After John left, Kit said, “Let’s get you into something more comfortable.”
Sarah lifted her arms, and Kit undressed her and slipped on a nightgown. The woman stared with large eyes. “If my baby comes now, he’ll be too little to live.”
Kit swallowed her reply. Being powerless to change the birth’s outcome wasn’t easy to accept. She slipped on a watch, opened a notebook, and started taking notes, concentrating on what she could do, not what she couldn’t. “When did your labor start?”
“Early afternoon. I’d hoped the pains would stop but they kept—” Sarah gasped with a contraction. From that point on, the labor pains continued—longer, stronger, closer together.
An hour later, Cullen stood outside the tent and called softly, “Kit, do you need anything?” His voice seeped into her skin and overlaid a soothing ointment.
“I’ll be right back.” Outside, she took a deep breath of cool, fresh air. The breeze took hold of her hair that had fallen free of her braid and swept the flyaway strands about her face.
He tucked the wild locks behind her ears. “You’re so tired. What can I do?”
She pointed to the center of her shoulder blades. “Rub that spot, please.” His fingers kneaded the tight muscle. She moaned and stretched her neck. “Sweet.”
“How is she?”
“Tired. This will take a few hours. Why don’t you get some rest?”
John walked up with a cup of coffee, which Kit gladly accepted. “Will my Sarah be…” he paused to gather his composure, “safe?” The fear in his voice increased Kit’s apprehension.
“Every birth has risk, John. Has she had any problems before?”
He glanced longingly toward the tent as if his laboring wife was visible through the canvas. “No problems, not with any of them. Always got right back up on her feet. Never a fear of having another. Not like some women I hear tell of.”
“Do you want to sit with her?”
“She’d rather me wait out here.” He looked at his hands. His big, callused fingers seemed to be questioning why they were idle, or why Sarah’s hand wasn’t close by to grasp. He held out a small blanket. “I just got this out of her trunk. It’s for…you know…for later.”
A sharp tug pulled at Kit’s emotions and a band constricted her heart. “I need to go back. The waiting is hard, John. Poke you head inside the tent if you want to check on her.”
Tears rimmed his eyes, but he seemed unashamed of his emotional display. He glanced once more at the tent, then sat in his chair and bowed his head.
Kit rolled her neck. “Much better. Please get some rest.”
“I’ll be here waiting for you.”
Deep shadows lined Sarah’s puffy eyes. Patches of flushed skin dotted her cheeks and pain pulled her lips tight. Ringlets of damp hair lay plastered to her forehead. But even in the darkest of moments, Sarah radiated inner strength.
Another hour passed during which the contractions came every two to three minutes. Finally, she looked up, panting. “I think it’s time.”
“Do you want John with you?”
“If there’s a chance the baby is alive, he needs to be here.”
Kit lifted the tent flaps and found him sitting motionless in his chair staring straight ahead, his face ashen. “Sarah needs you.”
He hurried to reach his wife.
Cullen rose from his rocking chair by the fire. “Is it time?”
“It’s close.”
“Are you holding up?” He stroked her face and wiped away the perspiration “Can I do anything?” Written in the depths of his blue eyes and in the creases in his face was his love for her. She loved him completely. She also loved the woman suffering inside the tent.
Kit leaned into him and breathed deeply of pine and leather and earth, replenishing her soul with his strength. By replenishing her, she could now give back to the woman who had given her so much.
Well onto midnight, amid deep, muffled groans, Sarah pushed her tiny baby out into the world. Kit cleaned his nose and face. His heart was beating, but it wouldn’t beat for long. She clamped and cut the cord, and then wrapped the baby in a blanket, and placed him in Sarah’s arms. “It’s a boy.” Sorrow swelled in Kit’s throat as she gazed into Sarah’s face, the face of a woman filled with unfathomable love and inconsolable grief. Her tears dropped onto the baby’s forehead, sprinkling him with liquid love.
“I think we should name him Gabriel.” A stream of tears slid down John’s cheeks.
Sarah kissed the babe on the top of his head. “Gabriel is a good name.”
Kit left the parents alone to sing their child into heaven. She found Cullen rocking in a chair by the fire, elbows resting on the rocker’s arms, fingers tented beneath his chin, eyes half-lidded. “How are they?”
“Gabriel’s still alive.” She spoke softly, but her voice carried an edge. “I held him…” She glanced at her hands, rubbed one over the other as if trying to wake up his little body and make him breathe. “He’s so small, Cullen. Just barely reached the tip of my fingers.”
“How long will he live?”
“Not much longer.” She remembered Scott’s last few breaths and how inadequate she felt.
“Probably brings up memories of their boy, David. They lost him a few years back,” Cullen said.
“I wondered why they skipped the letter D.”
“What do you mean?”
“Adam, Ben, Clint, Elizabeth, Frances, and now Gabriel. They’re private people. I’m surprised John told you.”
“He needed to talk while you women were going about the birthing. The boy was three. A cold settled in his chest. He died on his birthday.”
Kit dropped to the ground and laid her head on Cullen’s thigh. “Why did this happen? Sarah is such a dear, dear person. It breaks my heart.” Kit was unable to resist the pressure from tears building in her eyes. She cried for baby Gabriel, for Sarah, for Scott, for her parents, and because she damn well just needed to cry.
Cullen caressed her head, running his fingers through her hair. His strong hand had a barely discernible tremble. “Sarah wouldn’t want you to cry on her account.”
“I love her. She’s so much like my mom.”
He handed Kit his handkerchief. “What was her name, lass?”
“Mary Spencer.” The handkerchief smelled of lye-soap, clean and fresh. “Dad met her in Independence.”
Cullen’s hand stilled. “I knew her.”
Kit dabbed at her eyes. “I’m not surprised.”
“She’d planned to travel on this wagon train. Henry has worried over her for months. That’s why he wouldn’t let you go by yourself. He agreed to let your ma sign on then she disappeared. He’ll be glad to know—”
“What? That she’s dead now.”
Cullen shifted in his chair. “I reckon she had a good life with your pa.”
Her mother did have a good life. They all did. Kit felt the stirring of a smile tinged with sadness. “The paths to our ultimate destination intersected long before we met.”
He continued his caresses. “You sound like a Calvinist.”
She laid her head on his thigh. “Are you one?”
“You married a man without knowing his religious convictions?”
“You married a woman without knowing hers.”
“You’ve never appeared to be particularly spiritual.”
She swallowed, unsure of herself. “God and I had a disagreement awhile back.” Her voice was soft now.
His fingers massaged her neck at the base of her skull. “Mayhap it’s time the two of you worked things out.”
“How can I, when He takes precious children like Gabriel?”
Cullen’s fingertips worked their way down her neck to the middle of her back kneading tight muscles. “He didn’t take Frances.”
“He took your Kristen.” Her words came out on a long sigh.
“I never turned my back on Him.”
Kit didn’t say anything for several minutes while she reflected on the past few days. “If we get to Oregon without anyone else dying, I’ll think about it.”
SHORTLY BEFORE THE sun rose, Kit and Cullen and John and Sarah found a secluded spot on the Dry Sandy Ford’s sagebrush covered bank. John dug a grave deep enough so the animals wouldn’t dig it up, and then he placed Baby Gabriel in the ground while they all sang
Amazing Grace.
Kit knew no one would ever visit the baby’s gravesite, one of over twenty thousand along the trail. No one would cry over the grave after today. But Gabriel’s short life would be forever marked on his parents’ hearts and on her heart, too. She prayed for the babies yet to be born.
Would one of them be hers?
Chapter Thirty
A WEEK LATER, the wagon train arrived at Fort Bridger built on the Black’s Fork of the Green River. In three months, they had traveled more than a thousand miles and were only halfway to the Willamette Valley. The trip wore on everyone, fraying nerves and exhausting even the young and physically fit.
Kit didn’t need a reason to cry. Tears spilled over burned biscuits or a splinter in her finger or a cheerful
good morning
from one of the children. For someone with a penchant for leaving clothes, art supplies, and shoes lying about on the floor, she became a shrew, nagging Cullen for unpacking his books and stacking them in piles inside their new tent.
John received the brunt of her churlishness though. “He won’t listen to me,” she said to Cullen. “I’ve tried to tell him he needs to buy a new team but he won’t.” She poured a cup of coffee, then absentmindedly set the pot on the table instead of returning it to the campfire grate.
Cullen closed his legal treatise and put it aside along with his glasses. “He doesn’t want to be any more beholden to you than he already is.”
“He’s being stubborn. Why doesn’t he think more about his family and less about his pride?” She picked up her sewing basket then sat in the chair beside him.
“I’ll talk to him.” Cullen leaned over, kissed her, and trailed the backs of his long fingers over the curve of her breasts.
Kit jumped. “Ouch.”
He drew back his hand.
She hunched her shoulders, protecting her chest. “My breasts are sore.”
“They weren’t sore last night.”
‘That’s why they’re sore tonight. Don’t you have reading to do? A map to study? A meeting to go to?”
“Kitherina, what’s wrong?”
“Kitherina? Do you know how many different names you call me?” She counted them off on her fingers. “Kitherina, lass, sweetling, Kit. And Henry calls me missy. I don’t know why I answer either of you.”
“You always answer when I call you sweetling, and it’s usually with a breathy sigh.”
“If you’re trying to get on my good side, you’re not.” She set her basket on the table next to the misplaced coffee pot.
What’s wrong with me?
She carried the pot back to the campfire, paced for a couple of minutes then went inside the tent to get something but couldn’t remember what.
Cullen followed, hands clasped behind his back, his head slightly lowered as if he were in deep thought. “What’s on your mind?”
The timbre of his voice found a warm place in her heart. “My boobs hurt, my stomach’s queasy, and I’m in a bad mood.”
“Boobs?”
She waved him off. “My breasts.”
“Come here and tell me what’s bothering you.”
She drew in a deep, ragged breath. “We made love for the first time over a month ago.”
A tiny tic leaped at the corner of his jaw. “A wonderful, memorable night.”
“A night with consequences.”
“Consequences?” He paused. The silence seemed to take on weight. He threw her a crooked grin. “Are you expecting?”
“I think so. And if I am, that means I got pregnant
before
we got married.”
“When was your last…?” Cullen’s cheeks turned red.
Kit pinched the bridge of nose, thinking. “I’ve never had regular periods, and I haven’t had one at all since I’ve been in your time.”
“Do you want to ask Sarah what she thinks?”
Kit shook her head. “Not right now.” She tapped her fingernail on her bottom teeth. “There’s a way to find out.”
He fixed her with a serious gaze, wrinkling his brow.
“I packed a pregnancy test in my red bag.”
He gave her a heart-splitting smile. “What kind of questions are on the test? When was the last time you made love?”
She swatted him with the tail of her apron. “Not that kind of test.
“How many tests did you bring with you?”
“One test, one time.”
He grinned. “I suggest you take it now unless you have to study beforehand.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Then you won’t have to worry about it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Okay. You wait outside?”
“I’m not leaving.”
She put her hands on her hips and growled. “I love you to death, Cullen Montgomery, but you’re not going to watch me pee on a pregnancy strip.”
“What does peeing have to do with taking the test?”
She threw up her hands. “Go away. Come back in five minutes.” She pushed him through the tent flaps then dug through her paramedic bag for the pregnancy test. It was one of the things she’d tossed into her bag without thinking during the raid on the farm’s clinic the night before she left. She’d grabbed one or two of everything whether she needed it or not.
Cullen reentered the tent, pulled the box from her hands, and read the directions. “Hold the stick under your stream of urine for five seconds.” He then removed the foil wrapper and handed her the stick.
She didn’t budge.
“Pee on the stick, Kit. I won’t watch.” He turned his back.
She blew out an exasperated breath, pulled up her dress, squatted over the chamber pot, and held the stick in the correct position for five seconds.
They sat side-by-side on the bed and stared at the small flashing hourglass in the plastic window.
At three minutes, she wrung her hands.
At two minutes, she gnawed on her lower lip
At one minute, she broke out in a sweat.
At thirty seconds, she held her breath.
The answer flashed. The stick shook in her hand.
Cullen’s eyes grew wide, the blue—bluer. “It’s says you’re pregnant.”
She let out the breath she was holding. “Looks that way.”
Visibly shaking, he asked, “I’m going to be a father?”