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contractions, the false ones that were just practice for the real thing. This one was different. This rippled around her womb and clenched like a fist.
    She gasped, but her lungs were stones. The ghost hovered nearer, its substance touching her, ice cold, and she tried to wave it away. Chet's truck stopped by the house, and she fought for enough air to call him. Another contraction hit.
    Chet yelled her name. Was he mad? Did he expect to drive in after ten weeks gone to find breakfast waiting for him on the table? She'd take him the eggs, make him happy. Or throw them at him.
    The next contraction drove her to her knees. They weren't supposed to come on like this, one on top of the other at the start. The health department had told her what to expect, and this was none of the normal things. This was one of those symptoms that meant you'd better get to the hospital and fast.
    The ghost moved closer, Kelly could see the silver and white threads of the borrowed life that held the thing together. It was like one of Mamaw's old quilts, stitched after the woman's eyes had failed. Loose and tangled, nonsense. If not for ache in her guts, Kelly could have watched for hours, tracing the nearly-invisible lines.
    The pain came again, like a knife blade and a punch at the same time, and Chet yelled her name from outside. She crawled toward a pile of hay, sucking for air. The ghost hovered over her, shaking and spasming like linen on a December clothesline. She wondered if the baby was spasming, too, but she couldn't feel him through the globe of hurt.
    Maybe the ghost was causing all this, the pain, the fetal distress. If the ghost and the baby were connected, like to like, one jealous dead and the other with an entire life yet to live, years and years and years stretching out ahead, a billion heartbeats owed him . . . .
    Chet called again, and this time she managed to shriek. Nothing to write home about, but it was loud enough to get through the walls of the barn. Then she curled up in the hay, clutched her stomach, and tasted the dust that spun in the air. Her water broke beneath the tails of the long flannel shirt she wore. The barn door banged open, and daylight sliced through the ghost and cut it to nothing.
    “What the hell's going on?” Chet blinked into the shadows.
    Kelly gulped for another breath. “B—baby...”
    Chet hurried over, the smell of bourbon arriving before he did. He looked down at her, at the basket of eggs, at the amniotic fluid soaking her clothes between her legs. Kelly tried to smile at him, but her lips were dumb.
    “It's our baby,” she said. Everything would be okay now. The hospital was only twenty minutes away, you could hold out until then, why, the pain was nothing if you held onto that dream of brown eyes. And the baby was part Stamey, it was tough, it could bear up under a little trouble. Kelly was heavy, but Chet could manage, he would put her in the truck and slow down for the bumps.
    “It ain't mine.” Chet smiled. Except the smile was turned down at the corners, sharp as sickles.
    His boot came fast, knocking over the basket. She heard the damp crack of the eggs, and then her mind screamed red because the boot was at her stomach, into her stomach, fast and then again, the pain worse than the contractions even. He tugged at her waistband, and she thought at first it was some new kind of pain, then cold air rushed over her skin.
    Chet pulled the bloody pants down to her ankles, laughing, grunting.
    “Ain't mine.” He walked away, leaving her numb and broken and half naked. The truck started, backfired, and headed toward Tennessee or wherever it was he went to hide from himself.
    Chet wouldn't bury her after all. No one to bury her.
    Kelly, alone and dying. No, she wouldn't die alone. She would bring this child into the world. The child that was on its way, hospital or not. Dead or alive.
    She writhed in the hay, wracked by waves of a new hurt, as if her pelvic bones were being ground to