Father got down on his knees to clear away the last bit of earth, scooping it around the sides of Mr Kault’s panted legs and sleeved arms. He squatted then, and said –Kault … Kault, you can wake up.

Out came his pupils, a pair of deep wet holes, and the irises surrounding them swirling and brown. His hands grasped at the low walls of his soil-bed.

He didn’t see me as he blinked his way around the garden – or what he could see of it, and Father asked him how he was feeling.

There was no need for me to be there aside from the usual caution – a Cure resisting being above ground – but Mr Kault was fine. I went into the sitting room and sat in the window while Mr Kault got changed in the downstairs bathroom at the far end of the pantry. I’d left his things there. They’d smelled like outside.

He spent a few minutes drinking water at the kitchen table while I watched his son kick dust around the drive. The scuffing noise he made seemed timed with the rise and fall of his father’s questions in the kitchen. He was being told we’d eased the symptoms but that they came from a problem rooted somewhere we couldn’t go. I tried hard not to hear the quiet space Mr Kault made around himself. Eventually, he said –How long, then? How long have I got?

Once in the drive Mr Kault’s son grasped him by the arms. The son still had that jittering way of the very young and very strong, and hadn’t just then the presence of mind to note the slow horror of his father’s gait, the sad shape he made as he swung his bag into the truck.

Father had turned melancholy in the kitchen. I asked if he’d found Mr Kault to be a tiring Cure. He looked at his hands and said –What is it you like about him, Ada?

For a moment I thought he meant Mr Kault, and almost said His broad shoulders, so like your own. But I caught myself. I went to the pot on the stove and stirred it. There was little point in fighting him. If he knew, he knew.

–Only the feeling he makes inside me.

–It’s the Wyde boy? Yes?

Stirring the pot. Squinting through the steam.

–How’d you know it was him?

–He only came by a few months ago. And it’s not like you’ve much choice.

–Fine. I see him every so often and it pleases me.

He sat rock-still. I felt him there. Unmoving.

–There’s something not right about that boy.

The steam beaded my chest. Turning back to fragrant water.

–Ada.

–What?

–I said you know he’s not right.

–Because he likes my company?

–I smelled it on him. Soon as he came into the house.

I dropped the spoon. Let the handle slide too low into the pot.

–I’ve work to do.

Mr Sharpe

My wife loves Miss Ada like she’s kin but I’m not so sure. Says she saved our Tabatha, but God forgive me when our daughter started speaking she said the strangest things.

I’m a hare tripping over its too-large feet.

I’m a caterpillar dropped from a great height.

They were some of the first things to come out her mouth.

I’m ashamed for thinking it, used to make myself cry with thinking it, but maybe we weren’t meant to have her.

All water is blood to her. Can you imagine that?

Your life filled with that much blood?

Upstairs, scrubbing our linens in the bath. The day steaming outside and an ache in my back. Trying to think straight through my anger with Father, wondering how I could distract him or trick him into leaving me be.

And then a truck in the drive. I dropped the wet cloth and the dirty water splashed up at me.

We’d no Cures coming, and nobody ever called around unannounced.

My feet felt bruised on the stairs. I could hear Father coming in from the patio.

I went to the front door.

Mrs Claudette was landing on her feet with an effort, dropping the keys into her pocket. She called to me

–Hi Miss Ada.

I would have helped her up the steps, but there was a strangeness to her being there, and she looked tight around the eyes. Pulling herself up one step at a time, one hand on her stomach, breathing hard through her smile.

–I’m sorry for just arriving, but I’m awful worried about the baby.

Some Cures give off a scent when they’re lying. The glands get excited and make a liquid akin to sweat. Still, I told her to come inside.

She’d gotten a lot bigger since I’d last seen her. Her feet had learned to bend into little canoes that she rocked the length of with every step, struggling to balance under her own weight.

Father came out of the kitchen. He gazed hard at her midriff, that portion of her body that was doubly alive.

–Best take Mrs Claudette upstairs.

–Which room?

–The second.

I heard the swish of her fluids as she followed me up the stairs, pulling on the bannister. Loud wet puffing sound. Her laugh, once dancing breath, had grit to it now.

–I certainly have gotten bigger – I didn’t think that could happen. Lying on my back I can barely breathe.

–It’ll all ease quickly, soon as it’s born.

Your little green-eyed boy.

In the bedroom I lifted her feet onto the bed and leaned over her, moving the pillows behind her head.

Into my chest she said