Well, she thought, standing here worrying about it doesn’t make much sense. He’ll be at the house. And the thought she wouldn’t let herself have was How long has it been since I felt the child stirring? Every woman she ever knew had stories about some child that was lost or didn’t come out right because its mother ate too much of something, or took a fright, or took a chill. But there was nothing else to do but go on to the house. She said, “It’s just a few blocks. Then we’re home.”
He wasn’t there, either. The house was empty. Probably someone had died, or was about to die. Plenty of times he was called away to do what he could where comforting was needed. The last time it happened he came in the door after midnight, grumbling to himself. He said, “Asking a man to apologize on his deathbed for the abject and total disappointment he was in life! That does beat all.” He took off his hat. “So I took them aside, the family. And I said, If you’re not Christian people, then what am I doing here? And if you are, you’d better start acting like it. Words to that effect.” He looked at her. “I know I was harsh. But the poor old devil could hardly get his breath, let alone give his side of things. There were tears in his eyes!” He hung up his coat. “I’ve known him my whole life. He wasn’t worse than average. Wouldn’t matter if he was.” And then he said, “You shouldn’t have waited up for me, Lila. The two of you need your sleep,” and he kissed her cheek and went up to his study to pray over the regret he felt because he’d lost his temper. Anger was his besetting sin, he said. He was always praying about it. She had thought, If that’s the worst of it, I’ll be all right.
She wasn’t warm yet, so she decided to go upstairs and lie down in his bed until she heard him at the door. She’d just slip off her shoes and pull up the covers and wait. She thought it would comfort the child. But the cold of her body filled the space it made under the blankets, a hollow of cold. Maybe that’s how she felt to the child. Winter nights Doll would pull her against her, into her own shape, and she would pull the quilt up over her, and her arm would be around her, and Lila would only feel warmer for the cold that was everywhere else in the world. She was probably thinking of this when she gave that boy her coat, tucked him in. And then he laughed just the way she might have laughed all those years ago, for pleasure that seemed like a piece of luck, a trick played on misery and trouble. Now here she had this child of her own, and maybe it felt the cold. Maybe it feared it was being born to a woman who couldn’t be trusted to give it comfort. Maybe it would have the look that boy had, as if the life in him had decided to cut its losses when it had just begun to make him a man’s body. She thought, Then I’ll steal you, and I’ll take you away where nobody knows us, and I’ll make up all the difference between what you are and what you could have been by loving you so much. Mellie said, “Her legs is all rickety,” and Doll just kept her closer and seen to her all the more. Even Doll said, “If there was just something about you,” looking at her the way other people did because she couldn’t go on protecting her from other people. But Doll always made up the difference the best she could. Lila would, too. And there’d be no old man to say, I see what you’ve done to my child. No old man. It would happen sometime anyway. She pulled up her knees and hugged her belly, and she felt it moving.
The sound of the front door woke her. Boughton was talking with him, and she could hear worry in their voices. Boughton always came along when there might be something difficult to deal with, on a cane now half the time, but still as willing as could
