"I didn't know that," I whispered as my finger stroked Abigael's cheek. I'd always heard people saying they wanted to gobble up little babies, and I'd never understood it until meeting this particular baby. I did, I wanted to gobble her right up. "She's so lucky. You're going to be the best mama."
"Because I've already fucked up everything with you?" she asked, a dry laugh in her voice.
In a sense, I'd been her first baby, one she'd never asked to mother. It hadn't been her job to save me, but she did it anyway and I'd thrown it all back at her.
"No," I said, drawing my finger over the baby's precious nose. I couldn't stop touching her even though exhaustion was gathering behind my eyes and the emotional impact of this morning was creeping into my bones and muscles. "You didn't fuck up anything. You did the best you could."
Shannon tapped my hand, her attention on my wedding ring. Still on my middle finger, still a bit too loose for the spot where it belonged. The simple solution was getting it resized, of course, but I hadn't considered that until now. That was a common problem among academics. We made everything a little too complicated, and then thought too damn hard about it all.
"Will you tell me more about this?" she asked.
"I married him," I said. Those words rushed out in a gasp, and I'd had no idea how much I'd needed to share this with her. I'd considered it before, when I'd stared at her emails and imagined a flowing exchange between us, but it felt like I was saying the most real and true thing in the world now. I wanted to tell everyone, just as Nick had wanted for the past two years. "I married Nick."
Shannon laughed as she traced the diamonds on my band. "Good for you," she said. "You deserve him."
The baby shifted, kicking her legs out of the purple sailboat-printed swaddling wrap—definitely not hospital-issued—until her feet were free. "I don't know anything about child development, but that seemed really advanced," I said, running my fingers along the sole of her foot. "And these toes! They're the cutest, tiniest things I've ever seen in my entire life."
"I know, I know," Shannon repeated, incredulous. "I can't believe she's here." We watched as she stretched and wiggled, laughing as her expressions morphed from grumpy to alert to sleepy to peaceful. Shannon traced the lines on Froggie's forehead as the baby reverted back to grumpy. "That's her father, right there. She's so much of him."
"What did you mean," I started carefully, "when you said I deserved Nick?"
I was expecting the worst. Some oblique slam about him being a self-centered devil child or vapid manwhore, and me being the patron saint of shameful behavior. By that logic, we were a match made in hell.
"I meant that he's one of the best guys I know," she said.
"Really?" I asked.
"Absolutely," she said, shifting the baby to her shoulder. "The first thing I thought when I met him was that he had the biggest heart. He came around when we were a mess, and he didn't mind any of that. It was like he recognized that we were all a little bit insane, a little bit fucked up, and for some unexplainable reason, he wanted to be part of it." She paused, frowning as she stared at the blankets over our legs. "My second thought was that I wanted to bite his ass."
Suddenly flustered by her admission and more than a little possessive, I asked, "Have you thought that recently,Mrs. Halsted?"
"Have you seen his ass,Mrs. Acevedo? I've watched grown women—and men—cry in the street as he walked by," she replied. "I might be married, but I amnotblind."
"Well, Shannon," I started, "I'll have you know that I have seen his ass. And you know what? I've bitten it, too."
And as those words fell from my lips, Shannon's mother-in-law, Judy, strolled in with a pair of nurses.
"Well, I hope it was a good one," Judy said. "All asses are not created equal."
Shannon laughed as she gestured to me. "Judy, this is my sister, Erin."
"Of course," she cried, tossing her hands up in the air like she was seeing an old friend again. "We met at Matt and Lolo's wedding. When did you get in, sweet cheeks?"
I untangled myself from Shannon and the baby, and moved to the edge of the bed. "This morning," I said. "I caught the red-eye out of Reykjavík."
"And you're staying for the holiday," Judy continued. All statement, no question.
"You should stick around," Shannon said. Her tone was casual, and the accompanying shrug confirmed it. She was giving me the option. "We're not doing anything fancy, just dinner at the house."
I hummed as I ran my fingers over my face and through my hair. "Let me think about it," I said. Bending down, I pulled on my boots and grabbed my things. I reached into my backpack, feeling around for the rock I'd selected for the baby. Too many damn compartments in this bag. "I brought something for her. It's in here somewhere."
"You can give it to her when you visit later this week," Shannon said. "We don't have to figure it all out this morning."
At that, the baby released a rippling cry, and Judy and the nurses converged around the bed.
"Oh, this little girl is hungry," Judy cooed.
One nurse was stacking pillows at Shannon's elbow, and the other was pulling my sister's breast from her camisole. It didn't matter how much shit we'd worked through, I wasn't ready to watch this.
