The Northwoods Chronicles Read Online Free PDF Page A

wallet.
    “Can you go with us?” he asked her under his
breath.
    “Can’t,” she said apologetically. “Diner. But
it’s not far. Take County Road M east four miles, turn north.
There’s a sign. It’s another ten miles. You’ll be there in no
time.”
    “Thanks,” he said, then got in the car with his
silent wife, who was disentangling the foil from her hair. He
started the car and sprayed gravel as he fishtailed around and out
onto the county road, not even using his turn signal.
    Four miles. He punched the trip meter so he’d
know, although he was certain he’d seen the blue marker sign. “You
okay?”
    She didn’t answer. Pearce took a deep breath and
looked at her. She was calmly sitting, her backrest reclined a
little bit.
    “Honey?”
    “They’re coming for us,” she said, her voice
rising with hysteria.
    There it was, the blue sign with the H for
Hospital. He turned, and stepped on the accelerator. The air seemed
to thin out and he took deep breaths to compensate.
    “Oh, no,” she said. “No, no! Oh Pearce,
do you hear them? Oh my god, it’s so sad.”
    Pearce slammed on the brakes and the car slid to
a stop on the shoulder of the road, just in time to watch Regina’s
belly deflate like a punctured basketball. “Honey?”
    “Oh,” she said as if she were as mystified and
amazed as he at the sinking of her abdomen. It was the sighing “oh”
of an epiphany, of a disappointment, of an acceptance.
    “Honey?”
    She turned to look at him with eyes that were as
old as his, and no longer held childlike merriment. She took a
great, heaving breath, almost a sob, and let it out slowly.
    “Are you okay?”
    She caught another ragged breath, then said,
“Perhaps.”
    “Do you need anything? I mean, what happened?”
He put his hand lightly on her stomach and felt only soft, giving
flesh whereas only a moment ago, it was hard and ripe. He felt
panic rising, but tempered it in the face of her unearthly calm.
Was the baby on the floor of the car? “Should we go to the
hospital?”
    “That might be prudent,” she said, “although I
doubt that there is a real need.” She picked up the battered piece
of a tinfoil hat and began to unfold it and flatten it out on her
knee.
    “Honey?” Pearce turned off the engine.
    “Yes?”
    “The baby?”
    “Gone.” Another sobbing sigh, and this time a
few tears came with it. “Gone to be with the rest of them. And they
took something of me with it.”
    No kidding, Pearce thought. What happened to the
child-woman he’d been dealing with for the past year?
    Kidnapped, he thought. Snatched. Mother and child together. Exactly what Regina had been
afraid would happen.
    “Let’s go home,” she said.
    Or not, he thought. The disappointment Pearce
felt surpassed anything he had ever encountered. He wanted that
baby, he looked forward to having that baby in the house. We could
just start this car and keep on driving, he thought, because we
don’t have anything here, we don’t have any roots, we don’t have
any furniture, we don’t have any friends. We have Jimbo’s jacket,
but we can send that to him. Or keep it. We could just keep going
away from this damned place, and find ourselves a decent place, a
place where children don’t disappear and take their child-like
mothers with them. Let’s just keep going, he wanted to say to her,
let’s just be irresponsible for once and get out of here. To hell
with the church, to hell with White Pines Junction, to hell with
the dreams of home and family and a parish of our own. Let’s just
run and keep running until we fall down.
    Or until we can find a place where we can
realize our dreams.
    But instead, he started the car and turned it
back toward home. “We’ll have explaining to do,” he said.
    “There is nothing to explain,” Regina said.
“There is no explanation.” She folded the aluminum foil into a tiny
square and set it on the dashboard. “I’m sure I ought to take a day
or two to rest, but then