Free Tomorrow's Dream by Janette Oke, Davis Bunn

gone. It was too late to cry. Too late to hope, to pray, to beg for help of any kind. Nothing mattered anymore.
    One conviction surfaced during the time she sat there at the graveside. Just as the pastor stopped speaking and the impossible moment loomed as great and dark as the mouth of the grave, Kyle thought, It should be me . Her baby should be alive. She should be the one they lowered into the earth. For though she was living and seated between Kenneth and Abigail, still she was going down into the grave with her child. Her life was totally meaningless.

11 
    â€œMiss Kyle, I believe you promised that charity shop over on Seventh Street some clothes or somethin’.”
    Kyle raised her head to look at the young woman who spoke through the open door. Abigail had promptly sent one of her maids over soon after the funeral, and she had been with them since. But for the life of her Kyle could not remember the young woman’s name, despite the fact that Kyle had previously seen her at Abigail’s any number of times. Kyle fleetingly wished it could be Maggie standing there, the housekeeper from her childhood and a treasured friend. But Maggie was ill, so sick she had not even been able to travel for the baby’s funeral.
    Kyle looked back down at the Bible in her lap. She had been attempting to read a Scripture portion, or at least she had been going through the motions. She could not remember a single word from the passage. Certainly nothing had touched her heart. How could it when her heart felt like a rock in the middle of her chest?
    â€œMiss Kyle?”
    She looked up again and nodded her head. The charity on Seventh Street? Yes, she vaguely remembered their call. It had been back in her previous life when she was rushing to get to the hospital. It seemed like an eternity ago. Everything did, before that last day. . . .
    When Kyle made no effort to stir from her chair, the maid said that someone was waiting downstairs and asked Kyle what she would like her to do.
    Kyle laid aside her Bible and rose to her feet. The exertion cost her a deep, weary sigh. Even living and breathing was a heavy strain.
    â€œTell them I’ll be right down,” she instructed. She brushed listless hands over the dark skirt that seemed a reflection of her feelings.
    The maid turned and was gone. Kyle could hear the brisk footsteps echo through the hall. Kyle found such purposefulness, such liveliness, irritating and out of place. And at the same time she knew her attitude was unreasonable and also out of place.
    She sighed again and turned to the door.
    Where did I put those clothes I gathered? Kyle wondered vaguely as she left her room and started down the hall. For a moment she could not even remember what lay behind the other doors of her own upstairs. She pressed a hand to her forehead, trying to concentrate. Her room? No. She had wanted the things out of her closet so she had room to sort out and put away garments prone to picking up lint from the baby’s blankets. Her baby . The unbidden thought rocked Kyle. She stopped in midstep, then forced herself onward.
    The closet in their guest bedroom. She remembered now. She had placed them on the shelf in the large closet. . . .
    Kyle pushed open the door before her, and momentum carried her into the room.
    But it was not the guest room. In her confusion she had opened the door to the nursery.
    The room was just as she had last seen it, the day of her last visit to the hospital, the day she last . . . She took in the entire room in a single glance. The baby bed, hung with soft draping tapestries. The blue-and-white teddy there beside the pillow, waiting patiently with its big soulful eyes. The chest of drawers, its top arrayed with baby bath needs, including a pile of tiny diapers. A pair of bottles on the windowsill caught the light and reflected it into the room.
    Kyle stepped back, her shoulder bumping hard into the solid oak doorframe