The nursery’s still a work in progress. The cot is half-assembled, the mobile’s still in the box, and there’s a pile of paint swatches in the top drawer Reid pretends he hasn’t color-coded.
He won’t let me build anything alone. “Safety risk,” he claimed. More like control, but I don’t mind. I just roll my eyes and let him have his moment, because he gets weirdly intense about the tiny wrench that comes with build-your-own furniture.
The girls have been circling me like satellites lately, bright and chaotic and loud.
It started with a coffee catch-up after I told them about the baby. I’d expected curiosity, maybe some cautious support.
Instead, I got a group chat titledHormonal and Hotbefore I even made it home. Zoe and Heidi came up with it together, cackling over spritzers, while Lulu threatened to embroider it on a tote bag. Charlie suggested matching robes, and Tamara offered to host a baby shower with a theme she calledelevated cottagecore, and no one questioned her.
Heidi had looked alarmed for about twelve seconds, but then dived headfirst into the madness, too.
She’s still my constant, my calm in the storm. But it’s been something else entirely to watch her fold into this fast-forming coven of terrifyingly competent, aggressively loyal women.
I’ve never had that, not like this.
The six of them rally around each other like it’s instinct—remembering snack preferences, stalking old exes, sharing derm codes and game event spreadsheets like classified intelligence.
And somehow, they’ve made space for me too.
It makes me smile when I think about it. Makes me a little nauseous too—of letting people see me like that. Of being known.
Last week, I called my mother to tell her.
She was polite and congratulated me, then asked if I’d really thought through how much my life would change.
“Motherhood is hard, Carina. Especially for someone like you.”
Someone like me.
I didn’t cry afterward. I didn’t even get mad. But I told Reid all about it when he got home. Word for word.
He didn’t rant or pace or plan a rebuttal, even though I saw the fire in his eyes. He just pulled me in, held me against his chest like he was anchoring me there, and kissed the top of my head.
Told me he was proud of me.
I sit up, rubbing my lower back, and glance toward the stack of boxes still tucked under the window. One of them is labeledBedroom Overflowin my handwriting, the marker fading slightly at the edges.
I drag it toward me and slit it open with a pair of scissors. Inside are some old books I forgot I loved, a half-burned candle, and a tangle of cords that don’t seem to belong to anything I own.
And beneath it all, tucked between a paperback and a stray birthday card from Heidi that saysStop aging, bitch, there’s another envelope.
Thinner and plain white, but yellowing a little. My name is written in slightly shaky block letters that I’ll recognize forever.
I pull the card out slowly and unfold it.
It’s one he bought from the pharmacy down the road from my childhood home. Nothing fancy, just a photo of a cat in a party hat and a generic printed message inside. But he’d added his own note beneath it, scrawled in blue pen.
Happy twelfth,???
You’re brave, you’re smart. You’re exactly who you’re supposed to be.
Don’t let anyone tell you different.
?? ?.
Uri ttal.
My daughter.
