Chapter 91 Caught

Chapter 91 Caught


Violet's Pov 

Helen arrived twenty minutes after Eric sent for her.

She examined me in the bedroom with Eric sitting in the corner chair and her face did the thing it did when she was processing multiple pieces of information at once.

"Real labor," she said. "Not false this time. The contractions are consistent. Eight minutes apart."

"How long," Eric said.

"First labors vary considerably," she said. "Could be four hours. Could be twelve. The consistency of the pattern suggests moderate progress."

"What do you need," Eric said.

"Hot water. Clean linens. The kit I left here two weeks ago." She looked at me. "You are doing well. Stay as calm as you can. Calm labor is faster labor."

"I know," I said.

Eric stood. "I will get Bette," he said. He went out.

Helen looked at me the moment the door closed. Directly. The specific look.

"How are you actually feeling," she said.

"Frightened," I said. "Not of the birth."

"I know," she said. She did not ask me to explain. She moved to her bag and began setting out her instruments.

I watched her work. The contractions came and I breathed through them the way she had shown me and she timed them and made notes.

At midnight Eric said he needed to check something in the study and would be back in ten minutes. He said it to Helen, not to me. He said it like a domestic update, like information being filed.

He left.

I looked at Helen.

"How long does he usually take in the study," she said.

"It varies," I said.

"He has been gone a lot recently," she said. Not a question.

"Yes," I said.

She looked at me. "Violet," she said. "I am going to say something that is outside my professional remit."

"Say it," I said.

"If there is somewhere you need to be that is not this house," she said, "this is not the moment to be going there."

"I know," I said.

"Labor is not the moment to be crossing perimeters," she said.

"I know," I said.

"But there may be a window between now and the active stage," she said. "Between now and the next two hours. Before it becomes impossible to move at any speed."

I looked at her.

"I am not telling you to do anything," she said. "I am telling you that if I were in your position and there was someone on the outside of this fence who needed to know what was happening inside it, two hours from now would be too late to get that information out."

She went back to her instruments.

I breathed through the next contraction. It peaked and eased. Six minutes since the last one.

Eric was still in the study.

"Helen," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"How long can you give me," I said.

"I can step out to check the linen supply at the end of this corridor," she said. "I can be thorough about it. It might take me five minutes to assess what is needed."

"Five minutes," I said.

"The corridor is at the far end of the residential wing," she said. "From here to the back stairs is approximately forty feet."

She put down her instrument. She went to the door.

"I will be back shortly," she said. "The linens need assessing."

She left.

I got up.

I moved to the door and opened it and went into the corridor. The back stairs were at the far end. Forty feet. I covered it in thirty seconds, one hand on the wall, moving as fast as my body would allow.

I went down the back stairs. Carefully.

The kitchen. Empty. Bette had been and gone with supplies. The door to the garden was on the far side.

I crossed the kitchen. I opened the garden door.

Cold air. Dark garden. The lamp in my upstairs window was a point of light visible from below.

I went through the garden door and turned left along the side of the house toward the northeast corner where the shed was.

The contraction hit at the garden corner. Hard. Harder than any of the previous ones. The transition from early labor to something else. I pressed both hands against the wall and breathed through it.

Thirty seconds.

It eased.

I kept moving.

The shed was twenty feet away.

Ten feet.

Five.

"Violet."

I stopped.

Eric was standing between me and the shed door.

He was not wearing his jacket. He had come out without it. He had come out fast. He was standing very still in the cold garden air and looking at me with an expression I had not seen on him before.

Not the warm one. Not the managed one. Not the controlled one.

Something underneath all of those.

"Come inside," he said.

"Eric," I said.

"Come inside," he said again. His voice was very even. Very quiet.

"I need to check something in the shed," I said.

"No," he said. "You do not."

"The northeast shed has gardening tools I wanted to…"

"Violet," he said. "Stop."

I stopped.

He walked toward me. He was not fast. He was not aggressive. He was just completely deliberate, the way he was deliberate about everything, and he reached me and he put one hand on my arm and his grip was gentle and firm and not something I was going to pull away from at nine months pregnant in active labor.

"You are in labor," he said.

"I know," I said.

"You are in the garden in the dark," he said. "In labor."

"I was getting fresh air," I said.

"You were going to the northeast shed," he said. "Which backs up against the fence."

I said nothing.

He looked at me for a long moment. His hand on my arm was steady. Not tight. Not painful. Just present.

"How did you know about the gap," he said.

I did not answer.

"The gap at the base of the back wall," he said. "The one I have not found yet. How do you know about it?"

"I do not know about any gap," I said.

"Violet," he said.

"I wanted fresh air," I said.

He looked at me with that expression. The underneath one. The one I had not seen before.

"Did you send something through," he said.

I held his gaze. "I needed fresh air," I said.

He searched my face. Whatever he was looking for, he did not find the confirmation of it in my expression because I had spent months learning what my face showed and what it did not show.

A contraction began.

I breathed through it. It was a long one. Longer than the previous. I held Eric's gaze through the whole of it.

When it passed he said, "Come inside."

"Yes," I said.

He walked me back through the garden and through the kitchen door and up the main stairs this time, not the back stairs, his hand at my elbow for the whole of it. At the bedroom door, Helen was standing in the corridor with the specific expression of someone who had assessed the linens very thoroughly and was ready to proceed.

"The contractions are spacing closer," Helen said. "Four minutes. We are moving into the active stage."

"Then we focus on that," Eric said.

He guided me into the room and I sat on the edge of the bed and Helen came in and started the next part of her assessment and Eric sat in the corner chair and watched me with that expression.

I breathed through the next contraction.

The lamp on the windowsill was still on.

I had not made it to the shed.

I did not know if the letter from last night was still on the ground on the other side of the fence or if someone had found it.

I breathed.

"Good," Helen said. "You are doing well. Keep breathing exactly like that."

I kept breathing.

Eric sat in the corner.

"Is there anything you need," he said. His voice was warm again. The warm voice. The one I had believed for months.

"No," I said.

"Anything at all," he said.

"No," I said.

The contraction peaked and eased and I pressed both hands flat on Eli and felt him press back, steady and determined and completely himself.

"Soon," I told him.

He pushed back.