My phone buzzes.
MELANIE:I heard the mountain didn’t eat you. Call me. I have news.
A tiny spark cuts through the fog.
I flop onto my couch—smaller, lumpier, significantly less Rhett-y—and hit call.
“Hey,” I say when she picks up.
“IVY GARLAND.” Melanie’s voice bursts through the speaker, full of joy and something else that sounds suspiciously like awe. “You survived the blizzard and the small town and the grumpy man?”
I make a sound that wants to be a laugh and misses. “Define ‘survived.’”
“Oh no,” she says immediately. “We are absolutely circling back to that. But first—you are not allowed to be sad yet, because I have astory.”
“Hit me,” I say, pushing my hair back and tucking my feet under me.
“You know how I told you Lucas showed up at the baby store?” she starts. “The universe apparently hates subtlety, because I ran into him again when I was ordering Chinese. Literally. The baby…well, he ended up taking me to the hospital. It was all fine. Braxton Hicks. Anyway, he took me home and I decided I wasn’t going to keep…you know. The secret. So I told him.”
“Told him what?” I tease, even though I know exactly what she means.
She huffs. “That he’s the father.”
A smile flickers. “How’d that go?”
“Well, he stared at me like I told him he’d won the lottery and a meteor was about to hit him simultaneously,” she says. “Then he asked why I didn’t tell him sooner, and I cried, and we argued, and then… he stayed.”
“What.”
“Yeah.” She laughs, a little breathless. “So picture this: blizzard starting to rage outside, me with soaked jeans and contractions five minutes apart, and Lucas realizing in real time that he’s in love with me and also about to be a dad. I’m leaving out a ton, but that’s the gist.”
My chest squeezes—but this time in a good way.
“Is the baby okay?” I ask. “I mean—you. Areyouokay?”
“We’re both okay,” she says softly. “Lucas got me to the hospital. He didn’t leave my side once. He cut the cord. He cried more than I did, honestly. And when they put the baby on my chest…” Her voice wobbles. “I told him I wanted to name him Everett. And Lucas just—lost it. In a good way. In a ‘this is everything I didn’t know I wanted’ way.”
Tears prick my eyes, but they’re different from the ones that threatened on the mountain. Warm. Happy. “Mel…”
“I know,” she says. “He’s perfect, Ivy. Ev’s got this little dimple already and the longest fingers. Lucas keeps insisting he’s going to be a jazz pianist or a surgeon.”
I laugh. “Of course he does.”
“And Lucas…” She exhales. “He looked at me, in that awful hospital lighting, hair a mess, mascara down my face, and said, ‘I’m in. For all of it. For you. For him. I’m not going anywhere.’”
My heart twists.
“I’m so happy for you,” I manage. “So, so happy. You deserve this.”
“I know,” she says, with this tiny thread of wonder. “I’m still scared. It’s a lot. But it feels…right. Like I’ve been carrying pieces of a puzzle and they finally clicked.”
I close my eyes for a second, letting that image wash over me.
Melanie with her baby. With Lucas. A family she didn’t dare dream about a year ago. And now…here.
“I want that,” I blurt.
“I know,” she says gently. “Tell me what happened.”
