“You’ve done this before, right? Delivered a child?” Isabella asked when Hazel had set up between her legs.
“Not in the formal sense,” Hazel said. “But I’ve read a lot about it.”
Isabella’s response was swallowed by her crying out from the pain of her next contraction.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Hazel said. “You are going to look at me, and tell me everything you’re going to do with your baby and—and Thomas in Yorkshire. And every time you think of something, you’re going to give me a good push. Do you understand?”
Isabella nodded weakly.
“Good.”
“We can—we can walk in the park.”
“Good. Push.”
“We can teach her how to read,” Isabella said. “It’s going to be a girl. Thomas and I always knew we would have a girl.”
“That’s a good one. Big push for me.”
“We can take a trip to the lake.”
“Push! And, Iona—fresh water, please!”
The labor continued as the candles burned themselves to stumps. Iona had to run back to the main house twice to replace the tapers so that by the time Hazel was reaching between Isabella’s legs, she had enough candlelight to make out the bright red infant fighting her way into life, her hair already visible, slick and dark. Sometime during the second hour, Jack had disappeared.
“Oh, goodness. This doesn’t look anything like the diagram,” Hazel murmured.
“What?” Isabella shrieked.
“Nothing! Nothing! Just lie down. It’s all going to be fine. We’re so close now. I can see her head. Isabella? Isabella, can you hear me? You’re going to be a mother.”
Isabella nodded her head, but tears continued to stream down her cheeks. “I just wish Thomas was here,” she said, almost whispering.
“You’re going to be with him so soon. One last push now.”
Isabella screamed. And then that scream became two, the sound of a living infant screaming at the cold new world she had just joined.
Hazel wrapped the baby in a clean cloth and gently lowered her onto Isabella’s chest.
“You were right,” Hazel said. “She’s a girl. She’s beautiful, just like her mum.”
The baby was beautiful—round blue eyes and a cry that merged with Isabella’s grateful laughter.
“A baby girl. I have a baby girl.”
“You did it.”
Isabella looked up from her daughter to Hazel. “You did it too. I don’t know what I would’ve done if it weren’t for you, I swear.”
Isabella and the child rested then for an hour, while Iona fetched a few slices of buttered bread for all of them. Hazel graciously accepted and ate her slice. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. It had been hours since she last ate.
Jack returned just as Isabella was beginning to stir again.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” she said to him. “My baby girl.”
Jack pulled something from behind his back. It was a square music box, with bright painted sides. “I wanted to be the first one to give your baby a present.”
Isabella reached forward to take it. “Jack, this is too much.” She opened the music box, and the thin melody of a waltz filled the laboratory. The dancer in the box’s center, a blond ballerina, spun in perfect circles. It was almost impossible to see that the porcelain figure had been broken and stuck together again with adhesive paste.
“Thank you, Jack,” Isabella said. “She’ll love it.”
“Does she have a name yet?”
Isabella looked at her child and then at Hazel. “I think we should name her after you. Baby Hazel. I know Thomas will be pleased.”
“Baby Hazel,” Jack repeated.
Hazel didn’t trust herself to say anything out loud. She just nodded and finished wiping out the basin she had been cleaning, keeping her back to Jack so that he wouldn’t see her glistening eyes.
26
THE AFFECTION JACK ONCE FELT FOR Isabella had seemed so real, so immediate and important. And yet the next evening, as he walked down toward the stream where he had seen Hazel sitting by the shore, he realized something: his love for Isabella had been like seeing a candle in a painting, a painting by a master who captures its light and the glow it casts on everything around it, but still a flame made of oil on canvas. When Jack looked at Hazel, the flame was alive and licking at the air around it. He felt its heat and power, heard its crackle. It was seeing fire in person for the first time.