He never stopped telling me our time would come.
His mother, Leona, seemed just as excited.
She was sixty-four, the owner of Sheehan Medical Supply, a woman who wore a gold Cartier watch to the grocery store and carried a Hermès Birkin as if it were a lunch pail.
She picked out tiny outfits, helped paint the nursery a soft sage green, and called every week to ask how I was feeling.
Looking back, she asked some odd questions.
At twenty weeks, over coffee, she asked whether I knew my bl*od type.
At thirty-two weeks, she asked if I’d thought about banking the cord bl*od, “because it’s so modern, dear.”
I laughed and said we’d see.
We chose the name Antonia.
My labor began on a Thursday at midnight.
By 3:40 that morning, I was seven centimeters dilated and clutching the bed rail so hard my knuckles ached.
That’s when Leona appeared at my bedside with a clipboard.
“Just the hospital’s intake packet, sweetheart. Dr. Bauer asked me to bring it by. Sign where the yellow tabs are.”
Dr. Peter Bauer had been my obstetrician for two years, and he played golf with Leona every other Sunday.
I signed five yellow tabs between contractions.
I read contracts for a living, and I couldn’t have told you what any of those pages said.
Antonia was born at 2:47 that afternoon, seven pounds, two ounces.
The delivery room smelled like antiseptic and lavender hand soap.
The nurse laid her on my chest, warm and slippery and furious, and everything else in the world dissolved.
She was healthy and beautiful, with the softest cheeks I’d ever touched and dark, serious eyes that seemed to study my face.
Ian stood beside the bed, smiling through tears.
“We did it,” he whispered.
For a few wonderful moments, everything felt perfect.
Then a phone buzzed in his pocket.
He fished it out, glanced at the screen, and I watched the color leave his face.
He leaned closer to look at Antonia.
His expression changed.
The smile disappeared.
He stared at our daughter as though something about her had unsettled him.
