Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 86160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Now she’s not too keen on friends coming out here and we go into town maybe once a month same as I always did. She still waves and says hello but she’s not on the friend seeking circuit no more.
She got on the computer one day and did her own research. I guess I shouldn’t have sold her so much on the old way of doing things because now all I hear about is midwives this and midwives that. That’s where we part company.
“You’re being a hypocrite T.” I don’t care what she says her ass is going to the general hospital and having that baby.
I let her rant and rave and have her fit until she got on my damn nerves and I had to bend her over one of the stalls and fuck her quiet.
“Now go take your nap and behave.” She turned up here nose at me but wobbled her ass back to the house. I was busy trying to get the place ready for when the baby came and trying not to scare myself half to death with all the stuff I was reading about birthing.
The town’s people were good for one thing though. When that trollop that I’d dispatched to hell’s daddy came looking for her after all this time they convinced him she’d run off with the no count pansy man she had in my bed.
Because he’d apparently forbid her to see the boy because he wasn’t rich, he believed it and left me the hell alone. Not that I was scared, hogs don’t leave anything but the teeth and I got rid of those a long time ago.
She was baking bread when I went in a few hours later. I stood in the doorway and watched her kneading dough, her little round belly sticking out in front, flour on her cheeks and the heat from the oven making the hair around her face stick to her skin. I guess I was the overgrown horse’s ass she was cussing to herself.
I rolled my eyes at her language and walked over to put my arms around her from behind. “I’m scared baby.” She stopped and turned to look up at me. “Of what T?”
“Of something happening to you. That old lady is a hundred if she’s a day I don’t trust her to take care of you. I only saw where there’s three people in the last year that she helped with a birthing, the hospital do that many a day.”
She ran her hands up and down my chest soothingly. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I talked to one of the women she delivered and she had nothing but good things to say.” I brushed the hair back from her face and looked down at her.
So much has changed since that day she thought I was sending her away. We’d gone into town and got hitched, that’s what started the friend brigade come to think of it.
She had the freedom to go anywhere she liked, as long as I was with her of course, and she even knew where the keys to the truck were. I don’t think she’d driven it more than once.
I still wasn’t ready to let her go into town on her own, but not because I thought she’d keep driving, but because I didn’t trust anyone period. “You know I can’t give you what you want right? I don’t know that woman and I don’t trust her to take care of you and the baby. When the time comes I’m taking you to the hospital where they can take care of you.”
She went back to being spitting mad and I went back to packing her suitcase for when the baby comes which should be any day now. She didn’t say two words to me the rest of the evening but come bed time I reminded her who was boss.
If I weren’t careful she’d take my balls just like half the damn men in the country. Because I like to spoil her she thinks that means she can get over on me, fat chance.
As long as there’s breath in my body I’m gonna see that she’s safe. I can buy her all the nonsense her little heart desires no problem, but when it comes to her care there’s no question she’ll do as I say.
And that’s how our twins came to be born at the hospital with that damn old woman attending her, and the doctor on the sidelines just in case.
Epilogue
Carter
The springs in the old bed squeaked as I rocked back and forth inside her. The old straw mattress was barely holding up under the strain. I guess it was time for a new one at that. This one had seen us through six years of marriage and five kids with another one on the way, and that’s after it had been in the family for nearly forty years.