“I
“You already are,” Mack said.
“I love my baby.”
“I know.” Grace whisked the damp hair from her brow.
Mary Jo was drenched in sweat, her face streaked with tears. “I’m never going through this again,” she gasped, looking at Grace. “I can’t believe my mother gave birth four times.”
“All women think that,” Grace said. “I know I did. While I was in labor with Maryellen, I told Dan that if this baby wasn’t the son he wanted, he was out of luck because I wasn’t having another one.”
“You did, though.”
“As soon as you hold your baby in your arms, nothing else matters. You forget the pain.”
Footsteps clattered up the stairs. “Mom?”
It was Maryellen, Grace’s daughter.
“In here,” Grace called out.
Maryellen hurried into the room, then paused when she saw Mary Jo and smiled tearfully. Her arms were filled with baby clothes.
A pain overtook Mary Jo. Again it was Mack she looked to, Mack who held her gaze, lending her his strength.
She was grateful that Grace was at her side, but most of the time it had been Mack who’d guided and encouraged her. He had a way of comforting her that no one else seemed to have, not even Grace.
“You’re doing so well,” Mack told her. “We have a shoulder….”
Mary Jo sobbed quietly. It was almost over. The baby was leaving her body. She could feel it now, feel the child slipping free and then the loud, fierce cry that resounded in the room.
Her relief was instantaneous.
She’d done it! Despite everything, she’d done it.
With her last reserve of strength, Mary Jo rose up on one elbow.
Mack held the child in his arms and Brandon had a towel ready. Mack turned to her and she saw, to her astonishment, that there were tears in his eyes.
“You have a daughter, Mary Jo.”
“A daughter,” she whispered.
“A beautiful baby girl.”
Her own tears came then, streaming from her eyes with an intensity of emotion that surprised her. She hadn’t given much thought to the sex of this child, hadn’t really cared. Her brothers were the ones who’d insisted she’d have a son.
They’d been wrong.
“A daughter,” she whispered. “I have a daughter.”
18
“The natives are getting restless,” Jon Bowman reported to Grace when she camed own from the apartment. After watching the birth of Mary Jo’s baby, Grace felt ecstatic. She couldn’t describe all the emotions tumbling through her. Joy. Excitement. Awe. Each one held fast to her heart.
Katie, April and Tyler raced around the yard, screaming at the top of their lungs, chasing one another, gleeful and happy. Jon went to quiet them, but Grace stopped him.
“Let them play,” she told her son-in-law. “They aren’t hurting anything out here.”
“Kelly and Lisa are inside making hot cocoa,” Cliff said, joining Grace. “And Paul’s looking after Emma.” He slid his arm around her waist. “Everything all right up there?” He nodded toward the barn.
“Everything’s wonderful. Mary Jo had a baby girl.”
“That’s marvelous!” Cliff kissed her cheek. “I bet you never guessed you’d be delivering a baby on Christmas Eve.”
Grace had to agree; it was the last thing she’d expected. She was thankful Mary Jo hadn’t been stuck in some hotel room alone. These might not have been the best of circumstances, but she’d ended up with people who genuinely cared for her and her baby.
Grace didn’t know Roy and Corrie McAfee’s son well, but Mack had proved himself ten times over. He was a capable, compassionate young man, and he’d been an immeasurable help to Mary Jo. In fact, Grace doubted
After he’d delivered that baby girl, Mack had cradled the infant in his arms and gazed down on her with tears shining in his eyes. An onlooker might have thought he was the child’s father.
The other EMT actually had to ask him to let go of the baby so he could wash her. After that, Grace had wrapped the crying baby in a swaddling blanket and handed her to Mary Jo.
The two EMTs were finishing up with Mary Jo and would be transporting her and the baby to the closest birthing center. Maryellen had stayed to discuss breastfeeding and to encourage and, if need be, assist the new mother.
