“Where’s the baby?” Hester demanded, eyeing Olivia’s belly.
Guilt washed over Franklin so quickly she knew.
“Not yet,” he confessed. “Early labor. Pain last night. House split. Stove pipe torn. Couldn’t keep warmth.”
Hester looked toward the dugout.
Every step might kill them all.
Every delay might kill them faster.
“Hold the child under your coat,” she instructed. “Olivia, can you walk?”
Olivia’s fearful eyes found hers. Fear stripped away all pretense.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia whispered.
“Walk first. Confess later.”
They reached the dugout in parts.
Hester got Olivia to bed, Jacob near the stove, Franklin slumped against the wall. She stripped frozen layers, rubbed Jacob’s hands till he screamed properly, spooned hot coffee into Franklin because his tremors forbade him from holding a cup.
Olivia’s pains ebbed and broke like waves.
Hester had never delivered a baby. She’d seen calves, once a foal, and Mrs. Larkin’s youngest when Matilda arrived late and her mother did what needed doing. She remembered towels. Water. Clean hands. Calm assurances.
“You’ll be fine,” she told Olivia.
Olivia clutched her wrist. “Don’t let me die.”
Hester faced the woman who took her place at the hearth and threatened her into marriage like discarded furniture.
“I won’t.”
Franklin murmured from the wall.
When she turned, he stared at the frozen canvas by the door. It must have slipped from her coat.
His face shifted.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
Hester saw it.
“You know what that is.”
Olivia cried out as another contraction struck.
Franklin diverted his gaze.
Hester closed the distance in two steps, crouched before him.
“Who blocked my chimney?”
His mouth opened, closed.
“Who?” she pressed.
Olivia sobbed, “Franklin, confess.”
Hester turned slowly.
Olivia’s features crumpled.
“I didn’t know he’d act tonight,” she swore. “Before God, I swear.”
The room tilted.
Franklin hid his eyes with a trembling hand.
“Bronson told me it’d just smoke you out,” he whimpered. “Force you back to town. Said there’d be no harm.”
Hester stared.
The stove ticked softly.
Jacob whimpered in sleep.
Olivia moaned, and Hester stood between a birth, murder attempt, and the man who carved her a wooden horse when she was eight.
“You stuffed canvas in my chimney?”
Franklin’s voice cracked. “Bronson did. I showed where the pipe rose. Pastor claimed—”
“Pastor Stowe?”
“Said your claim was unnatural. A girl alone invited sin. Said restoring you to rightful protection might save your soul.” Franklin gulped. “Bronson promised my debts would vanish if you wed him. Once his, he’d manage the claim. The railroad—”
“The railroad,” Hester echoed.
“He procured the survey map.”
Olivia’s scream pierced.
The baby was coming.
For one awful second, Hester wanted every sordid detail exposed. Names, dates, promises, signatures. She wanted Franklin to feel the fear she’d faced crawling through the blizzard with death spewing from her stove.
But Olivia screamed again, blood staining the sheet.
Hester rose.
“This isn’t over,” she vowed.
Then she delivered Olivia’s child.
The baby emerged small, blue, and silent.
Hester’s world narrowed to the infant in her grasp. She rubbed its back. Nothing. Cleared its mouth. Nothing. Olivia sobbed, struggling to rise. Franklin whispered prayers bordering on bargains.
Hester cradled the infant near the stove, rubbed harder, heard her mother’s voice from deep memory reserved for crises.
Make the living know they’re wanted.
“Breathe,” Hester commanded. “You didn’t endure that storm to quit here.”
The infant coughed.
Once.
Twice.
Then filled the dugout with an indignant wail.
Olivia sank back, sobbing.
Franklin wept into his palms.
Hester wrapped the infant in her mother’s blue shawl, placing her on Olivia’s chest.
“It’s a girl,” she announced.
Olivia gazed at the infant, then at Hester.
“What should I name her?”
Hester almost said, Not my concern.
But the infant’s fist clutched the shawl’s edge tightly.
“Eliza,” Hester replied.
Olivia wept harder.
The storm ceased before dawn.
When the sky cleared, it revealed a frigid world gleaming, holy until tallying began.
Four dead in the broader valley. Two elderly siblings whose wood ran out. A young couple, found lifeless fifty yards from their door, lost in whiteout. An infant in a claim shack where the north wall fractured, leaving the stove powerless.
Garrett Larkin’s family endured by burning chairs and part of a bed frame. Wilhelm Becker’s youngest lost two frost-bitten toes. Pastor Stowe’s wife fainted in the cold parlor. Dorian Bronson’s freight barn collapsed, killing two mules and revealing illicit railroad stakes.
But Hester’s dugout remained.
Inside, with no roaring fire, the thermometer read fifty-six. With care, sixty-five.
Word traveled with thaw.
By noon, Garrett arrived with teams to carve paths. He found Franklin outside Hester’s dugout, guarded by his own shame while Olivia and the children slept inside.
Garrett comprehended the scene; the canvas, the blocked chimney tale Hester recounted flat as steel.