Baby

dilapidated cabin, she noticed the roof badly sagged. Could she actually figure out how to repair it on her own? She could surely try. Well maybe not, she thought, quickly becoming discouraged as she took in the ravaged fence, broken windows and crushed mailbox, her family’s name still faintly legible.
    A wave of despair and loneliness hit her hard. Her lovely mama and her poor papa were gone. Papa, to the flu when she turned fifteen and her mama murdered, shortly after her very own storybook wedding on her seventeenth birthday. She bitterly remembered the halfhearted search for the culprit. Sheriff Hudson eventually decided it must have been the work of one of the gypsies that frequently pass through the countryside, begging for handouts. She understood the country poor from the farm class matter little to the social and economic fabric of the town. They wield no influence and are of little consequence. The sheriff actually told her that something like this was bound to happen with her pretty mama living all the way out in the boondocks with no man of her own to keep an eye on her. Even the surprisingly cooperative intervention of her new and prominent lawyer husband oddly had no effect on the investigation, such as it was. Impotence silenced her as the investigation quickly and quietly concluded.
    Two weeks ago she discovered Mr. Woods, her papa’s boss and her mama’s longtime childhood friend had died. A special friend to her since she was just a toddler, she remembered his actions at her wedding with love. He pulled her aside, telling her how beautiful she would always be to him as he slipped a small but plump purse into her hands, whispering to her to keep it to herself, saying every bride needs a little something for herself in case of emergency. Not that she would actually have an emergency, good heavens, look who she just married.
    Yeah, look who I just married . The bile in her throat rose as she thought of him, Robert Doyle, the only son of a large and prosperous Irish family in town. His five older sisters, known far and wide for the thoroughbred horses they raised for the races in Saratoga, sported expensive wardrobes, lavish parties and haughty demands. How did a fancy man like him even discover her ? Oh yes, Robert , she thought bitterly ; so handsome, so formal, so rich … He surely had his choice of all the young, educated, fancy town ladies. Why did he deliberately pick her, Jeannette Elizabeth Smith?
    As Netty picked burrs off her papa’s moth eaten trousers, found shoved beneath her parents old bed in the cabin, her memory drifted back to happier times. She almost felt the wetness on her arm as she remembered the frequency of annoying raindrops that leaked down on her head in the simple single room mission style classroom of her schoolhouse, located a full five dusty and hilly miles from her home. She never became anything but an average student, daydreaming her way through class until she could get back home to check on the latest batch of rescued bunnies or the baby bird knocked out of its nest by greedy nest mates. She attended school until she turned thirteen, big enough to start pulling her weight around the farm, full time. Her education stopped there, even as she continued to read all the storybooks her mother provided from her own precious stores.
    Although her papa said she was smart and awfully pretty, she got passed over time and again by all the eligible young men in Sussex County. And even by some not so eligible, judged too young, too poor. When Robert started courting, she found herself non-responsive, unfamiliar with the mysterious intricacies of flirtation. The fact that he was forty years old to her sixteen, naturally intimidated her.
    Her mama rapidly convinced her to make an effort with her appearance when they realized his attentions merited serious consideration. All reservations about her tender age flew out the window. Gone, her papa’s hand me down trousers. In their stead, she wore the lovely new dresses her mama stitched, spending hours working late into the night as she herself lay curled up on her straw mat next to the toasty fieldstone hearth of the blackened kitchen fireplace. She gently stroked the silky fur of her favorite doggies, tiny Nip and one eyed Molly, as her mama worked the unfamiliar fabrics that were fondly provided by papa’s boss, Mr. Woods. Her mama and Mr. Woods were clearly intent on making sure Netty did not let this very sudden opportunity