Free That Summer by Joan Wolf

that I got away with it.”
    Kevin put down his empty glass. “You avoided each other at the party. That's what I told the police.”
    Liam said, “I never spoke to Leslie that night, and I most certainly didn't club her over the head with a baseball bat. “
    An alarm bell rang in my brain. I looked at Liam. He seemed perfectly sober, perfectly truthful. Yet he had just told a lie.
    Of course he's lying,
I thought defensively.
He'd have to be crazy to come out and say he and Leslie had an argument just before she disappeared. The police would be all over him.
    I said, “Andy is really pushing the police. If he wasn't such a high-profile person, I don't think they would have reopened the case.”
    “Andy thinks I did it.” Liam's voice became even more bitter than before. “He acts like I'm unclean. I feel sorry for him and all that, but it isn't fair to me. “
    My mother said, “To lose a child is a terrible thing. To lose an only child is even worse. And to lose her the way the Bartholomews lost Leslie is unspeakable.”
    We were all quiet after that. Then dessert was served and we all got into Liam's BMW and went home.

CHAPTER 6
    A t two in the morning, Liam called me at the house. “Pennyroyal is having problems, Annie. Can you come?“
    “I'll be right over,” I said.
    I put on my jeans, pulled a warm Virginia Tech sweatshirt over my head and ran out the door.
    The light over the foaling stall was on in the mare's barn when I arrived and found Liam and Jacko in the stall with a groaning, heaving Pennyroyal.
    “The baby is twisted,” Liam told me. He looked very pale in the stable light. “One foot is coming out but not the other.”
    The correct way for a foal to be born was to come out with both front feet first, then the head which was tucked between the front legs, then the rest of the body. One of Pennyroyal's foal's legs was out of position and caught in the birth canal. It would have to be straightened out for her to be able to push out the baby.
    Pennyroyal was lying in the straw with one of her foal's forelegs poking out of her vagina. “Do you have gloves?“ I asked Liam.
    Silently, he handed me a pair of long latex gloves. I knelt beside Pennyroyal and reached in around the foal, feeling for the other leg.
    You have to be strong to turn a foal in the birth canal, which was one of the reasons I worked out with weights. Finally I managed to get the baby righted and the second leg came out of the mare. I reached in, hoping to find the nose between its legs. It was there.
    “I think we're out of the woods,” I said. “Now it's up to her.”
    The rest of the birth was a textbook delivery. About ten minutes later, the foal was almost completely out of its mother's womb and a few minutes after that, the baby slid out onto the bed of straw. She was dark bay in color, with a star on her forehead and two white anklets on her hind legs.
    “A filly,” Liam said with pleasure. He toweled the foal dry of the birthing fluid, to keep her from getting cold in the night air, then placed her in the straw next to her mother so that Pennyroyal could finish the job with her tongue. The licking would encourage the filly to stand.
    Usually foals stand for the first time between a half hour and an hour after birth. Pennyroyal continued to lick her baby's haunches and the foal made an effort to get her thin spindly legs under her and stand up. It took a few tries, but she eventually got to her feet.
    There are few things more awesome than the way these newborn babies get to their feet in such a short time. Human babies don't walk until almost a year after birth, but foals stand, and nurse, and within a few days Pennyroyal's daughter would be running at her side out in the sunny pasture with the other babies and their mothers.
    We left the mother and baby in peace to continue their bonding. “Like a cup of coffee or tea?“ Liam asked me as we walked out the barn door.
    “Sure,” I said. “Your place or