“Aisling! Okay, Aisling Nina it is then.” She does a gesture with her hand as if she’s knighting the little girl, then grins.
“You’re perfect,” Sean says, amazed.
“Aye,” she tells him with a solemn nod, laughing then clutching her stomach where her stitches are. “What about you, Rowan?”
Chewing on my lip and looking into the face of the most perfect being I’ve ever seen, I say, “I don’t want her to be named after my mom. I don’t even talk to my mom.”
“Okay,” Willow says. “Fair enough. You pick the name then.”
“Let’s name her after you,” I say. When Willow makes a face, I add, “Okay, okay, no Willow because that might be weirdfor Fiona and Aisling. But how about…Magnolia? A beautiful, Southern tree just like Willow.”
She chews on her inside lip and lets out a sobbing chuckle. “Okay, Magnolia Cheyenne it is.”
I’ve said “I’d die for you” before. To friends after beers, to people I didn’t actually mean, to the idea of this in songs on bad nights. I don’t think it has ever been English until this second. I say nothing. I nod at her and at these men who make up my family now. I stroke Magnolia’s cheek, and I kiss Willow’s temple. I am a man who keeps his voice low and his hands sure. I am a man who finally has people to keep.
Declan
The NICU makes a liar of a man’s instincts. You think louder is stronger. It isn’t. You think control equals protection. It doesn’t. In here, control is a little green line that rises and falls at its own pace while you keep your hands in your pockets and let people who have practiced this for years do the part that must be done.
I stand and move to place Fiona in Willow’s arms, the first of the men to give up holding one of our daughters. Willow’s eyebrows knit together, even as her arms go out instinctively. “Declan, are you sure? You don’t want her a little bit longer?” she asks, and I shake my head, hands on my hips and heart in my throat.
I drift toward the monitors because I am a cliché and also because I spent too many nights of my twenties reading meaning in numbers while a nurse taught me how to hear what they were actually saying. The waveforms are good. The sats are where we want them. The heart rates are small rabbits, not runaway horses.
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until a hand—Rowan’s—lands on the back of my shoulder and presses. “They’re alright, now,” he says, like he’s not soothing me as much as translating the room into something I can carry. “Come here—sit yourself down, so.”
He moves from leg to leg, bouncing Magnolia in his arms, something fierce innate in him that he avoided acknowledging for fierce long. For the first time since starting this journey, I fear that the only innate thing I have in me is the ability to get someone to this place. But never past. What if I’m only meant for the clinical part and not this next part? When I held Fiona, I felt stiff and unnatural. Looking at Rowan, I can tell he feels at ease.
I understand I’m hesitating because there’s nothing for me to fix. It’s an insult to my bloodline. It’s the relief of my life. I nod at him and croak, “I’ll stand.” I look down at the babies. Fiona is in Willow’s arms, her lips flat in a look of disapproval, her eyes squeezed shut. Aisling is rooting at Sean’s nipple, and he offers her one of his giant fingers, which she sucks on greedily, to everyone’s delighted surprise. “I’m not much use standing, but I’ll stand, so I will.”
Rowan shakes his head and mutters, “This is new territory for everyone, Declan. Sit down and learn, like.”
I blink at him, at the new man in front of me who understands he can’t have everything without some growing pains. “Sit,” he says again, and I do because I’m not an idiot. The room doesn’t collapse. No one dies for lack of me standing.
Sean passes me a bottle of water with the cap already loosened the way he does when he wants me to drink and not argue. I drink and don’t argue. He looks at me with that same teenage ridiculousness that lives in me tonight—love fierce big enoughthat it makes you want to steal small things like minutes and machine beeps and put them in your pocket. I look back and let him see that I feel it too.
The night slides. Willow dozes. The babies do the kind of sleep that has nothing cute about it, just stubbornness. I watch six chests rise and fall.
When I can’t think of anything useful to do, I do something true. I stand close behind Willow’s chair and pull the blanket I’m holding up and over her shoulders. It slides into place like I planned it three months ago. It isn’t much. ’Tis the exact amount, now.
Marta catches my eye and tips her head, an acknowledgment from one person who has learned to live inside the boring part of miracles to another.
I shrug and tell her, “All I can do.”
“It’s enough,” she says back.
“Aye,” I answer, surprising myself with the word. “Aye, it is.”
32
WILLOW
The evening stretches longand golden across the Charleston windows, the air thick with salt and lullabies.
The babies are still at the NICU eight weeks later, and the house has that rare kind of quiet that feels both sacred and borrowed. Sean’s sprawled across the couch, Declan’s at the table with his planner and a cup of tea, Rowan’s leaning against the counter, sleeves rolled up, eyes softer than usual, watching me as I cook meatballs.
“So,” Sean says, breaking the silence. “What are we doing about holidays? Let’s talk about Christmas.” He claps his hands together. “We’ll have to get theweeones’ passports obviously, because an Irish Christmas is better, but my house does it like no other, I gotta say.”
Declan doesn’t look up. “Aye? And what makes a Byrne Christmas fierce special, then?”
