Silk and Stone by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

anything she wanted for fear he’d lose her. There was no looking back now.
    That night, for the first time in his sober and dignified life, he drank heavily and sat in the dark of his office, in the home that had been his family’s for generations, the Pandora ruby lying in the palm of his hand. He had given her everything dear to him. His name, his home, his protection, and his self-respect.

Chapter
            Three

 
    “A
tmen Sie aus
, Frau Ryder.
Atmen Sie aus.
”
    Breathe out? Frannie thought desperately. The pain was so bad, she couldn’t remember
how
to breathe, much less which way. “
Ja,
” she answered in the middle of a groan, her head arching back on the sweat-soaked pillow, her gaze fixed blankly on the ceiling of the bedroom in her and Carl’s tiny apartment. And then, as her updrawn legs convulsed and she thought the baby was going to rip her apart, she called, “
Nein, nein!
Oh, shit!”
    “What is
shit
?” the German midwife asked, huffing. “Push, Frau Ryder.”
    “She’s dying,” Jane Gibson said darkly. Jane, the wife of a staff sergeant and a cheerful friend ordinarily, was kneeling on the bed with her hands wound around one
of
Frannie’s fists. “She’s been in labor for a day and a half. This is crazy! We’ve got to take her to the base hospital.”
    “Too late for the
Krankenhaus, ja,
” the midwife muttered. “The baby, it comes out.”
    And it did, like a piano squeezing through a keyhole, while Frannie screamed. If she were dying, she didn’t see her whole life flash before her eyes, but only the last four years—four miscarriages in four years, and a platoon of army doctors patting her head while they told her and Carl to keep trying. Four years of hope, failure, and heartache had driven Frannie to this point. She didn’t believe in doctors anymore.
    Carl did though. Thank God he was away on maneuvers for two weeks and didn’t know she’d been studying natural childbirth. He was unhappy enough, already, about her interest in bizarre ideas.
    “Oh, Lord, she’s not breathing!” Jane yelled. Frannie heard the words dimly as the agonizing pressure inside her slipped away.
I am too breathing, I think
, she decided.
No, the baby. She means the baby
. Frannie lurched upright, staring in horror at the limp blue baby girl lying between her legs on the bloody sheets.
    The midwife enclosed the baby’s head in her beefy hands, bent over her, and closed her mouth over the baby’s entire face, it seemed. “What the hell are you doing?” Jane screamed.
    Frannie pushed at Jane’s hands, which were grabbing the midwife’s curly gray wig. “She’s giving her air,” Frannie explained. She leaned forward, shaking, praying. “Please let her be all right. Please don’t let my stupidity kill her.”
    The baby shuddered. Its frail chest puffed out vigorously, and the incredibly delicate-looking arms and legs began to move. The midwife sat back, hoisted her across Frannie’s abdomen, and lightly slapped her rump. A faint, angry wail filled the room.
    Frannie huddled over her daughter, crying, stroking slick wisps of blond hair on the baby’s head. “Do you think she’s hurt?”
    “She’s
mad,
” Jane said, collapsing beside them. “And Carl is going to be mad as hell too, if you tell him how this went. You could have delivered this baby hoursago, in the hospital, with a nice spinal block and a pair of friendly forceps to help you, instead of only me and this … this Aryan soothsayer.”
    “Hush. Everything’s all right. I’m sure.”
    But she wasn’t sure, she was terrified, and later, when the baby had been cleaned and dried and put in her arms, she looked down into her eyes and swore she saw rebuke. “Don’t be upset with me, Samantha.” she whispered. “I love you. I really, really do.”
    “Samantha?” Jane sipped a cola and sat, cross-legged, on the end of the bed. The midwife ambled in from the kitchen, belching and taking deep swallows