“And another baby could die.”

“But the cry of a baby the minute she yanked open the front door tightened her chest so hard she could scarcely catch her breath. Her baby was dead. Theirs weren’t.”

“, repeatedly visiting the online baby calendar to see what stage of growth the baby would have been in.”

“The babies seem so very far away.”

“I lost our babies for us,” she croaked. “My body wouldn’t hold them.”

“Melinda settled back against the bricks. Just go in. Let me escape. Jake would interrogate her, no doubt. Maybe she should just never go home. Get a job again and be independent. Avoid the thought of having babies. Or failing at it.”

“Dot sat forward and tugged another handful of bracelets from the snarl. “Here’s something I believe.” She held up a green bracelet so that the sun shone clear through the colors on the beads. “I believe that when women like us meet, that our children in heaven also find their way to each other, on account of us all being in the same place and them watching over. So they’re all together—Stella your pair, Melinda’s, and mine. Right now, they’re up there, singing maybe, or playing Red Rover, and probably laughing at us sitting around trying to fix a mess we ourselves made.”