Rose Rose was sitting up on the bed. She had pulled her blue jeans on, but she hadn't closed them, and she had pulled the T-shirt on, but she held Candy's bathing suit in her lap--she was unfamiliar with wearing it, and she'd not been able to put it on in a hurry. She had found only one of her work shoes, which she held in one hand. The other one was under the bed. Candy found it and put it on the correct foot--Rose Rose wore no socks. Then Candy tied the laces for her, too. Rose Rose just sat on the bed while Candy put on and tied her other shoe.
"You're coming with me. Your baby, too," Candy told the girl.
"Yes, ma'am," Rose Rose said.
Candy took the bathing suit from her and used the suit to wipe the tears from Rose Rose's face.
"You're fine, you're just fine," Candy said to the girl. "And you're going to feel better. No one's going to hurt you."
Baby Rose was sound asleep, and Candy was careful not to wake her when she picked her up and handed her to her mother. Rose Rose moved uncertainly and Candy put her arm around her when they walked out of the cider house together. "You're going to be just fine," Candy said to Rose Rose; she kissed the young woman on her neck, and Rose Rose, who was sweating, leaned against her.
Mr. Rose was standing in the darkness between the Jeep and the cider house, but the rest of the men still sat on the roof.
"You comin' back," Mr. Rose said--nothing was raised at the end of his voice; it was not a question.
"I told you not to speak to me," Candy told him. She helped Rose Rose and her baby into the Jeep.
"I was speakin' to my daughter," Mr. Rose said with dignity.
But Rose Rose would not answer her father. She sat like a statue of a woman with a baby in her arms while Candy turned the Jeep around and drove away. Before they went into the fancy house together, Rose Rose slumped against Candy and said to her, "I never could do nothin' about it."
"Of course you couldn't," Candy told her.
"He hated the father of the other one," Rose Rose said. "He been after me ever since."
"You're going to be all right now," Candy told the girl before they went inside; through the windows, they could watch Wally flying back and forth in the house.
"I know my father, Missus Worthington," Rose Rose whispered. "He gonna want me back."
"He can't have you," Candy told her. "He can't make you go back to him."
"He make his own rules," said Rose Rose.
"And the father of your beautiful daughter?" Candy asked, holding the door open for Rose Rose and her baby girl. "Where is he?"
"My father cut him up. He long gone," Rose Rose said. "He don't wanna be involved with me no more."
"And your mother?" Candy asked, as they went in the house.
"She dead," Rose Rose said.
That was when Wally told Candy that Dr. Larch was dead, too. She would not have known it to look at Homer, who wa
s all business; an orphan learns how to hold back, how to keep things in.
"Are you all right?" Candy asked Homer, while Wally wheeled Baby Rose around the downstairs of the house and Angel took Rose Rose to his room, which was prepared for her.
"I'm a little nervous," Homer admitted to Candy. "It's certainly not a matter of technique, and I've got everything I need--I know I can do it. It's just that, to me, it is a living human being. I can't describe to you what it feels like--just to hold the curette, for example. When living tissue is touched, it responds--somehow," Homer said, but Candy cut him off.
"It may help you to know who the father is," she said. "It's Mister Rose. Her father is the father--if that makes it any easier."
The crisply made-up bed in Angel's childhood room and the gleaming instruments--which were displayed so neatly on the adjacent bed--made Rose Rose both talkative and rigid.
"This don't look like no fun," the girl said, holding her fists in her lap. "They took the other one out through the top--not the way she was supposed to come out," Rose Rose explained. She'd had a Caesarean, Homer Wells could see, perhaps because of her age and her size at the time. But Homer could not quite convince her that this time everything would be much easier. He wouldn't need to take anything "out through the top."
"Go stay with Wally, Angel," Candy told the boy. "Go give Baby Rose a ride in the wheelchair. Knock over all the furniture, if you want," she told him, kissing her son.
"Yeah, you go away," Rose Rose told Angel.