And Then I Found You by Patti Callahan Henry Page A

them in a bowl. She mixed the
     wilderness feathers with the new ones until the individual was indistinguishable region
     from region.
    She found feathers so blue they shimmered, the red ones and brown, the soft down and
     the coarse bristly ones. Her favorite was all white, so white it seemed bleached and
     yet had a single dot: a freckle. Bluebird, raven, hawk, chickadee, cardinal—and then
     she found some that she couldn’t identify, ones she hadn’t yet found a name for. She
     became obsessed with the nameless ones. She checked Audubon books out of the library
     and they were piled on the dining room table. Engrossed in discovering what bird had
     lost a piece of self, she tied tiny labels to the quills. She didn’t have any plans
     for the feathers, and maybe that was the best part—they existed for beauty only.
    She brought something wild to the tame and rational. She brought heart into a place
     where she must soon give away her heart.
    Jack shut down, or that was the best way Katie knew to describe what happened to the
     man she once knew. He disappeared and another man, a married man who wanted to get
     on with his life, took his place. She felt it wasn’t true, that deep down Jack still
     existed, but the facts proved otherwise. He left her alone to go through family profiles
     until she decided on a closed and confidential adoption.
    Through terrible phone calls and months of agony, Katie chose a mother and father
     who had been trying for nine years to have a child and were unable: a couple with
     a large extended family and a seemingly solid (as solid as one could look on paper)
     background.
    Still and yet, through all this agony, Jack never told his wife, Maggie.

 
    seven
    BLUFFTON, SC
    1997
    The cramps weren’t bad. Really, they were little more than a stomachache or muscle
     spasm. Katie still had another week and anyway, the agony she’d heard about—head-spinning
     pain that tore women in half—would be much more severe than this. She wouldn’t panic
     over muscle aches. It wasn’t time yet.
    Katie sat back against the tub and let the warm water soothe her. Twilight was turning
     into night, and the bathroom was dusky and serene as the first knife-searing stab
     thrust itself through the middle of her body. She bent over with its force and lost
     her breath into the darkness.
    “Mom…” she called, tentatively at first, then louder, then loudest of all. “MOM!”
    Nicole ran into the bathroom where Katie stood in the middle of a puddle, naked and
     round, doubled over and dripping water onto the tile floor. “Are you okay?” Her mom
     placed her hand on Katie’s bare back.
    Katie looked up. “I think … it’s time.”
    “Get dressed. I’ll get the bag and start the car.”
    Another knife ripped through Katie’s body, a searing heat that she’d never felt before.
     “Oh…”
    Her mom uttered the same soothing sounds she’d used when Katie was sick as a child,
     the sounds a mother uses with any child in any world, rubbing her hand up and down
     Katie’s spine until the pain dissipated.
    Nicole rushed into the bedroom and grabbed the prepacked bag as Katie wobbled, wet
     and bent, into the room to pull on sweatpants and a T-shirt. Within two minutes, they
     were on their way to the hospital.
    Fluid gushed from Katie’s body, drenching the towel that had been placed on the passenger
     seat. She knew from her classes that her water had broken, meaning that the baby would
     come quickly now. “Mom.” Katie uttered the name, feeling its shape change with each
     contraction. She would be a mother soon. And then she would relinquish the right to
     be called by that same name.
    Nicole gunned the car, placing her hand on Katie’s leg. “You are going to be okay.
     This will be fine.”
    “I’m scared.”
    “Of course you are.” Tears dripped off Nicole’s chin and Katie turned away.
    “We forgot to call Jack. I promised…” Katie’s words were stopped short by a quick