| Later, in the hospital, a nurse told her they had found a small white feather clenched tightly in one of Kate's hands when the ambulance brought her in. The nurse had actually saved it for her. Kate saved it too. I don't know where she kept it, I couldn't ask that. But she went home from the hospital having lost her first child then, and though you would think her life would have been radically changed by this, she didn't describe it that way. Perhaps enough time had passed that she could no longer perceive the turn. She said her husband was very attentive after the accident. When I suggested he probably felt guilty, she denied that possibility emphatically, and defended him. He never took blame, and she didn't want him to. "He wasn't going to hurt me! If there is blame in what happened. . . well. . . I am the one who jumped back without thinking." She was vehement really, and I could say nothing, but she watched my face as she changed the subject. We never talked about pregnancies and childbirth again after that. I know because I was sometimes tempted to bring it up. There was so much I couldn't understand then. Huge gaps of missing pieces for me because afterwards things obviously just went on for them, everything seemed normal. They had three more children, he worked long hours, she stayed home with the children. About three years after she and I became friends, he was promoted in his company and they moved to somewhere around Dallas. |
