“I tried. I mean, yes, sir, I did tell her. Unfortunately, right after I did, um, her water broke.”
Coach choked back a guffaw. “No shit?”
When I shook my head, he grinned. “God almighty, boy. You and my daughter give new meaning to the wordscomplicatedandbad timing.”
“You’re telling me, Coach.”
“Well.” He gripped my shoulder with one large hand. “I have to say that despite all of this craziness, I believe in you. I know you’re not going to disappoint me, are you?”
I took a deep breath. “No, sir. I won’t.”
“Good. That’s what I wanted to hear.” He nudged my arm. “Now, are you going to hand that baby over to her grandpa, or do you plan to hog her all night?”
ChapterTwenty
Willow
Motherhood was glorious, incredible, and transformative.
It was also exhausting, frustrating, and hard.
We named our daughter at the very last minute, right before we left the hospital, after much debate among my parents, Dean, and me. Actually, Dean didn’t say much about it; I noticed that he agreed with whatever I suggested and at first didn’t offer any ideas of his own, even when we asked.
“Are there any special names in your family, Dean?” my mother asked.
“No.” He shook his head. “Not that I know of. I think I was named after my great-grandfather on my mom’s side. But I’m not sure.” He ventured a glance at me. “I like Rose. Her little mouth reminds me a rosebud.”
I regarded him with a small frown. Dean had been a steady presence here at the hospital the whole time. He’d supported me as I struggled to figure out breastfeeding—it was hard!—and happily held the baby while I napped. He changed diapers without complaint.
But he hadn’t tried to talk to me, not the way he had right before my water broke or just before I had been overcome with the irresistible urge to push. I wondered if he’d changed his mind. Maybe, now that the baby was here and we were both safe and healthy, Dean had decided that we no longer needed him.
But that wasn’t true. I needed more than I’d realized. If only he could see that . . .
“Rose,” I mused. “It’s pretty.”
“I like it,” Mom agreed. “Perfect in its simplicity.”
And so our daughter was Rose, and once that was decided, we were allowed to leave the hospital.
It turned out that through some series of events that wasn’t quite clear to me, my dad knew that Dean was Rose’s father. Both of them—Dad and Dean—had tried to explain to me how the secret had come out, but I was too tired to make sense of it. However it had happened, I was relieved, because I wasn’t sure I had enough operational brain cells to keep a secret any longer.
Somehow, without me even knowing it, Dean was staying with us at my parents’ house. It seemed he had worked that out with my parents, maybe while I was napping in the hospital, which was whenever I got the chance. He started out sleeping on the sofa, but eventually, he ended up in my room, where the baby was sleeping in her cradle. It was just easier for him to get up to bring me Rose when she woke crying several times each night.
We fell into a routine of sorts: right after dinner—which was take-out more often than not since all of us were operating on precious little sleep—Dean and I gave Rose her bath and put on her pajamas. Once I’d nursed her to sleep, we both fell into bed, sometimes with our clothes still on. When she woke for her first feeding, Dean would roll out of bed, pick her up and change her diaper and then bring her to me. We’d lie together as she nursed, making her adorable little hungry noises. Sometimes, Dean would doze, but more often, he sat propped up, watching us.
I wondered if he was soaking it in to remember once he’d left.
Each morning, we settled the baby in her stroller and walked her around post. I thought of how often Dean and I had walked the same paths in the early months of my pregnancy, when we were just beginning to know each other. If he was remembering, too, he didn’t say anything.
Most afternoons, we traded off on taking naps when Rose took hers. When Dean slept, I did the baby’s laundry or did other household chores. When I slept . . . I wasn’t exactly sure what Dean did.
I wondered if he was making plans for the future . . . for a future that wouldn’t include Rose and me.
Rose was two weeks old when some of the postpartum fog began to lift from my brain. Oh, I wasn’t over the sleep-deprivation or bone numbing exhaustion yet, but I could finally think a little. My body was slowly returning to something that vaguely resembled its old self, though I knew that it would never really be the same. Nothing ever would. Rose’s arrival had changed everything.
I’d nodded off while nursing the baby, and to my utter shock and delight, when I’d woken up and moved her to the cradle, she’d stayed sound asleep. Turning on the baby monitor, I went downstairs, wondering how long she’d nap and what I could accomplish in that time.
Dean was sitting at the kitchen table when I wandered in. He glanced up at me in surprise.
