It Happened One Night (35 page)

Clem hooked one hand around a thin beam on the porch, absentmindedly testing the strength of it with his weight. He wore a
thick hunter’s vest over his dress shirt, not much protection against the cold, but he seemed in no hurry to go back inside.
“Sorry about the pumpkin.”

“It’s okay,” Eli said, looking down at the smear of orange on his shirt.

“My Melly’s a wild one. She’s gonna be trouble down the line.”

Eli laughed. Clem’s youngest daughter had an impish look to her, straight dark hair and dancing green eyes. She was energetic,
to say the least, and Eli liked her—even if she’d managed to stain his shirt with pie.

Clem cleared his throat. “I’d have thought you’d want to head back to Burlington by now, being that it’s so close to Christmas.”

Eli was quiet, not sure how much he wanted to say. He bumped the bottom of the porch with the toe of his boot. He was so frustrated
with the story of his life at the moment, he wasn’t that interested in hearing it spoken aloud. “You know how it is. I just
had to get away for a while.”

“Why’s that?”

He paused, thoughtful. “I don’t know. To test if my life will still be the same when I get back.”

“I hear you there,” Clem said.

Eli glanced at him. He used to be very close to Clem. They’d fallen out of touch when Clem had moved out here, far west of
Burlington, to raise his family. But Eli saw no reason not to at least tell Clem the gist of what had happened to him over
the past couple of months.

He did the best he could with the story, smoothing it out as he went, all the little ups and downs giving way to one larger,
more streamlined arc. To keep from sounding too emotional as he spoke, he pretended the story belonged to someone other than
him.

When he was done, Clem shook his head a little, a disbelieving smile on his face. “So let me get this straight. You have no
idea if she’s gonna marry the guy or not?” Clem laughed out loud and clapped Eli on the back. “Man, you got it bad.”

“Tell me about it,” he said. And oddly enough, he found himself laughing too. It felt good, he realized, to see how asinine
the situation looked through Clem’s eyes.

“You met my wife in there,” Clem said, more statement than question.

“Yeah, she’s great.”

“Did you know she was sick when I met her? She had Lyme disease real bad. And man, you should have seen me. Within two weeks,
nobody knew more about Lyme disease than me. She and I worked together for months, finding ways to beat it, or at least make
it bearable. Then, one day led to another, and she started feeling better. And next thing I knew, we were split up.”

Eli looked at Clem closely, his slight stubble and thick eyebrows. He and his wife seemed so happy, always touching each other
on the shoulder or hand. Always connected. It was hard to imagine them apart. “Well, you obviously worked it out,” Eli said.

“Yeah, after I quit being an idiot.”

“I’m not following you.”

“I freaked out. It was like,
Well, now that you’re not sick, what do you need me for?
You know what I mean?”

Eli was quiet, realization slowing dawning. They stood in silence for a long minute. A light sprinkling of snow began to fall,
flakes sparkling red, green, and yellow in the lights strung along the edge of the porch.

Clem breathed out, white rising up clear and strong. “Well,” he said at last. “You coming back in?”

“In a minute,” Eli said.

“Take your time,” Clem said. “The eggnog supply is going strong.”

Eli took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the cold air that was as heavy and refreshing as ice water. Snowflakes glittered
in the dark and faded as they reached the ground, and inside, another round of laughter rose above the light music of flutes
and guitars. He wanted this for himself—family, friends, laughter, love.

It had scared him, he realized, to think that Lana didn’t need him. He liked when she’d needed him, when he had something
to offer that no one else had. When Ron was gone and she was alone, he felt certain of his role—to support her, to be there
for her, to be everything she needed. But once Ron showed up, and he was suddenly faced with the prospect of no longer being
necessary to her… it had scared him half out of his mind.

In the clear sky above, a falling star streaked downward, a blaze of white, and his heart made a wish long before his mind
could even articulate the words of it. It seemed like a good sign.

Tomorrow, he would go back. He wanted to be with her on Christmas. Maybe Lana no longer needed him—maybe she never truly had—but
he could only hope that she
wanted
him half as much as he wanted and needed her. If she did, the future—whatever it was—was theirs.

December 25

Karin and Lana took baby steps, shuffling along slippery asphalt in the parking lot. Early in the morning, they’d driven west
forty minutes to Montpelier—a trip they made every Christmas morning. They’d loaded Karin’s van with poinsettia, and then
spent a few hours serving cinnamon buns and coffee to those in need. Karin had suggested they stay home because a storm had
been predicted for the afternoon. But Lana had rejected the idea, saying they were needed since not too many people were willing
to donate their time on the biggest holiday of the year.

Unfortunately, the snow had arrived sooner than predicted. They’d found that the sky had clouded over and a thin layer of
ice had formed on every surface, gleaming crystalline and bright. The mountains were blurred by bad weather and the roads
were tranquil and untraveled—eerie—as if even sound had been silenced by the ice.

“Maybe we should just stay here,” Lana said, disappointment and weariness in her words.

Karin looked out at the snow-covered roads. “I think it will be okay. The ground is icy, but the roads are still fine. And
the minivan is good in the snow.”

As they crossed the parking lot, Lana stretched out her hand to steady herself and Karin reached for her arm. She could think
of nothing worse than if her pregnant, bubble-bellied sister were to fall. Though they’d parked less than three hours ago,
ice had formed a hard, clear shell around and on the windows and doors. It wasn’t a glass-smooth type of ice, but instead
a craterous and cloudy white that might have been the hard skin of some mythical dragon.

Karin pounded on the door handle and leaned all her weight on it to slide the panel open. She helped Lana climb inside, then
started the car and headed back out into the cold to chip off what ice she could.

When the last window of the van was scraped off and Karin’s arms burned from exertion, she banged her boots on the side step
and climbed in. Lana was shivering in the backseat, her arms wrapped tightly around her body. She could sense Lana’s sadness,
her loneliness. She’d hoped the situation with Eli would have been resolved by now. And under different circumstances, she
would have marched herself over to Eli’s house and given him an earful. But she’d learned her lesson about getting too involved
in her sister’s life. Karin supported her, but Lana’s choices were her own.

She heard Lana give a little squeak, the kind of sound she might make if she’d got a paper cut. Karin turned around in her
seat. “You okay?”

Lana didn’t speak for a long moment. She shut her eyes tight, gripping the top of her seat belt so hard that her knuckles
went white. Karin felt a little twinge of worry, but in just a moment, Lana let out a big, ragged breath and then she seemed
fine. “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure? Because if something’s wrong…”

“
Nothing’s
wrong. I’m fine. I just don’t understand why we’re not driving already.”

Karin turned back around in her seat, feeling thoroughly put in her place. Lana had been irritable all morning, snippy and
at times even mean. It wasn’t like her at all. But if Lana said she was fine, Karin had no choice but to take her at her word.

She put the engine in reverse to back out of the spot and felt the tires slip a little beneath them. She was sure the roads
were better than the parking lot—really not bad at all. And Lana’s was less than an hour away.

She glanced in the rearview to see Lana looking out the window, a scowl on her face as if she was furious. She could only
imagine what her sister was going through. Each day that Lana didn’t have the baby was a triumph, one more day that the baby
could use to gather its strength for its break into the world. Lana never complained and never seemed to get overly emotional
or worried. She’d told Karin she needed to focus on the positive, to keep her thoughts in a good place if she wanted to carry
the baby to term. Karin agreed with her, but in the privacy of her mind, she couldn’t help but feel that optimism would have
been easier if Eli were around. She glanced in the mirror again.

“Do you want to stop for lunch?” she asked.

“I just want to go home,” Lana said. Karin knew enough to let the subject drop. Until her sister had the baby, Lana was in
charge. She put the van in four-wheel drive and slowly maneuvered the vehicle toward the exit. As she reached the main road,
she saw that the plows had done a good job dealing with the ice. She settled back into her seat and sprayed the windshield
with deicing fluid. The storm had turned the trees to glittering white, making kinked branches into smooth lines, rounding
out corners and glossing over jagged edges. She had the sense that the worst was behind them now.

Half an hour later, Lana leaned her head back against the seat behind her, trying not to breathe too loudly or alert her sister
that anything was wrong. Her stomach had been bothering her all morning while she’d been getting ready to go, and if it weren’t
for being pregnant, she would have taken some kind of medicine to sooth her bowels and calm her guts down. Instead she’d ended
up running to the bathroom three times before they’d left the house, and she’d considered staying home. But eventually, the
urge to go to the bathroom had subsided, even though the pain remained.

All day long, the cramps had become worse and worse. And now the ride home was taking much longer than normal. The highways
had been fine, but now that they were skimming along the smaller back roads that would eventually lead to Lana’s house, the
minivan slowed to a crawl. Beyond the windows the countryside passed by, a patchwork of cleared fields and dense copses of
old trees. Occasionally, chunks of ice fell from the branches overhead, shattering in hundreds of pieces against the roof
and sailing wildly behind them.

“Almost there,” Karin said. “You hanging in?”

Lana started to say yes, but a great wave of pain came over her, taking the breath from her lungs. Everything in her body
protested against it. She curled her shoulders forward, trying to find a way to make it stop, but each way she turned the
pain was there, confronting and consuming. She gripped the edge of the seat, trying not scare Karin. But her brain was racing
and her heart was beating as hard as if she’d just run a marathon. She writhed in her seat, trying to slow down, to cool off,
to make the wrenching pain abate.

For the last few weeks, she’d been concentrating unceasingly, willing her body not to give birth. She’d heard the nurse’s
warning that she shouldn’t overreact, and she’d heeded it, ignoring twinges and spasms that seemed so immediately dangerous
but had no more bearing than things that go bump in the night. She repeated her promise like a mantra:
I am not going to go into labor; I am not going to go into labor; I am not going to
…

A swell of pain squeezed her like a belt pulled too tight. This was not Braxton-Hicks. It was not stomach cramps. It was labor.
And it was happening fast.

Lana took another deep, hard breath, bracing herself. She’d been trying not to make any noise, to keep Karin from worrying
that something was wrong. But all that was going out the window and the urge to scream, to gasp and cry, was coming on strong
now, as if making noise might somehow keep the pain at bay.

“
Karin
,” she managed between breaths. She tugged on her seat belt, wanting it off. She loosened it as if she could loosen the ache
within her. Suddenly, she felt her bladder let go, and she cried out, mortified. No, it wasn’t her bladder. Her water had
just broken. She squeezed every muscle within her, but the rush of fluid kept coming and coming, nonstop, more than she thought
possible. How could there be so
much
? Karin’s backseat would be ruined. She was in trouble. The baby was in trouble. She needed help. “Karin.
Please
. Stop.”

“Hold on.” Karin was leaning forward in the driver’s seat, both hands wrapped tight around the wheel. Her concentration was
intense. “The roads are… not really that great back here. I’m sorry. They were fine on the highway. But don’t worry. I’ll
get us home.”

“Not. Home.” Lana braced herself for another contraction, pushing down hard on the floor with her heels. Nothing in the books
had prepared her for how quickly the intervals between contractions shrank, and nothing could have warned her against the
pain. In a matter of minutes, the cramping had taken on a life of its own, a furious monster raging within.
No
, she thought.
No, I’m not ready yet
.
Please, not yet.
She fought hard against the cramps, against the urges of her body, but there was no stopping them. When she spoke again,
she was crying. What would make the misery go away? “Karin. Please—God, Karin—
please
pull over.”

“What? Pull over?” Karin craned her face around nearly backward, so her cheek pressed the collar of her coat and her thick
red scarf. “What’s wrong? Are you oka—”

There was a loud, almost deafening bang on the roof of the van. And then the whole world slowed to a crawl. Between the moment
of the bang and the moment a million little shards of ice went tinkling around the windows, Karin lost control. Lana watched
her hands grip the wheel, she felt the tires lock beneath them, but still they were moving, sliding, slipping smoothly and
inevitably off the road.