Excerpt: Into the Fire

Autumn had returned once again, and the warm sunlight bathing the south face of the mountains and the cottage huddled in the foothills carried with it a kiss of chill winter breezes, a promise of snow and ice and long dark nights under brilliant stars. The grass had changed to the color of wheat, and a single cow grazed among the stubble. In all, the picture was one of contentment, of peace, of perpetual growth and nature.

Marion sat in a rocking chair, staring out the window across the high plains, rocking slowly back and forth. She stared, but she did not see the grass, or the cow, or the trees with leaves turning to gold and scarlet. Her eyes were blank, her hands absently stroking a soft yellow baby blanket, a blanket she made with her own hands only a few weeks earlier, in happier times. A perfect little blanket for a perfectly formed little baby girl with blue eyes that contemplated her mother wisely and perhaps somewhat pitying, regretting what she knew at only a few minutes old. A perfectly formed little girl who the nurses took from her, and who never returned alive. Little Natalie, now laid beyond the field of grass, and the cow, and before the trees who now dropped leaves like tears over the grave of the sweet little baby.

Robert stood in the doorway, looking at his wife, as he did so often during the last three weeks. At first he tried to comfort her, to feed her, to encourage her back into life. He sat their three year old son, Jamie, in her lap, but she seemed not to notice as the child played with the greasy strands of her hair then whined and fussed to be let down from this stranger who looked like his mommy but didn't smile or hold him close. Robert played her CDs, brushed her hair, lead her to shower, but eventually fell to just watching her, a ghost alive and breathing for a baby who could no longer do so.