Part 3
The breaking point came a month later, on a damp, gray afternoon in late April. The ground was slowly thawing, turning the farmyard into a thick soup of freezing mud, but the air still held a bitter, winter-sharp bite.
Jenna was in the barn, mucking out the cattle stalls. The work was brutal. The heavy pitchfork, loaded with wet straw and manure, dragged at her shoulders. Beneath her oversized flannel shirt, the tight cotton bindings were cutting mercilessly into her ribs, restricting her breath to short, shallow gasps.
She drove the pitchfork into the muck and hauled it upward.
A sudden, blinding pain ripped through her lower back.
Jenna dropped the heavy wooden handle. It clattered against the stall door. She doubled over, grabbing the rough wooden slats of the gate, her knuckles turning instantly white. This was not the dull, persistent ache she had lived with for months. This was a sharp, violently tightening band of pressure that seized her entire abdomen, stealing the air from her lungs. She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her forehead against the freezing wood, waiting for the spasm to pass.
When it finally released its grip, her legs were trembling so badly she could barely stand. She left the pitchfork in the dirt. Moving with slow, terrifying care, she stumbled out of the barn and made her way back to the house.
She managed to get through dinner by keeping her head down and claiming a sudden migraine, pushing her food around her plate while the pressure in her back built into a slow, agonizing drumbeat. Bill barely looked at her, entirely focused on a broken tractor axle. As soon as she was excused, Jenna retreated to her cramped room and shut the door.
She lay on her narrow iron bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, tracking the intervals. The house slowly settled into its nighttime routine. She heard the clatter of dishes being washed, the murmur of her parents’ voices, and finally, the heavy, decisive thud of her father’s boots dropping to the floorboards in the master bedroom.
By midnight, the farmhouse was dead silent, save for Bill’s rhythmic snoring bleeding through the thin walls.
The contractions were coming faster now, pulling tighter and tighter across her stomach. Jenna carefully swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. She pulled on her heavy boots, not bothering to lace them. She moved to the small closet, feeling around in the dark until her hands found a stack of old, moth-eaten wool blankets. She grabbed two, tucked them under her arm, and slowly eased her bedroom door open.
She knew exactly which floorboards squeaked. She stepped over them, holding her breath as she moved through the freezing kitchen and slipped out the back door, gently pulling it shut until the latch clicked silently into place.
The cold air hit her like a physical blow. The ground was slick with half-frozen mud and patches of old snow. Jenna crossed the dark yard, her shadow stretching long and distorted in the pale moonlight, and slipped inside the cattle barn.
She pulled the heavy sliding door completely shut behind her, sealing out the wind. The barn was pitch black, smelling intensely of hay, wet animal hide, and ammonia.
She made her way to the farthest corner, behind the storage bins of feed oats, completely hidden from the door. She dropped to her knees, arranged the rough wool blankets over a mound of loose hay, and curled onto her side.
There was no one to call for. There was no help coming. If she made a sound, if she woke her father, the consequences would be worse than the pain tearing through her body.
When the next contraction hit, Jenna shoved a bunched-up corner of the wool blanket deep into her mouth. She bit down hard, her jaw locking as her body arched in the darkness. Tears of pure physical agony leaked from the corners of her eyes, tracking through the dirt on her face, but she did not make a sound.
The hours dragged on in a brutal, exhausting cycle. The cows in the nearby stalls grew restless, sensing the distress. They shifted their heavy weight, hooves thudding against the dirt floor, their thick, wet breaths pluming in the freezing air. Jenna focused on the sound of their breathing, using it to ground herself as the pain threatened to pull her under completely.
Sometime in the hours before dawn, her water broke, soaking her clothes and the blanket beneath her in freezing, sticky dampness. Her body took over completely. She gripped the wooden leg of the feed bin with one hand, biting down on the wool so hard her teeth ached, and pushed.
The baby was born into the absolute, freezing darkness of the barn.
Jenna collapsed back against the hay, gasping for air, her chest heaving violently. She waited.
Silence.
There was no cry. There was no movement.
For one terrible, stretching second, Jenna felt a cold rush of relief. It was over. The problem had solved itself. But then, looking down at the tiny, motionless shadow lying on the blood-soaked wool, something primal and deeply human fractured inside her chest.
Her hands, slick and trembling, reached out. The baby was terrifyingly small, a consequence of coming two months early. Jenna picked up the motionless infant. The tiny limbs were limp, the skin cold to the touch.
“Breathe,” Jenna whispered, the word barely a breath of air.
She turned the baby over and firmly rubbed her thumbs up and down the tiny spine, just as she had seen her father do to stillborn calves. She gave the baby’s back a sharp, desperate pat.
A tiny, wet gasp broke the silence.
The infant’s chest shuddered, pulling in the freezing barn air, followed by a weak, reedy cry that sounded more like a kitten than a human child.
Jenna exhaled a shaky breath, her forehead dropping against the rough wool blanket. She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out the heavy folding knife she used for cutting baling twine, and carefully severed the umbilical cord. She tied it off tightly with a piece of heavy string she kept in her pocket, her hands working entirely on farm instinct.
In the dim moonlight filtering through the cracks in the barn siding, Jenna looked at her daughter.
The baby was shuddering with cold. As Jenna wiped the infant’s face with a clean corner of the blanket, her thumb brushed against the side of the tiny neck. There was a dark, distinct mark on the pale skin, just below the jawline—a birthmark, shaped roughly like a small, uneven heart.
The baby turned her head, instinctively rooting toward Jenna’s chest, her tiny mouth searching for warmth and milk.
Jenna’s breath hitched. She forced herself to pull back, physically creating distance between her body and the child. She could not feed her. She could not afford to feel the connection, because she already knew what she had to do.
With numb, mechanical movements, Jenna folded the dry sections of the wool blanket tightly around the fragile body, wrapping the baby into a secure, insulated bundle until only the tiny face was visible. She laid the bundle in the hay next to her and pulled her own knees to her chest, shivering violently in her wet clothes.
She waited in the agonizing silence, watching the slats of the barn walls.
Slowly, the pitch-black gaps between the wood turned to a pale, bruised blue. Dawn was breaking. The roosters would start soon. Bill would be waking up.
Jenna forced her exhausted, battered body to stand. She picked up the small wool bundle, holding it tight against her chest, and slipped quietly out of the barn door, stepping into the freezing fog of the early morning.