“You have a village now,” Mrs. Patterson told me one afternoon. “Whether you wanted one or not.”
I hadn’t known how much I needed it until I had it.
Owen was at the station when my water broke.
Twenty-four-hour shift, his first since moving back. He’d kissed me goodbye that morning, his hand lingering on my belly.
“Call me if anything happens,” he’d said.
“Nothing’s going to happen. I’ve got three weeks left.”
“Call me anyway.”
I’d rolled my eyes, but I’d also felt the warmth of being worried about. Of mattering enough that someone wanted to know.
Mrs. Patterson had gone into town for her weekly errands—the pharmacy, the bookshop, the market. She’d be back by lunch, she said. Elena had to rush home early that day to help her daughter with an event at school.
So I was alone in the kitchen, making bread.
Gran’s recipe. The one I’d been making since I was eight years old. Flour, water, and yeast. The muscle memory that had carried me through every hard thing.
I bent to slide the loaf into the oven, and I felt it.
A pop. Low in my belly, like something releasing.
Then wetness. Spreading down my thighs, soaking through my leggings, pooling on the kitchen floor.
For a second, I just stood there. Hands on the counter. Bread in the oven. Water was dripping onto the tile that Gran had laid forty years ago.
Then the first contraction hit.
Not like the practice ones I’d been having for weeks. Those had been tightening, uncomfortable, and easy to breathe through.
This was different.
A band of pressure wrapped around my middle, squeezing, stealing my breath. I gripped the counter and rode it out, counting the seconds the way the books had said.
Thirty seconds. Forty.
Then, it released.
I stood there, breathing hard, my mind racing.
Three weeks early. Owen was at the station. I was alone in the kitchen with bread in the oven and my water on the floor.
Okay. Okay. I could do this.
I grabbed my phone and dialed Owen.
Voicemail.
I tried again.
Voicemail.
Another contraction started building. I braced against the counter, breathed through it, felt the pressure crest and fade.
When it passed, I called the station.
