Sean beamed at me. “Wow! You look fantastic.” He hugged me. “And look at this. A beautiful baby girl.”
Sean and I smiled into the stroller, and though it was probably gas, Mietta smiled back.
“There you go, she’s got good taste. Already recognizes a handsome man when she sees one.”
“She just thinks you’re funny-looking, Sean.”
“By the way,” he said, his selective hearing as good as ever. “I heard about the birth. Your mom is an absolute hero.”
I couldn’t hide my smile. “She sure is.”
“What a coup for midwifery, eh? Dr. Hargreaves is really excited about it—she wants your mom to come and speak to the Obstetrics department.”
“Really? I’m sure she’d be happy to do that.” It was the understatement of the century. Grace telling doctors how to suck eggs? It would be the highlight of her life.
“I bet her business is booming. It was all over the newspapers: ‘Breech Baby Delivered Amid Conanicut Island Blizzard.’ What a headline.”
“I don’t know if her business is booming. We haven’t talked about it. All we’ve talked about is the baby since she was born.”
He smiled. I smiled.
A doctor across the foyer caught Sean’s eye, and he held up one finger. “Well look, I have to run. Glad I got to meet your darling daughter.” Offhandedly, he pecked my cheek. “You girls take care of each other.”
“We will. Bye, Sean.”
* * *
I hadn’t expected all the fanfare at the birthing center. Anne had made chocolate-chip muffins, and a few of the midwives who weren’t even on shift had come in. Only one woman was in labor, and it was the early stages, so we managed to have a little party in the foyer.
“Tell us about the birth,” Anne said between fielding calls. “We’re dying to hear!”
I retold the story of Mietta’s birth several times to gasps and covered mouths, and funnily, quite enjoyed being the center of attention. Particularly on this subject, which I found quite interesting. Since Mietta’s birth, I’d read everything I could find on vaginal footing births and was constantly on YouTube, watching it happen. If I could have a successful safe vaginal footing delivery, I was determined to find out if others could too.
Mietta was passed around from person to person. It was quite nice having my arms free for a while. Talking to adults was also a nice change of pace. I chatted happily but kept my eyes trained on the door.
Susan sat by my side the whole time, and every now and again, I reached out and gave her hand a squeeze.
The party crumbled when two clients arrived in progressed labor.
“We must do this again soon,” Anne said when the phone rang for the fifteenth time. She scrambled back to her desk. I took my cue, bundling Mietta back into her winter suit. While I waited for her to hang up so I could say good-bye, I felt—actually felt—Patrick arrive.
He wore a gray winter coat over a T-shirt and jeans. A leather bag crossed over one shoulder. His lips were curled into a preliminary smile. “Hi.”
Anne hung up the phone, still scribbling a message. “Okay. Do you need help getting out, Neva?”
“It’s okay, Anne. I’ll help her.”
Anne’s head snapped up. When she located Patrick, she inhaled sharply.
“Thank you for the party,” I said, before she could speak. “I won’t hang around. I see you’re busy.”
I held Mietta out for her to kiss, which she did, studying my face. I worked to keep it carefully neutral and avoided her stare. I felt like my feet might rise right up off the floor at any moment, and one pointed look from Anne, I knew, would be enough to send me into a full-blown panic.
Patrick commandeered the stroller and snaked it one-handedly out the door. I followed him down the hallway and through the automatic doors into the cold, sunny day. Once we got there, though, I had no idea what to say.
“I have a joke—” I started, but Patrick cut in.
“Sorry,” he said, “I just want to say this first. I’m sorry about how I reacted. When you told me about Sean.”
I opened my mouth.
“I was jealous,” he said louder, making it clear he was going to finish. “But I shouldn’t have left you on the stairs like that. I shouldn’t have let you believe that it would change things between us.” He blinked, frowned; then his face morphed into a soft smile. “Why are you crying?”
I reached up and touched my wet cheek. I was crying. “Because I love you. And I couldn’t have blamed you if you’d changed your mind—”
“I didn’t change my mind. Just so we’re clear on that. And”—he blushed—“I love you, too.”
A tear dripped off my chin. I laughed. I was crying. I was professing my love for a man on the street. All the things I’d known to be true about myself were fast proving to be lies.
Patrick grinned. “Oh, I nearly forgot. Here. I’ve been meaning to give you this.” He fished a package, wrapped in white paper covered in yellow rattles, from his bag. “For Mietta. I bought it a while back. Before … well, you know. But I thought you still might like it.”
I wiped my cheek and took the gift. “Should I … open it now?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
As I slipped my hands out of my gloves, I saw they were shaking. I started to pick at the tape on one end and then decided to take a leaf out of my mother’s book and tear it off in one go. Patrick laughed. The sound of it unraveled something in me, something that had been wrapped too tight for too long.
A book with a pale green cover stared back at me. BABY’S FIRST YEAR.
I opened the cover. The brightly colored pastel pages reminded me of the paint swatches Patrick and I had picked out for the nursery a lifetime ago. “Thank you,” I said. “We don’t have one of these.”
“Well, now you do.”
I turned the page. At first it looked blank, but then I noticed the scrawly, doctorly pencil marks along the right-hand side. MOMMY’S NAME IS Neva. DADDY’S NAME IS Patrick.
I glanced up. Patrick blushed. “I filled it in before she was born, obviously, but you can change it to Mark’s name if you want.”
His face was carefully neutral, his hands dug into pockets, shoulders sloped down. A strange stillness came over him. I couldn’t even see the rise and fall of his breath.
“Well … there’s a bit of space here,” I said slowly, looking back at the book. Maybe we can leave it and … just add Mark’s name?”
Patrick’s chest began to move again. “Sure. We could do that … if you want.”
Now we both smiled shyly. My insides tickled—that feeling when you’ve won a race and you’re just waiting for it to be announced to the crowd. We rocked back and forth a few times, grinning stupidly.
“So…,” I started. “Gran and Lil are coming over later. They’d love to watch Mietta for a few hours. We could … I don’t know … go for coffee or something—”
“Actually, I was hoping the three of us could go for coffee,” he said. “You, Mietta, and me?” His lips curled into a sexy half smile. How did he always know the exact thing to say?
“Nellie’s?” I said.
He nodded. “Nellie’s.” He started to push the stroller he had failed to assemble. “So what was the joke?”
“Ah yes,” I said. “Two babies were sitting in their cribs when one called over to the other: ‘Are you a little girl or a little boy?’ ‘I don’t know,’ replied the other baby. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ asked the first. ‘I mean I don’t know how to tell the difference.’ ‘Well, I do,’ said the first baby, chuckling. ‘I’ll climb into your crib and find out.’ So he carefully maneuvered himself into the other baby’s crib, then disappeared beneath the blanket. After a couple of minutes, he resurfaced with a big grin on his face. ‘You’re a little girl and I’m a little boy,’ he said proudly. ‘You’re so clever,’ cooed the baby girl. ‘But how can you tell?’ ‘It’s easy,’ replied the baby boy. ‘You’ve got pink booties
and I’ve got blue ones.”
I grinned at Patrick expectantly. “Good, right?”
“No.” But he chuckled. “Terrible.”
He kept walking, and I fell into step beside him. “Come on. Like you can talk.”
With one hand on the stroller and the other slung low around my waist, Patrick maneuvered us through the snow toward Nellie’s. The sun was at our backs, and the light slid over our shoulders and onto Mietta’s face. Before I could reach for the hood, Patrick quickened his step, putting himself between her and the sun. It was an instinct, a reflex. Something a father would do.
Gran was right. When it came to family, biology was only part of it. Patrick and I, Mark and Imogen, Mom and Dad, Gran and Lil—we’d give Mietta a wonderful family.
Together, the three of us turned the corner, toward Nellie’s. Toward home.
About the Author
Sally Hepworth is a former event planner and human resources professional. A graduate of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, Sally started writing novels after the birth of her first child. She is the author of Love Like the French, published by Random House Germany in February 2014. Sally has lived around the world, spending extended periods in Singapore, the U.K., and Canada, and she now writes full-time from her home in Melbourne, where she lives with her husband and two young children. Visit Sally’s Web site at www.sallyhepworthauthor.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
Also by Sally Hepworth
Wenn du an meiner Seite bist
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Author
Also by Sally Hepworth
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE SECRETS OF MIDWIVES. Copyright © 2015 by Sally Hepworth. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover designed by Michael Storrings
Cover photographs: woman © Thomas Szadziuk/Trevillion Images; girl with ballon © Stefan Cioata/Getty Images; boys © Imgorthand/Getty Images; background image © Louise Fahy/Arcangel Images
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Hepworth, Sally.
The secrets of midwives / Sally Hepworth. — 1st. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-250-05189-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-5263-1 (e-book)
1. Midwives—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9619.4.H48S48 2015
823'.92—dc23
2014033628
e-ISBN 9781466852631
First Edition: February 2015
The Secrets of Midwives Page 24