood positively boils with our shared power and the anticipation I’m feeling. Zapping us should be no trouble at all.
“Okay, give me your other hand.” I face him, both of our hands joined. He gasps when I summon the glory around us.
“It’s that easy for you, isn’t it?”
“Glory? I’m getting better at it. How about you?”
He looks at his feet, gives me a half-embarrassed smile. “It’s not that easy. I can do it, but it usually takes me a little while. But I can’t cross. That is way beyond me still.”
“Well, glory’s easier when I’m with you,” I say, and am rewarded by his eyes lighting up. “Let’s go.” I close my eyes, think of my backyard in Jackson, the aspen trees, the sound of our babbling brook. The light around us intensifies, red behind my eyelids. Then fades.
I’m not holding Christian’s hand anymore.
I open my eyes.
Tucker’s barn.
Gack, maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t succeed in bringing Christian. I whip out my phone.
Sorry, I text him. Want to try again? I can come back.
It’s okay. I’ll get home the traditional way. See you in a couple days. Say hello to Angela for me.
I look up to see Tucker staring at me from the hayloft.
I’m gone before he has time to form a greeting.
I find Angela in the recovery part of the maternity wing, dressed in a faded blue-and-white hospital gown, staring out the window. The baby’s a few feet away in a plastic bassinet on wheels, wrapped up tightly in a blanket so he looks like a little burrito, sleeping, a tiny blue cap on his head that doesn’t quite cover his thatch of thick, black hair. WEBSTER says a printed card at the end of the tub. His face is all purple and splotchy, swollen around the eyes. He kind of looks like he was just in a boxing match. And lost.
“He’s adorable,” I whisper to Angela. “Why didn’t you text me?”
“I was busy,” she says, and there’s a hollow quality to her voice that makes my heart sink, a terrible dullness in her eyes.