"I'm not backing down from anything." Dominic takes the printout and looks at it.
"She'sgoing to be impossible." He says it still looking at the image. "Between your stubbornness and Amos' need to be right about everything and my—"
"Your everything." Mattaniah finishes.
"My everything." Dominic presses his mouth against Mattaniah's temple. "She doesn't stand a chance."
"She stands every chance." I say it because it's the truest thing I've said all day. "She has three parents who will make sure of it."
Mattaniah settles deeper between Dominic and the couch cushion, his eyes closing as Dominic's hand rests on the curve ofhis stomach, his breathing slowing to match the Omega's within a minute.
I sit with them until Mattaniah's weight goes slack against my shoulder. Then I ease out from under him carefully, settling his head against the cushion, and cross to the desk where my laptop is still open from this morning's work.
The developmental milestones file opens to a blank first page. The cursor blinks against the empty spreadsheet. I created the file six weeks ago in a burst of optimism I didn't fully trust at the time, and the empty cells have been staring back at me every time I opened the folder, waiting for data I wasn't sure would come.
Week eight. Cardiac activity confirmed. 152 BPM. Fetal measurement consistent with gestational age. No abnormalities detected. Development on track.
I look at the entry. The clinical language is a reflex but it doesn't capture what happened in that room. I add a second line underneath.
First heartbeat heard by all three parents. The file is no longer aspirational.
Epilogue 1
SixMonthsLater
Mattaniah
The argument has been going in circles for twenty minutes and I still can't say what I actually want.
It starts over the apartment. Dominic finds a listing for a condo in the city with four bedrooms and a balcony and brings it up over dinner as if it's a discussion rather than a decision he'salready made. Amos pulls up the listing on his phone and starts analyzing square footage. I push linguine around my plate trying to figure out why the idea is making my chest tight instead of making me happy.
"The nursery needs to be adjacent to the master bedroom." Amos scrolls through photos. "This layout has the nursery across the hall, which adds fifteen seconds to response time for nighttime needs."
"We'll renovate." Dominic doesn't look up from his own phone. "The contractor can move the wall between the second and third bedrooms."
"You haven't even asked me if I want to move." The words come out sharp and both of them look up from their screens. "You found a listing. You brought it to dinner. You're already planning renovations. Nobody asked me if I want to live in a condo."
"Do you want to live in a condo?" Dominic sets his phone down.
"I don't know. That's not the point."
"Then what's the point?"
The point is something I can't articulate because the words for it were trained out of me. Dominic is planning a future I'm included in and nobody has said out loud that the inclusion is guaranteed.
"We've been living in this apartment for a few months now and you're planning a condo and a nursery and a renovation and at no point has anyone..." I stop. My scent is going sour, I can feel it, the distress leaking into the kitchen before I can pull it back.
"Has anyone what?" Dominic's eyes narrow.
"Nothing. Forget it." I stab a piece of chicken and put it in my mouth.
"Mattaniah." Dominic's voice drops. "Finish the sentence."
"I said forget it."
"You said nothing and forget it within three seconds of each other, which means whatever you were about to say is the most important thing you've said all night." He leans forward. "Finish the sentence."
"Nobody has asked me to stay." It comes out too loud for the kitchen and my face heats immediately. "You're planning a condo and a nursery and talking about contractors and the whole time you're assuming I'll be there because we're bonded and I'm pregnant. Where else would I go." I look between them. "But nobody has actually said 'Mattaniah, we want you to be here permanently, not because of the bond or the baby but because we chose you.'"
