The Birth House

Dora sends Precious to bring the women of the Occasional Knitters Society. Sadie and Ginny are still nursing their own children and readily agree to feed the baby. Precious comes back and refuses to leave. She brings her new Easter dress, only worn once. She wants to give it to Iris Rose because “she should have a proper dress” (260).

The women work together to wash and dress Iris Rose’s body, and Precious brushes her hair. Mabel puts a bouquet in her hands “to give her beauty in death” (260). Dora says she has a place to bury her, so the women shroud her in a blanket and wrap her in sailcloth before taking her into the woods to le jardin des morts. She has the other women take off their shoes, and they bury her in the same hole where Dora and Miss B. buried Darcy.

Three days later, Dora takes the baby to the Ketches’ place in Deer Glen, intending to do return her to her family. However, Brady Ketch answers the door and denies all knowledge of Iris Rose, telling Dora that the baby is her business now and to get off his property.

Dora takes the baby home, inventing a story about her origin as she goes. She will tell people that the baby was left at her door and that she has no idea to whom the child belongs. She names the baby girl Wrennie. The women of the Occasional Knitters Society back up this story and tell it often. Still, there is gossip in the town that the child is a “moss baby” sent to Dora by Miss B. or stolen from a family in another town (264).

Archer returns shortly afterward, appearing at church on a Sunday morning with “Grace Hutner clinging to his arm” and wearing expensive clothes (265). Both Grace and Archer are shocked when Dora reveals that the baby she is holding, Wrennie, is hers. Archer is confused, asking why Dora didn’t tell him she was pregnant or send for him. Dora is cold to him, only revealing the made-up story of Wrennie’s discovery once they are home.

She then chastises Archer for the show he put on at church, “where people have next to nothing, where families have lost their sons to war and their lives to hard work” (267). Archer protests that he wanted to show people he’d been successful. He says he ordered the windmills from a man in Halifax, and they should be delivered soon.

The people of the town quickly begin to doubt the windmills, as days pass with no sign of a delivery. They believe Archer lost their money to charlatans. Grace Hutner also goes back to Halifax. Still, “he never stops saying how he wants to bring the world to the Bay,” though Dora has lost patience with him (268). They sleep separately and do not share any happy moments. Dora’s father and Hart come to get Archer every morning and force him to go to work building ships to provide for his family and pay back the town for the money he lost.

Archer is drinking again and ignores Wrennie, though Dora feels she still needs a father. Eventually, he becomes violent, slapping Dora when she points out that he ruined a doll she’s been sewing for Wrennie. Hart arrives and interrupts the violence, taking his brother to help at the wharf.

Hart asks Dora to give her caul to Archer to protect him from drowning. She gives him the locket that Widow Bigelow gave her for their wedding, saying the caul is inside. 

In the Bay, the men go out torching for herring on clear, full-moon nights. One night, Dora is waiting for Archer to return when she sees Hart standing in the doorway, dripping with saltwater. She hurries Hart inside and asks about Archer, supposing that he can’t be far behind. However, Hart tells her: “Archer’s gone, Dora. He was messing with my torch, his clothes caught on fire, he jumped in the water, must have hit his head on the bottom of the skiff” (274). Although Hart tried to grab him, “he slipped away” (274).

After a week, Dora calls off the search for Archer. She knows he was never kind to the townspeople and “was left to make the decision, to consider what his life was worth, to say our efforts had been enough” (274). The women of Dora’s family bring her food and Precious helps with Wrennie. The Occasional Knitters Society women help cook and clean because “this is part of a woman’s nature—knowing how to busy herself around a death that isn’t in her heart” (275). The men search but can’t find his body, eventually giving him a sailor’s grave.

For Dora, Archer’s death is a relief, something she daydreamed about “each time he left me alone” (275).

Dora is a widow at 19 and quickly grows tired of wearing black. However, Aunt Fran and her mother tell her it is too soon to do otherwise, for she will “lose the support of the Bay” if she doesn’t mourn at least a year (276). Then she can remarry and have children of her own, although she is adamant that Wrennie is truly hers despite her origin.

Wrennie is a “blue moon child,” which is a baby “sent by Mary herself to poor mamas who ain’t got room in their hearts for any more sour,” according to Miss B. (277). Dora believes that Wrennie “should see that her mother isn’t afraid to laugh, that she’s not afraid of anything,” and she’ll become a happy child that everyone loves (277).

Hart is the only person who knows Dora’s true feelings about Archer’s death. He has been helping her around the house since then and stays to play with Wrennie and have a late supper. She confesses to Hart that she didn’t give Archer her caul. The locket was empty. It’s valuable and she thought she might need it “more than I needed him” (278). Hart understands and confesses that he “let him go”: He had a chance to save Archer but “the last time he grabbed at my hand, the last time he gasped for air—I thought of you. I let him go” (278).