“We have to stop for a minute,” Blair says. There’s a bench outside the store and Blair hears Jessie asking her if she wants to sit but Jessie’s voice is faint and far away. There is only room in Blair’s head for her own thoughts and this searing white-hot pain. She doesn’t think sitting will help; it may make things worse—if anything could be worse than being in labor on Main Street in the broiling-hot sun.

The contraction barrels down. Blair’s knees buckle but Jessie holds her steady.

“Should I run for Mom?” Jessie asks.

Blair can’t talk until the contraction is past. “And leave me here? No, let’s go.”

They make it to the corner of Main and Fair, but another contraction is coming. Blair says, “You go. I’ll be right here.”

Jessie races up the street. Blair braces herself against a tree. The Quaker Meeting House is across the street—quiet, calm, serene. Blair wills herself to think about the Quaker Meeting House, but the pain is overwhelming. It consumes her. She’s crying and sweating and cursing the day she ever met Angus. Angus, who is a thousand miles away in Houston. Blair tries to recall today’s date. She thinks it’s the fifteenth, so the moon launch is tomorrow. Right? It doesn’t matter. Angus is so unavailable, he might as well be on the moon.

A car pulls up and Blair casts her eyes down, willing it to move on. Her legs are sticky with fluid, the back of her dress is soaked, and she wants to disappear; what she fears most right now is a Good Samaritan.

“Blair!”

It’s her mother and Jessie in the Scout. Jessie hops out and walks Blair over to the passenger side, but how will she ever get up and in? She faces the car while Jessie pushes from under her buttocks and somehow boosts Blair up. Another contraction is coming.

“We can’t go down the cobblestones,” Blair says.

“What?” Kate says. “But darling, there’s no other way.”

“We! Cannot! Go! Down! The! Cobblestones!” Blair says in a voice that sounds nothing like her own. “Back up.”

“Back up?” Kate says. “Fair Street is one-way, darling.”

“Back up, Mom,” Jessie says. “No one is behind us. I’ll keep watch.”

Another contraction is coming. Blair howls.

Kate backs up.

“Keep going! Keep going!” Jessie says. “It’s clear all the way to Lucretia Mott.”

Thank you, God, Blair thinks. Lucretia Mott Lane to Pine Street, Pine Street to Lyons, Lyons to South Mill, which meets Prospect Street right across from the hospital. Kate screeches to a stop in the emergency room parking lot, and two orderlies appear with a stretcher.

“You’re not leaving me, are you?” Blair asks her mother.

“We’ll be right behind you, darling,” Kate says. “You won’t be alone.”

Blair closes her eyes. She won’t be alone. Kate and Jessie will be here. Someone is missing, Blair thinks. “Someone is missing,” Blair mumbles to the orderly.

“Oh yeah?” he says. “Your husband?”

Angus? she thinks. No.

The person missing is Kirby.

Blair is in labor for eighteen hours, which sounds grueling, although, truthfully, it’s only the beginning and the end of labor that are challenging. The contractions come fast and hard until Dr. Van de Berg arrives and instructs the nurse, Myrtle, to give Blair something to make her “comfortable.”

“Here comes your glass of wine,” Myrtle says as she shoots something into Blair’s IV.

She’s in twilight sleep much of the night. She wakes up at dawn when the nurse tells her it’s time to push.

Kate is there at the bedside and Jessie is sitting on a stool in the corner of the room. This would never be allowed in a big-city hospital, Blair knows, but she’s glad they bend the rules here a little. Jessie is wearing a surgical mask, which looks so funny on her that Blair actually laughs.

Dr. Van de Berg reappears in blue scrubs. “Who wants to have a baby or two?” he asks. He checks Blair and says, “The first baby is crowning, Blair. Bear down.”

This is happening. Blair is overcome with emotion. She is going to have a baby, two babies. She is about to create a family, right here, right now, on July 16, 1969, the same day that man will head to the moon. Angus must be consumed by the imminent launch, checking and rechecking calculations, in constant contact with Cape Kennedy. He will have no idea that on an island thirty miles from the Massachusetts shore, his children are about to enter the world.

“Push, Blair, push,” Dr. Van de Berg says.

Blair pushes.

“Again,” Dr. Van de Berg says.

“Push, darling,” Kate says. Blair looks at her mother. Kate’s hair is in its usual chignon; there are pearls at her neck; she’s wearing a peach dress. She has an iron grip on Blair’s hand, and Blair can feel Kate passing her her strength, gifting her her fortitude. Blair knows her mother endured this, and Nonny before her, and Nonny’s mother, Mimi, before her, and so on and so on. Blair hopes Jessie is watching so she learns that all women are strong and miraculous.

Strong, Blair thinks. Miraculous.

“It’s a girl!” Dr. Van de Berg says. “She’s perfect.”

A girl! Blair thinks, and her heart soars. Jessie is on her feet, her eyes wide, her fists clenched with nerves or joy. Kate sniffs, wipes a tear.

“My granddaughter,” she says.

Dr. Van de Berg hands the baby to Myrtle as though it’s a loaf of bread he pulled from the oven. “We aren’t finished,” he says. “You can take a couple of deep breaths until we’re ready to go again.”

Blair turns to her mother. “I bought outfits.”

“Miss Timsy brought them up to the house,” Kate says. “Along with three bras for Jessie. Thank you for handling that. I meant to do it—”

“Here we go,” Dr. Van de Berg says. “The head is crowning.”

“I’m wagering on another girl,” Myrtle says. “Probably identical.”

“Push,” Dr. Van de Berg says.

Blair bears down.

Kate squeezes her hand. “You are such a champion, darling.”

Blair lets a great moan go as she pushes with all her might.

“Again, please,” Dr. Van de Berg says.

“I can’t,” Blair whimpers.