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  The Midwife’s Playlist

  A Now Entering Hillford Novel

  Piper Lennox

  Copyright © 2019 by Piper Lennox

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  “Where You Go,” Copyright © 2019 by Piper Lennox.

  For Freeman, and all our summers

  I was summer nights, you were thunder

  You were my fool me twice

  And the best damn blunder…

  “Where You Go,” Hana Muftic and Piper Lennox

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Also by Piper Lennox

  Stay in the Loop

  About the Author

  Prologue

  The first night Ford McLean crawled through my bedroom window, his playlist was born.

  “Glycerine,” with its heartbeat strums, reminded me of the paper footballs he’d steadily flicked at the glass, until I pulled back my curtains and invited him in so he could sleep somewhere safe. Anywhere that wasn’t home.

  Retroactively, I added more.

  Some Elvis, like the music melting through his house the day we met: eight years old and sworn enemies.

  A sad, low violin without lyrics, and our favorite cover of “Hallelujah,” both echoing that pull in my chest when we were twelve, and our feud suddenly seemed stupid. I had learned too much about him to keep the hatred.

  The techno-pop song from our first high school party, its pulse muffled in the coat sleeves dangling around our heads while we counted out our seven minutes in heaven.

  Oasis, for the night it all changed. Gin Blossoms, for the night it all changed again.

  It was my biggest playlist, and the most complicated and varied, because the way I felt about Ford changed day to day, minute to minute. Especially after he was gone.

  Bob Marley sang that when music hits, you feel no pain.

  He was wrong.

  When it was over—when I looked out my bedroom window and saw the darkened glass of Ford’s across the fence—I put on my headphones. I touched the petals on the sunflowers from my bureau. I started the playlist.

  Every note scraped my insides raw, the hurt swelling until I skipped to the next song. Then the next, and the next, searching for one that would take it away. I stared at the black glass and prayed to God I’d see his face appear like a floating mask, the way it always had. He was always there.

  “I’m getting out of here, E. As soon as I can.”

  He warned me.

  I tore the flowers apart until the windowsill was covered in living confetti. No, I thought: it’s dead now. They were dead before I even got to them. Dead when Ford picked them. When something is torn from its source, it dies.

  The crushed petals stained my fingertips. I stopped the playlist.

  The day Ford left, he ruined those songs for me in a way nothing and no one else had ever done. Overplayed or misheard lyrics were nothing compared to the damage he brought to each and every track—the ability to break my heart over and over again, as easily as I broke the headphones he’d given me, with just the push of a play button.

  One

  “Is anyone here a doctor?”

  It must be fate, the fact my iPod dies at exactly the moment someone shouts this clichéd, though genuinely desperate, line across the terminal.

  Like everyone else, I listen and look around, waiting for a hand to emerge from the crowd. Two people hold their phones higher, searching for a signal they won’t find. Not in this storm.

  “Please,” another voice says, “this girl—I think she’s in labor.”

  I stand. Call it instinct, or some moral requirement to help: I can’t think of what else would call me to another birth less than an hour after finishing one. Nineteen hours straight of the Kind family. Aptly named, save for their spastic little terrier biting my ankle every two minutes, as clockwork as the contractions.

  They insisted he stick around for the birth, almost as much as they’d insisted I show up immediately this morning. Between the hour-long car ride, pedestrian ferry trip, and bus ride to their home, I’m one cup of coffee away from cardiac arrest.

  In other words: I’m exhausted. Deep down, to the bone and out the other side.

  So as I shoulder my way through the onlookers in the ferry terminal, the smell of everyone’s wet hair clinging to my sinuses, I’m not sure why I’m doing this. Women have gone into labor around me dozens of times, and not once have they been as close to birth as they thought. The closest was forty-five minutes, plenty of time to reach the hospital.

  Still, I know it’s scary. And if I can help somehow, aren’t I obligated to do it?

  “I’m a midwife,” I call, and the last of the crowd parts for me and my Mary Poppins bag of supplies. I kneel beside the woman on the floor. There’s a man’s leather jacket underneath her; the window behind her head is streaked with water from a broken gutter, fogged with the heat of all these bodies crammed in one place.

  I say “woman,” but the stranger who shouted for help was probably more accurate with their use of the word “girl.” She can’t be older than sixteen.

  “Don’t worry,” I smile, and grab some gloves as soon as my hand sanitizer has dried. “If things just started, you’ve probably got more time than you think.”

  “I’ve been in labor for a few hours already, I think,” she winces, smiling her thanks when I tear open a paper sheet and place it across her legs for privacy. While I pull off her leggings, she studies me. It’s a weird look, like she thinks she knows me.

  Even weirder: I feel that way about her.

  “Okay,” I warn her, slipping my hand under the sheet, “I’m just checking your cervix.”

  Already, I can tell she’s way closer to birth than I thought. An hour, tops. Barring a miracle, there’s no way this storm will let up before then.

  When I feel her cervix, it takes all my brainpower to hide the panic.

  Forget an hour.

  “Um,” I start, struggling for the best possible way to tell a teenage girl that the biggest, scariest event of her life is about to take place in a ferry terminal during a thunderstorm, but she interrupts me.

  “Easton,” she blurts, like she’s been wracking her brain this entire time, trying to place me.

  I stare at her. “How do you know my name?”

  “It’s me,” she manages, panting through the start of another contraction. “Caroline.”

  The weirdest part about
this exchange, believe it or not, isn’t the fact my gloved hand is still in her business. It’s not even the fact I’m staring Caroline McLean in the eyes all these years later and can hardly recognize her, she looks so different. Older, sure. Even more like her mother than before. But more beaten down, too, more broken, something I never thought was possible in that family. They were as broken as people could get.

  No: the strangest part of this moment, by far, is that I fill in the blank, “McLean?” at the exact second Ford appears out of the crowd like smoke, limbs twisting past people and chest heaving as our eyes, the magnets they are—that they’ve always been—lock into place.

  “Easton.” Her name falls out of my mouth. Six years, and it still hurts to say it.

  Thank God for the roll of shop towels nearly falling out of my hands at the same time, giving me something to do besides stare. I catch them just before they clock Caroline in the face.

  “Ambulance?” she asks hopefully, teeth sinking into her lip. The sight of her in so much pain snaps me back to reality. Forget Easton. Forget the fact my heart and stomach feel like they’ve braided themselves into one malfunctioning organ.

  “Uh—yeah, yeah, I got through on the ticket counter phone. It’ll be here soon. Just wait a few more minutes.”

  “A baby,” Easton snaps, drawing my attention right back to her, “isn’t pee. You can’t just ‘hold it in.’ Your sister’s having her baby now.”

  “Now?” Caroline and I say at once, but hers gets cut short with another contraction. I stand there like an idiot, a title I deserve. It was my idea to visit the island today; Caroline wanted to stay home.

  “Yes. Now.” Easton is all business as she lays out God only knows what on a clean blue sheet from the bag. She shoots a look at the shop towels in my hands and says, “Put those down and hold her hand, Ford.”

  Judging from the breath that catches in her chest, saying my name is as hard for Easton as saying hers is for me.

  “Could everyone back up, please?” she shouts, widening the crowd around us. She looks at Caroline. “Where’s the father? He should support your head. The wall isn’t going to feel so great when you need to push.”

  My heart feels like it stops. I wish I had the spine to answer for my sister. I owe her that much: the ability to make sure she never has to think about Bennett, ever again.

  But I can’t. Spineless.

  “He’s gone,” she manages, stretching her back against the window and grimacing.

  I wonder if Easton catches the twist in Caroline’s voice. There’s a world of difference in the way someone says “gone” when it’s temporary versus permanent.

  “I’ll sit behind her,” I say quickly, and scoot between Caroline and the wall. It feels a little weird—I don’t think I’ve held her in my lap since she was about seven—but not as weird as being at the business end of things.

  “Next contraction,” Easton tells her, “I want you to push, okay? Bear down. It’ll feel like a bowel movement, but don’t panic, don’t fight it. And don’t stop until I say so. Here, hold your legs—right behind the knee.” She checks the watch she set on the towel. I notice the corner of another towel under the paper sheet, mercifully shielding me from whatever’s happening. How many towels does she have in that bag?

  “Okay,” she warns, “next contraction—”

  Caroline screams. It’s not the sudden eruption you hear in movies, but more like a wave, the way it swells to the highest point from a low rumble.

  “You’re doing great,” Easton coaches. “Keep pushing, keep pushing.”

  Caroline goes limp, crying when she looks up at me. “Ford, I can’t do this!”

  It might be poor timing, but I can’t help it: big brother humor. “Do you have a choice?”

  It works. She glares at me and sputters a laugh before Easton reminds her to focus. She glares at me, too. But hers is much worse.

  “Don’t let up, next time. Not until I say so. You have to keep the momentum going, okay?” Easton stares at her until she nods. “You can do this, I promise.”

  The next contraction, Caroline sits up almost completely as she pushes. I’m not sure why I’m here, except that it’s more comfortable to fall back in exhaustion against a person than a concrete wall. And the fact that Bennett, who should be here, can’t.

  Because of you.

  Here comes the guilt. It’s a fire that trickles through my body like a continuous drip, whiskey in an IV. Times like now, it turns into a flood.

  “Ford,” Easton snaps. I drag my stare to hers. “You okay? Looking kind of pale.”

  Her concern surprises me. Maybe I shouldn’t find it so shocking she still cares, in a way, even if it has been six years.

  Then she adds, “If you’re going to puke, get out of here. This is the closest thing to a sterilized environment we have and you’re not messing it up.”

  Ah. That’s about the treatment I expected.

  “I’m fine,” I assure her, matching the steel in her voice with mine. The eye contact lingers a minute before Caroline’s next contraction distracts us both.

  “Keep pushing, that’s good—I see the head! It’s got hair.” Easton grins at Caroline over the blanket, who laughs through her tears.

  Once again, Easton and I make eye contact. Again, it takes us a minute to look away.

  But this time is softer, the intensity of the way she looks at me just a little diffused. A little easier.

  During the next contraction, Easton urges Caroline to push harder. “It’s not moving down, you have to give it everything, come on. Come on, Caroline, you can do this.”

  “I can’t, I can’t,” Caroline whimpers, and collapses again. “Where’s the ambulance?”

  “You’re either pushing this baby out on the floor, right now,” Easton tells her sternly, “or you’re pushing it out on the floor with a couple paramedics watching, in a few minutes. Your call.”

  “Fuck,” she mutters, and sits forward to push again.

  “That’s it.” Easton nods emphatically and grabs something from her tray. “That’s it, keep going—the head is almost out, Caroline, push, push, push.... It’s out! The head’s out, Caroline, you did it! One more little push for the shoulders and that’s it, we’ve got it.”

  I expect Caroline to protest. She’s drenched in sweat, crying hysterically, and shaking like she just ran a marathon from a cold start.

  But then she nods. “Ready,” she tells Easton, as though it’s just the two of them here.

  Well, it might as well be. All I can do is sit and listen numbly. The crowd around us has thinned, a few people turned away in awkward politeness; the only people left are women clutching their chests or covering their mouths. One has a phone out to record everything—Seriously?—while another can’t stop smiling, like this is some gorgeous miracle instead of a medical emergency.

  But then I hear that cry, piercing the air through the pounding rain and thunder, and think, Maybe it can be both. A gorgeous emergency.

  “Boy,” Easton announces, grinning as she passes the baby—wrapped in another white towel, my God—to Caroline. I scoot away while Easton wraps a space blanket around them.

  “Wow,” I exhale, “that was—”

  “I still have to deliver the placenta.” She shoos me away. I’d be offended…if I didn’t suddenly understand why. The sight of whatever appears in the metal tray she’s holding pushes my stomach into my throat.

  “Jesus. You act like you’ve never seen one before.”

  She’s got a point. All in all, tonight’s events haven’t been too far removed from the weekends I spent on my grandfather’s farm. But birthing calves feels like...well, farm life. This is different.

  “Seriously,” she whispers, and maybe I imagine the way her face softens with her volume, “get it together, Ford. She needs you.”

  Six years, and she still knows exactly what to say. Whenever my selfish asshole tendencies reared their head, I knew Easton Lawrence would have something
to say about it.

  I nod, swallow, and turn away. While Easton does whatever she does, I do what I do: rub Caroline’s shoulder and tell her she did great.

  “He’s perfect.” Her tears start again as we stare at the baby. It’s hard to tell if he looks more like Bennett or Caroline, this early. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

  “Ambulance just got here,” Easton tells us, peeling off her gloves and dropping them into an orange bag. “I’m glad you’re okay. And congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” I blurt, all of us seeming to freeze at once. “We couldn’t have done this without you.”

  Slowly, she turns to stare at me. I stare right back.

  Paramedics appear around us. It’s the only thing that snaps us out of the fog. Maybe it was just me.

  Because suddenly, “thank you” doesn’t feel like enough. Not even close.

  I want to tell Easton how good she is at her job. How I can just tell, from her confidence and quiet leadership, that she’s incredible at it.

  I want to tell her how happy I am that she found this. How maybe it was good for her.

  I want to tell her she’s even more beautiful now than the day I left.

  But in the end, that’s exactly what stops me: the fact that I left. I’m lucky she helped us at all. If it had been me in need of medical assistance, you can bet I would have bled out by now.

  “You the father?” a paramedic asks.

  “No, brother.”

  “You riding with?”