Afterward, we lie in the gray morning light, and I trace a pattern on his chest, and he has his hand in my hair, and neither of us says anything. The silence is the good kind, the full kind, the kind that doesn’t need filling.
Morrigan Pearl makes herself known at six forty-seven, right on schedule.
“Your daughter,” he says.
“She has your timing. Everything on the dot.”
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”
“You should. It’s an excellent quality.” I stretch and get up. “Stay. I’ve got her.”
He does not stay. He follows me in because that’s what he does. The babies are his favorite thing in the room after me, and sometimes I think the order might be reversed, which I do not mind in the slightest.
We get all three up and changed and fed in the smooth, coordinated way we’ve developed over months. There’s no discussion required. Each of us knows where the other is going to be, the wordless efficiency of two people who have spent enough time in the same space.
He takes Liam, I take the girls in rotation, and by seven forty we’re all at the kitchen table and everyone is fed and Morrigan Pearl is issuing her morning commentary and Fiona Rose is examining the ceiling fan with her usual philosophical engagement and Liam is watching his father eat toast with the focused admiration of a person who has decided that toast is a worthwhile ambition.
Someday, little guy.
I love this hour. The forty-five minutes after the first feeding, when everyone is fed, and no one is yet ready for a nap, and the apartment has the warm, inhabited feeling of a space that is being fully used.
Ronan drinks his tea standing at the counter because he always stands at the counter for his first cup. It’s some habit fromdecades of pre-rounds mornings, I think, the body remembering the shape of urgency even when there’s no urgency. I have stopped trying to make him sit down for it. Some things are just true about a person.
“I’ve been thinking about a nanny,” he says.
“Does that mean you’ve already put out a call?”
He smirks, because I know him well enough to know that if he’s doing something for me, he’s already arranged it. “And the agency called back. Three candidates, all with strong references. I thought we could interview them together this week.”
“Good.” I feed Bossy—Fiona Rose—her next spoonful. I’ll get used to the names eventually. “I also want Rosemary to come. Before classes start.”
He smiles, and I think for approximately the thousandth time,That smile. That is the thing I will never get tired of.The one that escapes before he decides to let it out, that surprises him slightly, that is his most unguarded self arriving without announcement.
The morning continues in the full, unhurried way of mornings that don’t have anywhere to be. He washes up while I settle the babies for their nap, and then we swap. I make more coffee while he puts Liam down, and when he comes back, I’m sitting on the sofa with my class list and a highlighter.
He sits next to me and looks at the list. “You’ve already color-coded it.”
“I color-code things when I’m excited about them.”
“I know,” he says, with a dry, particular warmth that means something.
I lean into his shoulder, and he puts his arm around me in the easy, automatic way he has, and we sit there in the morning quiet with the class list between us and the city doing its thing below the windows.
I used to be afraid of exactly this. Of the ordinary. Of a life that wasn’t going anywhere dramatic, that was just being. I thought for a long time that still meant stuck, that quiet meant empty.
I have been very wrong about a lot of things, and this was the biggest. Still is not stuck. Quiet is not empty. This Tuesday morning is the fullest thing I have ever been inside of, and it just keeps being more full.
“Tell me something,” I say.
“What would you like to know?”
“Something I don’t know yet.”
He thinks about this with the genuine seriousness he brings to questions that don’t require it, which is one of my favorite things about him. “When I was twelve, I wanted to be an astronaut. I told my father, who told me that was very fine but I should perhaps also have a second option. I chose medicine entirely as a secondary option and then found out I was rather good at it.”
I laugh. “You became a world-class cardiologist as your backup plan?”
“In my defense, the astronaut plan was also quite solid. I had very good spatial reasoning.”
