“Goddamit,” he exclaimed. As he fought through the vile smell, his mind drifted to the things Gus had said. Innocent remarks and questions that induced a rage to stew and burn within. “It’s none of his damned business if we’re gonna have kids or not!” Blake fumed. But it wasn’t the question about a baby that infuriated him. He just couldn’t escape the reminders about football, about the fame and fortune of the NFL that was almost his. Should have been mine!

Blake gripped the wheel tightly as he stared at the dispirited birds packed tightly in the cages on the truck in front of him. The chickens lay placidly, either unable or unmotivated to move. The truck rounded a sharp corner allowing Blake to see the McReek Trucking logo on the side. As the truck picked up speed, one of the birds was thrown out and landed in the middle of the pavement with a splat. It tasted freedom for the first time and looked around with bewilderment.

Furrowing his eyebrows at the chicken, Blake swerved his truck. He lined the chicken up with his front left tire the way he often took aim at a discarded soda can. He stepped on the gas and ran straight over the hapless chicken, first with his front tire and then with his rear as his truck bounced down the road.

“Stupid chicken,” Blake said, still fuming.

He glanced at the rearview mirror to see the bird’s flattened carcass centered in the road, and cocked his head in surprise as a raven landed swiftly and hopped to stake its claim. Blake turned south on 441 and finished off his uneaten McChicken sandwich as he headed toward Athens.

Chapter 3

Angelica Savage marveled at the delicate silk teepee in the forks of Nancy’s fig tree. Every spring the tent caterpillars emerged, just as sure as the daffodils and yellow bells, and every winter they left behind egg masses to overwinter. And each winter she failed to remove the masses, thus allowing them to hatch the following spring. She had no desire to harm them or anything else, for that matter, but she couldn’t let them damage Nancy’s Tree.

Smiling at nature’s dew-covered masterpiece, she indulged in a moment of peace as she closed her eyes and thought about Nancy. There were no distractions in the sanctuary that Angelica had created, a secret garden in a forest clearing. The only access was a winding path from the house she and Blake had bought 300 yards away that was set well back off of Hale Ridge Road. She still couldn’t believe how lucky they had been to get this piece of land three years earlier, twelve acres for themselves surrounded by almost 100,000 acres of federal land, mostly densely wooded terrain up and around Rabun Bald. Might as well say it’s all ours, Angelica reasoned. It was far too much land for her to contemplate and she desperately needed a smaller place for herself, something akin to a pastoral altar. So she had painstakingly cleared the path by hand once she stumbled on the brookside clearing, just after Nancy...

“Oh Nancy,” Angelica sighed. Her shoulders collapsed, like a brick set on top of a house of cards.

Angelica bent down with the grace befitting her name, picked up a small stick, and gently brushed aside the silky mass. Very tenderly, she placed each caterpillar in a cup. She stared into the cup realizing, at least for the moment, that she was their God, in control of their fate. She was their captor, they were her prisoners. What must they think, having been abruptly confined to something as unnatural as a cup, looking up at Angelica’s raven colored hair and eyes as green as the forest moss? Maybe they thought she was an angel; perhaps one or two worried that she was an evil monster with glowing, green eyes.

With her long, slender fingers, Angelica reached in and picked out a chosen one for inspection. “Hello, little one,” she whispered before gently scolding the creature. “Now you and your friends have to stay away from that tree, okay?” And the little fellow was returned to the cup, eager to share the word of his God. Angelica walked to the far side of the garden and softly poured the contents on the ground underneath a mountain laurel. “There you go,” she said, before strolling back to Nancy’s Tree.

It had taken over a year for Angelica to be able to stand at the tree without bursting into tears, hating herself, feeling hopeless, helpless, and searching for understanding. Even questioning God. But two years had now passed since she alone had buried tiny little Nancy here. Now, finally, she had reason to be hopeful again. Still, the memory of the miscarriage haunted her. Twelve weeks, she had that time with Nancy before the bleeding began. That fact alone was enough to strike fear into any young woman’s heart. Then the cramps arrived and prompted a panicked trip to the doctor. Angelica feared the worst all the way.

Why is it, she thought, that anytime someone wants something...needs something as badly as I wanted and needed that baby, they can’t enjoy the journey? Instead, they have to live in a state of fear that they will be denied, that somehow they’re not worthy.

The ultrasound lived up to her fears, revealing no heartbeat and showing a fetus about the size of a nine-week old, meaning that the fetus, Nancy, had probably died a few weeks earlier. It was that realization more than any other that haunted Angelica; that Nancy had died, and Angelica, her own mother, didn’t know and didn’t do anything to save her baby. The emotional toll was almost unbearable. Angelica had never felt such a stew of emotions. The self-blame, the grief and the guilt were overwhelming. Sorrow penetrated every cell of her being, for her alone to digest.

She had no choice in the matter, she had to cope with the loss, but the worst feeling was how incomplete she felt. She had failed to do the one and only thing that nature asked of her: successfully reproduce. That realization, piled atop the remorse and the physical and emotional trauma, was overpowering. And then, Angelica did the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She went home to have her miscarriage. Alone. She added the feelings of isolation and loneliness to her stew of haunting emotions.

The doctor had offered her something for the pain that he assured her would come. Something called DI-GESIC. Angelica refused. She didn’t want to hide from the pain. She wanted to feel the pain, to not hide from the suffering.

She would regret that choice.

At first it was like a bad period. Just some spotting blood and a few minor chunks of tissue resembling torn bits and pieces of chicken liver. Was that all there was to it? All there was of Nancy? A few chunks of bloody tissue? Angelica didn’t know what she was looking at, what to look for. How large could it be? Hadn’t the doctor said the fetus starts shrinking immediately after death?

Death. The word slowly reverberated in Angelica’s mind, admonishing her, denying her, haunting her. D-E-A-T-H. She just couldn’t get her mind around the surreal nightmare she was living.

When she awoke the next day there was no bleeding, a sign that Angelica took that the event was over. She remembered everything about that day and remembered nothing about that day, as if she stood outside a snow globe of misery. She saw herself on the inside, curled up on the sofa, then standing over Nancy’s crib twirling a mobile, singing softly to a baby that wasn’t there. She did all these things, remembered them all, and remembered none.

The cycle began anew on day three with more bleeding and cramps, stronger than on the first day, but tolerable. The modest pain brought Angelica back to the moment, to the reality of her loss. But there had been no loss yet, she told herself.

Nancy is still inside me, isn’t she? Maybe the doctor was wrong! Maybe Nancy is fine, just quiet!