Free Dunaway's Crossing by Nancy Brandon

few months, a kind of tacit signal to her baby that all would be well. When she’d reached the three-month milestone, she wept for joy, with relief that she’d finally have that beautiful child of her dreams. Now, at seven and a half months, she found herself stuck in the middle of nowhere without even her husband, the only person she would trust to deliver her baby.
    Netta held her feet up in front of her. The ride to the country and walk outside had exacerbated her swollen feet so that now the tops of them puffed like half-baked loaves out of her slippers, the only shoes she could still wear. Ralph always told her to put her feet up, but if she lay down on that cot, she might not be able to get up by herself. Instead, she pushed the other wooden chair around the table so that the two chairs faced each other. Then she rummaged through a box of housewares until she found her book, Baroness Orczy’s
The Elusive Pimpernel
, a birthday gift from Ralph. Sitting in one chair with her feet in the other, she resolved to ignore the hard seat and focus on whether Chauvelin would succeed in tricking Sir Percy Blakely in returning to France. She never fancied this kind of romantic fiction. She much preferred an Edith Wharton novel, but the closest library was twenty miles away in Hawkinsville, and its collection was sparse. Buying new books required a trip to Macon, which was impossible for her these days.
    The swelling in her feet subsided a bit, but she doubted they’d ever look the same again. Apparently, the fluid in them had traveled to her bladder because she was about to pop. Of course, lately that need arose hourly. As she tensed her muscles and crossed her legs, her eyes widened in alarm. She could never use that putrid outhouse once, much less a dozen times a day. What would she do?
    She tried to read more of the novel, but the building pressure inside her ruined her concentration. Still, she ignored the urgency in her bladder until her belly ached. Shutting her book, she whispered a curse on her husband, then pushed herself out of the chair, shuffled to the door, and waddled down the cement block steps. The sun had lowered itself in the sky, but the temperature had dropped little. That outhouse would be both stinky and stifling. She’d just have to hold her breath while she was in there.
    As she neared the rickety wooden structure, its emanating odor withered her resolve. She stopped, considered the alternative for a moment, and then turned toward the lake, just down a slight embankment. At the sound of water lapping the edge, Netta thought she would wet herself, but she held on long enough to remove her underclothes and find a bush thick enough to squat behind.
Just my luck that Bea Dot would arrive at this moment
, she thought as she hiked up her skirt and held the fabric in her fist. With her other hand, she grasped the trunk of the bush for balance and squatted. She’d never felt such simultaneous relief and shame. Here she was, a graduate of Saint Vincent’s Academy, former secretary of the church women’s guild, and wife of Pineview’s only physician, urinating out in the open into a country lake. Her mother would just die.
    When she finished, she put her underclothes back on, and just before turning to go back to the camp house, she spied a large black turtle sitting on a nearby log, staring at her. She stuck her tongue out at it before trudging up the embankment, and then a frightening thought occurred to her. What if that turtle had been a snake? Weren’t there water moccasins out here? What about alligators? She shivered at the thought and made her heavy legs push her up the embankment and into the house. No more outdoor business for her. She would just have to fashion herself a chamber pot and then ask Will Dunaway to phone Ralph. There had to be a better option than this shabby fishing camp.
    She went back to the stiff wooden chairs, propped up her feet, and returned to
The Elusive Pimpernel
, taking