I endured two hours of intense contractions and nearly fifteen minutes of pushing before he even crowned. Toward the end, in hands-and-knees position on the hospital bed, I performed the impossible task of flipping over, Gustav’s eight-pound, eight-ounce body wedged inside my birth canal. Two nurses grabbed my feet, bent my knees, opening my clamshell as wide as humanly possible. Only then did Gussie emerge. His eyes were big and wet like those of a little boy who opens his eyes underwater without goggles.
In an updraft of energy and relief, Ryan turned away as midwives lifted him from between my legs, umbilical cord stretched like a silver sash between us, braided and swaying. Some water-filled chasm, Ryan’s own amniotic pouch, split open at the sight of our fifth child. He’d never cried during my births, but now he pirouetted toward the window, sucking air. Later, he confessed to fear over Gustav’s health. He and Gussie experienced simultaneous relief as our baby released himself, or I him, from the vice grip of my body.
May became the most celebrated month in our household. Irie, Leo, Fern, and Gustav were born on days 23, 14, 13, and 30, respectively, each birthday marking the end of winter. Maia, Roman goddess of growth, actually means midwife in Greek, some explanation for why we celebrate Mother’s Day in May. My only objection to May was that Francis was born in June. Waiting to officially honor him felt like an eternity.
On Mother’s Day, the year Gustav turned two, Ryan was not expecting a phone call from Reginald Price. Mother’s Day was like a national holiday, and even Ryan’s clients had moms to celebrate. In this, the seventh year for Ulrich Law Office, Ryan had taken on a handful of reckless homicide cases, including one for a guy named Terrell Knight, charged with selling heroin to a user who died from injecting the dope. Reginald Price, on the phone that sunny day, was one of Knight’s associates. He’d previously delivered small down payments to Ryan toward Knight’s fees, but now he was handcuffed to a hospital bed at Aurora, where I’d birthed our third, fourth, and fifth children.
His voice pulsed, muffled but urgent. The guy was about to face his own attempted homicide charges, two counts in the first degree, and Ryan, still running his law practice as a ministry, agreed to see him. Price was soon to be received by the Winnebago County Jail. For seven long years, Ryan had mistakenly relied on criminals, who otherwise showed little to no responsibility in their lives, to follow through on payments. I wondered, would Reginald Price be the last customer on the pro bono bus?
“I know you’re good for it, Reggie,” Ryan said. But did he really?
Price and his longtime girlfriend, Autumn Krumenauer, had broken up in the preceding weeks, but Mother’s Day also happened to be her daughter Delilah’s fourth birthday. Price had purchased gifts for Krumenauer and Delilah, wanted to see them in person, and needed a lift to the Greyhound bus station because he planned to visit his mother in Milwaukee that afternoon. According to the police report, Price was later found to have two bottles of perfume on his person. Unforgivable Woman Parfum Spray by Sean John, perhaps; the police report failed to specify.
Price and Krumenauer ended up running errands together, stopping off last at Walgreens. Surveillance cameras showed them, along with four-year-old Delilah, at the checkout, purchasing flowers, three greeting cards, and prescription medication. When they emerged into the parking lot, Price climbed into the driver’s seat of Krumenauer’s nearly brand-new Chevy Traverse despite his suspended license. Price commonly drove Krumenauer’s vehicle when they dated, and probably without much thought, she handed him the keys. According to one version of the story, Price told Krumenauer he wanted to stop at a nearby junkyard to check on the reupholstery of his Camaro. The clock clicked 1:30 PM, time for Delilah’s family birthday party. No matter what happened, they would arrive late or never at all.
As they headed west on Highway 21, one of the most dangerous two-lane thoroughfares in Wisconsin, they began to argue, barreling at least sixty miles per hour away from town. Price accused Krumenauer of being jealous about his new girlfriend, and likewise she accused him. At some point, as their argument escalated—Chevy Traverse galloping like a horse for the stable, faster, faster—Price wrestled away Krumenauer’s cell phone. According to Krumenauer, she was texting her boyfriend, Price growing furious; but according to Price, he confiscated it, speedometer up to eighty miles per hour now, because she was wielding it as a weapon, beating him over the head, screaming, “You need mental help, Reggie!”
As their fight mounted, so did their speed. Although Reginald Price had reclined his seat so far back it touched Delilah in the rear seat, and he appeared in full-on leisure-driving mode, somewhere between Oshkosh and Omro, he yanked on his seat belt and buckled himself in. Then, without slowing down, he swerved south on County Road FF and floored the gas pedal as the speedometer needle ticked up—107, 108, 109.
“I’m gonna die, and you’re gonna die with me!” he is alleged to have screamed.
“Stop, Reggie!” Krumenauer screamed back. “My baby is in the car!”
County Road FF is far more narrow and uneven than any highway, surrounded on both sides by farmland. Reginald Price would later tell police Krumenauer yanked on the steering wheel, so he lost control. While she would admit to grabbing his leg and pulling it from the gas pedal, she said Reginald Price veered off the
