I mouth *I love you* at her.
She mouths it back.
And Daisy, still in my arms, says, "Okay, now we need the tea set. It's in my room. Mama, can Danny come see my room?"
"If Danny wants to."
"I'd love to see your room," I say.
"Yes!" Daisy points dramatically toward a door. "That way! This is gonna be the best tea party ever!"
As I carry her toward her room, Mr. Flopsy tucked under her arm, chattering about how many cups we'll need and what kind of pretend tea we should have, I realize something.
I'm not nervous anymore.
I'm home.
Epilogue - Joanna
Three Years Later
The apartment is chaos.
Beautiful, wonderful, loud chaos.
"Mama! Mama! Can I give Leo his present now?" Daisy bounces on her toes, six years old and practically vibrating with excitement. Her pigtails, the same style she's insisted on since she was four, swing with each movement.
"After we sing happy birthday, sweetheart," I tell her, adjusting the "ONE" balloon that keeps trying to escape toward the ceiling.
Our son… I still can't quite believe it sometimes. He sits in his high chair, chocolate cake smeared across his chubby face, looking absolutely delighted with himself. Leo has Danny's dark eyes and my nose, and right now he's grabbing fistfuls of cake and shoving them in his mouth with the single-minded determination of a one-year-old.
"He's making a mess!" Daisy giggles. "Leo, you're supposed to eat it, not wear it!"
"Let him have fun," Danny says, appearing behind me with more napkins.
His hand finds the small of my back automatically, the way it always does. Three years together and he still touches me like he's making sure I'm real. "It's his first birthday. He's allowed to be messy."
He's wearing a blue button-down I bought him last month. The first dress shirt he's owned in probably forever. Sleeves rolled up, top button undone, but still more formal than his usual t-shirts. He'd protested at first, said it was too fancy for a one-year-old's birthday party.
But I'd seen the way he looked at himself in the mirror. Stood a little straighter. Liked what he saw. He's been doing that more lately. Seeing himself the way I see him. The way everyone here sees him.
"Joanna, this cake is incredible!" Erin calls from across the room. She's holding her newest baby—a girl this time, just four months old, while her seven-year-old attempts to convince her ten-year-old brother to share the toy car he brought. "Seriously, you should open that bakery already. You'd make a fortune."
"She will," Danny says with absolute certainty. "Another year, maybe two. Once Leo's a bit older."
He says it like it's fact. Like my dream isn't just a dream anymore but an inevitability. Like he'll make sure it happens no matter what.
Even after three years, he still does this. He believes in me harder than I believe in myself sometimes.
"Uncle Danny, look!" Erin's older son, Thomas, runs over with a drawing. "I drew you fighting a dragon!"
Danny crouches down to examine the picture seriously. In it, a stick figure with massive arms is punching what I assume is supposed to be a dragon. "This is amazing, Tommy. Can I keep it?"
"Yeah! You can hang it at the gym!"
"I'll put it right next to my locker."
Thomas beams and runs off to show his sister.
