Abigail well recalled the flame of anger that scorched her at the arbitrary imposition of these duties—What did Parliament know about conditions in the colonies?—and, hard on its heels, the stab of pain in her vitals, the warm wetness of her water breaking. She hadn’t even had time to call out when her mother came in from the dairy with the milk-pans, saw her gasping, and rushed to her side.

The child who’d been born later that day, twenty-two years ago come July, had been Nabby.

Nabby who would today—Please, God, let it BE sometime today and not tomorrow or Wednesday!—birth a child of her own.



Footsteps creaked in the hall of that tall gray stone town house that was so wildly different from the kitchen of her memory, the kitchen whose open back door had let in the scents of summer fields and orchards just beyond. John appeared in the bedroom doorway, stout, round-faced, blue eyes as bright and as sharp at fifty-seven as they’d been when first they’d met. In times of agitation his plump cheeks tended to turn red and they were like cherries now: “Is she all right?” were the first words out of his mouth.