Maggie felt ill. She’d been up since before dawn, but hadn’t been able to move in hours due to the waves of nausea that kept rolling over her, one after another, each one just far enough behind the last to let her hope it was the end. Every time she took a breath, the feeling came back, until the only thing she could bear to do was lie still and pray she could fall back asleep. But the praying didn’t work; sleep didn’t come. She was stuck in a cycle of low-grade misery.
The house didn’t help. It was one room, and not a large one: log walls chinked with mud and moss, a table and two chairs, the bed shoved into the corner, and a hearth that had sat cold for days because nobody in their right mind lit a fire in this heat. The shutter was propped open for air, and what came in was worse than what went out—the neighbour’s pig, somebody’s privy, the green swamp stink that came up off the canal on hot mornings. A fly had been circling the room since dawn. Maggie had come to know it personally.
It was midmorning when something finally broke through: a sound at the door, like a very large rat was trying to break through in the clumsiest way possible. Thump, thump, thump it went until the sound of it was driving Maggie to distraction. She swallowed her sickness and rolled out of bed, the boards warm under her bare feet, making her way over and opening the door just in time to see Colleen lose her balance and tumble into the dirt, spilling her basket of vegetables everywhere. She’d been knocking with her boot, it turned out, both arms full, and the second the door gave way, so had she.
“Excellent timing,” grumbled Colleen, crawling after a potato before it got into a neighbour’s yard.
“Sorry,” said Maggie, bracing herself against the door frame. “I’m not feeling my best at the moment.”
“You don’t look your best, either. Don’t you sleep?”
Maggie shook her head as much as she dared. The nausea was returning. “Not much, no.”
“Well, I suppose that’s to be expected.” She flashed Maggie a grin. “And God knows this is just the beginning of the adventure.”
She finished collecting the spilled vegetables and let herself in, bustling through to the table as Maggie stayed stuck by the door, unable to will her body to move. Colleen was halfway through unpacking her basket before she noticed she was all alone.
“Can’t move?” she asked.
“Can’t move,” nodded Maggie, ever so slightly. “Feel so sick.”
“Well, don’t strain yourself on my account. The babe comes first.”
Maggie took a cleansing breath. Or at least what she wanted to be a cleansing breath. “I can’t wait for this part to be over, because…” she turned to see Colleen holding a beet, and the nausea returned with a vengeance. She dashed back through the house, dropping to her knees and vomiting into the wash basin.
“Sorry,” she said, spitting the last of the taste away. “I don’t…I don’t think I like beets anymore.”
Colleen gave the beet a quick glance and then threw it straight out the open door without another word. She poured Maggie a cup of cold tea and settled her down at the table, next to the veritable harvest she’d unpacked.
“My mother had it tough, too, I remember,” said Colleen. “Weeks on end, for each of us. My aunt had to come stay so we didn’t starve to death.”
Maggie whimpered a little. “I’d prefer starving to this.”
Colleen laughed. “Alas, you’ve got me to keep you fed. No beets, obviously, but I think we can find something to do with the rest of this…”
Maggie willed herself to look up at the bounty Colleen had brought, and it was truly breathtaking. More food than she and Rían had ever been able to afford on their own.
“Colleen…” she said. “I can’t accept all this. You’re—”
“Oh nonsense,” said Colleen. “My father insists you have the best of the best. Or, well, he would if he knew I’d done this. But believe me: when he hears he’s going to be a grandfather—”
Maggie laughed. “Is he now?”
“Well, since I’m Auntie Colleen, that must make him the babe’s grandfather, I should think. Come on now, Maggie dearest. Do keep up.”
Maggie sipped her tea, smiling at her friend. At the absurdity of this little moment, and the odd assortment of vegetables she had strewn across her table. Somehow, for some reason, it was making her feel better. Like the morning sickness was melting away by the second…and it was all thanks to Colleen. It wouldn’t last—it never did, not past the next smell or the next wrong thought of food—but she’d take it while she had it.
She nudged some parsley. “You have a recipe that uses all this?”
Colleen frowned at the parsley. “Helps make the babe big and strong. Or at least that’s what the gorgeous lad at the shop said. Or wait…maybe he was saying it made him big and strong…” She pulled it closer. “I’d better go back and ask him about it, just to be safe.”
“Good looking, was he?”
“Oh, good enough. You know those farmer boys…broad shoulders and wicked smiles. Can’t say yes to ‘em, but Lord knows I can’t say no.” She got a devious smile on her face. “Speaking of which: you two wasted no time starting a family. How excited is Rían to be a father?”
Maggie’s expression shifted to something a little less present, a little less happy. “Not enough to go,” she said.
“Go?” asked Colleen, sensing drama and leaning forward to soak it in.
Maggie set down her tea, straightened her skirt out a little to distract herself. “He’s keeping his job. With the magistrate. I thought he might change his mind, but his mind is set.”
“Constable Kelly, hmm?” sighed Colleen. “Liam couldn’t talk him out of it?”
“He said he tried, and I…if I’m honest…I don’t know if Liam wants us to go either.” She turned her cup a little on the table, watching the tea tip and settle.
Colleen raised an eyebrow. “How do you figure?”
“They’ve been so close for so long. They left Ireland together, built the canal together, kept each other alive in a strange land where everything and everyone is out to get them. And I know they’re both strong men with tough hearts, but I just get the feeling that if Rían left with me, and Liam couldn’t follow…” She shrugged. “I think Liam’s afraid of losing his brother.”
“Ah,” said Colleen, staring at the ceiling. “Yes, that’s who he’s worried over, I’m certain.”
“What do you—”
“I’m sure Rían will be fine as a constable. He’s always had a good head on his shoulders, and I don’t see why that would change now. Besides, half the job’s just breaking up fights outside the taverns, and sending drunks on their way home.”
“It’s the other half I’m worried about…” said Maggie.
“Oh, the Shiners won’t trouble a constable. Not this summer.” Colleen waved the thought away. “Haven’t you heard? Mr Aylen’s gone respectable. Bought himself the whole Agricultural Society last week. Stood a hundred of his lads the dollar to join, marched them in, and voted himself onto the committee. Gentleman farmer now, if you please. Father says the next thing he’ll want is a seat on the bench.”
Maggie frowned. “Is that a good thing?”
“For a constable? It’s the best thing there is. A man courting Uppertown doesn’t want his boys breaking heads where the gentry can see it.”
Colleen shifted her chair over next to her friend, took her hand up and squeezed it tight. “Believe me, darling, the second this babe is born, you’ll have no time to worry at all. You’ll be drowning in milk and vomit and all manner of things so fast, everything else will fade away fast.” She laughed to herself: “I remember when Harriet was born—after my mum had passed, God rest her soul—between myself and Isabelle, I think we got an hour’s sleep every month, trying to keep the damned child alive.”
Maggie looked like she was going to be ill all over again. “It was really that bad?”
“Yes, well, as you know, Harriet is a deviant hellspawn, so that probably factors in somewhat. But the point is the same: once you have another life to tend to, the rest all sorts itself out.”
The words were sincere, and there was truth behind it, but Maggie still wasn’t sure. She put her hand atop Colleen’s, looked her in the eye.
“If this goes wrong…”
“It can’t go wrong,” said Colleen. “Because I’m here. And I make everything wonderful.” She kissed Maggie’s hand. “So tell me: what names’ve you got picked out? Colleen if it’s a girl, obviously, but for boys?”
Maggie laughed again. It felt good to laugh, to shatter the tension she felt, just a little. “Fathers and grandfathers are the way to go, apparently. It’s a tradition in the Kelly family that can’t be broken. So from what Rían tells me, we’ve got a choice between Francis—his father—or Liam, his grandfather.”
Colleen’s face froze in a smirk. “Well that would be awkward.”
Maggie frowned. “What do you—”
But Colleen’s eyes had gone to the ceiling again, same as before, and she waved a hand like she was shooing the fly. “How about your side? Any good names out east?”
Maggie winced before she could stop herself. It was small, and she covered it fast, but Colleen saw it. “No, I’d rather—”
Colleen could sense the reluctance, but pushed anyway: “You never talk about your family at all. Wouldn’t they like to know you’re—”
“No,” said Maggie, and it carried a huge weight behind the single word.
There was so much more to say, and so much Colleen wanted to know. Maggie felt her nausea returning; she got up and hurried back across the house, staring down at the basin—but no sickness came. She just stood there, hands braced on either side of it, looking at her own blurred face in the grey water. The fly landed on the rim, and she didn’t even swat it.
She was struck in that moment at memories that felt so long ago: that first night in Bytown, when her dress had been soaked with beer and her past had been dragged into the light against her will. She could still feel it, if she let herself. The cold of it down her back. Every face in the room turned her way, waiting to see what she’d say, and the way her throat had closed up around all the answers she couldn’t give.
Colleen’s question felt the same, in a way, but with a difference: Maggie wasn’t sure she wanted to keep all her secrets to herself anymore. Some of them, maybe. Not all of them. She was so tired of carrying every last one of them on her own.
She took a breath. Let it out. Didn’t turn around.
“My family is gone,” she said. “I can’t see them anymore.”
Colleen didn’t move, didn’t say a thing. She knew the tone of voice well enough, from when she talked about her mother, to know when not to speak.
“I’m an only child,” Maggie said, almost too quietly to hear. “My mother died when I was…too young, in a way. Too old, too, to forget what it was like. I didn’t have a Harriet in my life. No brothers or sisters, or cousins at all. I wanted them, growing up. So badly. I used to dream of having someone to play with, someone to talk to in the night. Someone who’d paddle the boat in circles with me, like I wanted. Papa only ever rowed in straight lines. He said circles were for people with nowhere to be. We lived in a house by a river, just the two of us and papa’s books, and we…”
She trailed off. In her head, the sentence went on without her—the porch steps, the lamp in the window, papa asleep in his chair with a book open on his chest—but none of it would come out of her mouth.
She laughed to herself, made her way back to the table. “For the longest time, all my friends were just words on the page, or images in my head. Love came and went between two covers. And now I realize the only thing I know about what I’m going through—about having children, bringing life into the world—is that a great many women die doing this. And that terrifies me.”
“A great many don’t, though,” said Colleen. “And you’ve no reason—”
“Bad luck has a way of finding me. It always has.”
Colleen nodded silently at that. She still hadn’t heard what happened to Maggie’s first husband, but she knew the contours of it, and how much it still hurt. She stared at the floor for a moment before trying a different angle of attack:
“Maybe Rían would let you name the baby after your father,” she said. “I know he understands the loss distance brings…”
“No,” said Maggie. “No, I can’t. That name doesn’t belong here.”
“What name doesn’t belong here?” asked Rían, stepping through the open door, a curious grin on his face. He set his uniform on the back of a chair and wiped his sweat on a rag before heading to the back to clean up.
“Nothing,” said Maggie. “It doesn’t matter.”
Rían stopped short of the wash basin, turning back to give Maggie a compassionate wince. “The sickness is still bad, I see.”
“No beets,” said Colleen. “You’ve been warned.”
“It won’t last much longer,” said Maggie, weakly. “I hope.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Rían. “My mother was sick for eight straight months with my youngest sister. Got so bad, my father had to build her a shed out back to keep the smell of us children away from her.”
Maggie whimpered, and Colleen burst into laughter. “Rían, you’re a terrible husband!”
He laughed, too, kneeling down next to Maggie’s chair and resting a hand on her still-flat belly. His palm was warm through her dress, and heavy, and he left it there like it belonged. “Don’t worry, love,” he said, resting his forehead on her arm. His hair was damp. She could feel the heat coming off him, a whole morning of walking the streets in the sun. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be better than fine—you’ll be great.”
“I smell awful. I feel awful. I don’t think I can do this,” she said, battling more nausea from the smell of his sweat, of all things. And still she didn’t move her arm. She didn’t want him anywhere else. “What if I’m a terrible mother?”
“You won’t be,” he said, kissing her cheek. He looked up at her then, and he was smiling the way he only ever smiled at her, like the answer was simple and she was the only one who hadn’t noticed yet. “You’ll do great. And even if you stumble along the way, I won’t care one bit. Because you’re having our baby, Maggie darlin’, and next to that, nothing else matters at all.”