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Never Named

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She goes home for the procedure.

The procedure is what she calls it, both in her head and, when she can't avoid saying it, out loud.

It's a nine-hour drive from Nashville to Carthage; the flight, in these days of Homeland Security, isn't much better, and then there's the hour's drive from the airport in Springfield. There's no shortage of people to drive her or to pick her up, but there are very few people she wants to spend an hour with in a car these days. Very few people she wants to spend an hour with, in general.

Her childhood bedroom in leafy Brentwood is hers again: Her mother moved the sewing and knitting supplies out of it. Her father is tender, bumbling, and a little clueless: Grief and pregnancy are in the realm of women.

The estate isn't nearly closed out yet, and won't be for some time. The house has only recently been released back to its owners (owner) for cleaning and sale. But now it's a crime scene, a crime scene in an already depressed real estate market, so God knows how long it'll take to sell. She'll take a loss if she has to.

There's the will to be probated, Jack's practice to be dissolved. Her father, appointed to the US District Court bench when she was still a girl, made some inquiries among colleagues, and someone in the Western District of Missouri found her a lawyer of her own. He's in Joplin, no one Jack ever knew. No one anticipates problems, but it's good to have an attorney anyway. She tells him that she doesn't want to know details. That she wants everything finished as quickly as possible.

Her father had been so pleased that she married a lawyer; Jack, for his part, had been both terrified and awestruck the first time he'd had dinner in the house of an actual federal judge. So young then, in his first year at Vanderbilt Law, though he'd seemed so much older to a sophomore who'd never lived anywhere but Nashville.

She feels older now than she'd ever imagined.

She drives herself to Springfield on a Friday afternoon and leaves the car in long-term parking. It's the same one she drove away in the night Jack died, and she plans to sell it. But she's been advised to wait until the estate is settled, and she has. She's had the interior cleaned multiple times; has washed and vacuumed it herself. Has scrubbed the exterior and run it through more car washes than she can count. Nothing even happened in or to the car; it was just her escape route. But it's contaminated by proxy, and she wants it gone.

Soon. Soon.

Her mother meets her at baggage claim, their usual place, even though Michelle didn't check anything. Her mother hugs her, strokes her hair, tells her she's looking good. Stronger. When they get home, supper is vegetarian lasagna. There are some things that Michelle just can't eat anymore.

Later that evening, she lays out her clothes for the morning, agrees with her mother that they'll leave around eight. The appointment is at nine, but she needs to be there a little early. Michelle is half expecting a last-minute reminder that it doesn't have to be this way—that she could give the baby up, that her parents could raise it, something—but her mother tells her only to sleep well, and to wake her if Michelle needs her.

Michelle looks down at herself as she's getting ready for bed. Her body looks no different—she's not far enough along to show yet, especially with a first child.

The baby might be perfect, ordinary, nothing but a beautiful little boy or girl with Michelle's hair or Jack's eyes. (His eyes were nothing aesthetically spectacular, not jewel-colored or long-lashed, but they were full of quiet intelligence and dry humor, and those were the things she fell in love with as an undergraduate illicitly studying in the law library.) Their baby might be different from other babies only in the ways that all children are different from one another, the ways that their parents know and love.

Or the baby might be something else. She saw what Jack became, her gentle and funny husband turned into some kind of unspeakable monster. The man's words running through her head: She deserves to know. She's a part of this. Tell him what you told me.

She can't give birth to a baby cursed like that. Jack didn't deserve that. She knows the same way she knows her own name. No one deserves that.

She puts her hand on her belly and whispers, "I'm so sorry. But it's better this way." She curls in on herself, arms wrapped around her stomach, and she rocks back and forth, but she doesn't cry. She's out of tears. The grief feels like another deep furrow cut through an already dry bed.

She tries to sleep but can't. Finally, she turns on the television and watches ESPN for the rest of the night. It's not particularly interesting to her, but Jack was never a sports fan, and ESPN, reliably, contains nothing having to do with babies or children.

At the clinic the next morning, protesters line the sidewalk, blocking the walkway and shouting Bible verses. Michelle's mother looks at her with something approaching panic, but a woman with a vest reading "Clinic Escort" meets them at the car, apologizes for the noise and assures them that they'll be perfectly safe on their way inside. She looks college-aged. She looks so young.

Michelle's mother is shaking by the time they're in the clinic. Michelle just hopes that the worst is over.