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didn't make her wash dishes for a week.
    But Chet was gone. And she would not be the last. She rubbed her belly. “You'll live,” she said.
    She had dreamed it was male. He had talked to her last night, even though in the dream he was not even old enough to walk, his skull still pointed from the pressure of birth. His eyes were brown, like John Randolph Stamey's. The family brown.
    She told her belly, “You will carry on the name.”
    Kelly leaned forward and touched the marble. She would have a family. Her baby would live and grow. She would be connected.
    She groaned as she struggled to her feet, pulling on a tree limb for balance. The sun had killed the frost and the ground glistened in a thousand wet sparkles. A mile away, rising from the forest, came a thread of chimney smoke from the Davis place. Beyond that, the Blue Ridge mountains stretched toward the horizon. Blue as a stillborn.
    Mothers weren't supposed to think that way. Sure, you had your little fears, but you let them pass and thought only of the baby against your breast, alive and grunting in ceaseless need. You hoped and prayed that everything would be perfect. And you forgot about everything that could go wrong. Just like you forgot about Chet.
    She made her way back to the farmhouse. Her back ached, so she sat in a rocker in the kitchen. The sun through the window fell on her belly, warmed her. The baby kicked, then rolled in her womb so that either a shoulder or a knee squeezed her bladder.
    “You're going to be a mover,” she told him. “Just like your daddy.”
    Chet, who wriggled like a snake. Who moved so fast that nothing stuck to him, no responsibility, no steady job, no woman. No family. No connections.
    She looked out at the Chevy in the driveway. She'd drive herself in, when the time came. She'd have to do it early on, because you never knew what to expect with a first pregnancy. They said some women spent two days in labor, while others dropped them five minutes after the first contraction. You never knew.
    Chet’s sister had offered a room in town, right up close to the hospital. But Kelly belonged here, on Stamey ground.
    The baby squirmed again, probably hungry. Kelly had forgotten to look for eggs. All this foolishness over graves and ghosts, and she wasn't taking care of duties. She rose from the rocker and went back to the barn. It was either that, or oatmeal again, and if she ate any more oatmeal, she'd probably give birth to a colt.
    “You can't see ghosts in daylight,” she told her belly.
    But you could see them during the day, if the place you're in is dark enough. The barn had only a couple of windows, set high in the plank walls and covered with chicken wire. She'd tried to get Chet to run electricity to the barn, but there was always fishing or hunting or a Squad meeting. The important things.
    The ghost was closer now, the closest it had ever been. She'd come around the corner and nearly dropped the little basket of eggs. But if the ghost wanted to hurt her, it had missed plenty of chances.
    She couldn't run, anyway. She could waddle, maybe, take three or four steps while her hip ligaments caught fire and her breath left her. How fast was a ghost? No, if it wanted her, it would have had her any night while she was asleep.
    The ghost wiggled in rhythm with the baby. Kelly tried to look at the ghost's face, but it was like watching patterns on the surface of a windy lake. Shifting, sparkling, not knowing what it wanted to be. She stood before it, waiting.
    The sound came from between the trees. She knew it well, she'd laid awake many nights listening for it. Chet's Chevy pick-up, with the rusted muffler. The truck was coming down the long driveway.
    Kelly smiled. Somehow, she'd known he would come back. He was a good man. He loved the good times, sure, but he knew when to stand up and be a man.
    Kelly set the basket on the hard dirt floor, and the first contraction hit when she raised back up. She'd had a few Braxton-Hicks