She had survived, hadn’t she? Even when she had wanted to lie down in the night orchard and sink into a grave of her own, she had stumbled home in the dark, washed in the basin, and in the morning cooked breakfast for Jack. She had put away the dishes and scrubbed the table and counters. She had baked bread. She had worked and tried to ignore the painful swell of her breasts and the empty cramp of her womb. And then she had done the unthinkable; she had entered the nursery and put her hands on the oak crib, the one Jack had slept in as a child, and his mother before him. She touched the pastel
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