Ayers screams through the next contraction. Maia grabs a stack of towels from the bathroom and puts them on the bed.
“Ice chips,” Sadie says. “And send the father in here, please. This baby is on its way.”
When Maia leaves the room, she nearly collides with Phil and Sunny, who are stationed outside the door. “It’s time to send the father in, she said.”
“That would be me,” Phil says.
“Why Phil and not me?” Sunny says. “That makes no sense.”
“I think she means the baby’s father,” Maia says. “Baker, bro, it’s time.”
Baker leaps off the sofa and slides between Phil and Sunny and into the bedroom.
Maia fetches a bowl of ice chips and a Coke but she can’t get back into the room because Phil and Sunny are blocking the way. Ayers is screaming. Maia gets tears in her eyes and thinks, I am never, ever having a baby. It’s incredible that each and every person in this world had a mother who’d endured some version of this.
Rosie went through it with Maia; LeeAnn and Huck were there. Maia hands Sunny the ice chips and the Coke to pass into the room and then she goes out to the front yard and stands with Huck while he has a cigarette. Maia isn’t supposed to hang around Huck while he smokes but there’s a new life entering the world and a hurricane coming, so the usual rules don’t apply.
“Do you remember when I was born?” Maia asks.
Huck exhales, then gives a dry laugh. “Do I remember? Maia Rosalie Small, that was the happiest day of my life.”
Ayers screams again. They hear her, even outside.
“Must be getting close,” Huck says.
Close but not yet, not yet. When Maia goes back inside, she hears Sadie saying, “Push, doll, push for me,” and Ayers screaming, “I can’t!” And Sunny calling out, “Push, Freddy, push!” Phil gently leads Sunny away from the bedroom door and back to the living room. He says, “I think I’m going to try some of that chili. Do you want some, my love?”
Sunny says, “How can you think about eating when our grandson is about to arrive?”
“Or granddaughter,” Irene says, and Maia smiles. She knows that Sunny visited a medium on her trip to Croatia and the medium told Sunny the baby was going to be a boy. Sunny fully believes this and she has bought ten outfits for the baby in blue.
Ayers screams.
“There we go,” Sadie says. “One more push, doll!”
Maia puts her hands over her ears so she doesn’t have to listen to Ayers. A second later, Irene jumps off the sofa. Maia drops her hands.
“It’s a girl!” Sadie calls out. “A beautiful baby girl.”
A split second later, there’s a noise unlike anything Maia has ever heard—it’s a cry. A baby’s first cry. Maia shivers. It’s a girl. Her niece.
Maia stays up late because sleeping arrangements in the Hibiscus are a little crazy. Baker, Ayers, and the baby will sleep in one bedroom; Irene will sleep with Floyd; Huck and Maia are taking the sofas; and Phil and Sunny are sleeping in the laundry room on an air mattress. The wind has picked up but there’s no rain yet; the storm is due to make landfall the following day between noon and two.
Once Sadie has finished checking Ayers and the baby—Ayers and Baker haven’t given her a name yet because they want to get it just right—and helped Ayers latch the baby onto her breast and taught Ayers and Baker all about newborn care, Huck says that despite the curfew, he’s going to run Sadie back to Coral Bay.
Maia approaches Sadie as she’s scrubbing her hands and her equipment at the kitchen sink. “We didn’t have a lull,” Maia says, “so I didn’t get to hear the stories about my ancestors. Did you…know my ancestors?”
“Well,” Sadie says, “my mother, Blythe, was a midwife here on the island, and believe it or not, she delivered your mother.”
“She did?” Maia says.
“When I was fourteen, my mother started bringing me with her to the births,” Sadie says. “I’m fifty now. So…thirty-six years ago, the very first baby I saw being born was your mom.”
For a second, Maia is left breathless. Here’s someone who wants to talk not about Rosie dying but about Rosie being born. “What…” Maia isn’t sure what to ask. “What do you remember?”
“Your grandmother was the most elegant woman ever to grace this island,” Sadie says. “She was a model for a while, you know, in Paris and Milan.”
“I know.”
“She left all that and came back to St. John to marry Levi Small.”
“Did you know my grandfather?” Maia asks. She checks around the house. Their voices are low, but this topic—Rosie’s father, Levi Small—is so forbidden that Maia doesn’t want anyone overhearing. It also feels wrong to refer to anyone but Huck as her grandfather.
“Course I did,” Sadie says. She dries her hands finger by finger on a paper towel and lowers her voice to a whisper. “He was singing to LeeAnn the whole time she was in labor, mostly old Motown tunes—‘My Girl’ and ‘You Can’t Hurry Love.’ Your grandfather had a magnificent voice.”
“He did?” Maia says. She has never heard anyone say one kind thing about Levi Small.
“He used to sing in the church choir,” Sadie says. “He was a soloist. I remember that from when I was younger than you are now.”
“Do you know what happened to him?” Maia asks.
Sadie shrugs. “He left when your mama was little. Two or three years old. Some people say he ran off with another woman; some say your grandmother kicked him out and told him never to come back. Nobody knows for sure what happened and nobody knows where he went.”
“So he might still be alive?” Maia says.
“Man I dated before Rupert told me he saw Levi Small playing the piano at a fancy restaurant in Miami, Florida. But don’t get your hopes up, honey. The man
