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I look at him. "I'm familiar with the geography. I wouldn’t call it moving. I’m staying wth my mom a while, just like I said.”

He exhales through his nose and looks away for a second. He puts his hands in his pockets and spreads his legs in a wide stance.

"Why didn't you tell me you were moving Hildie back?"

"It just happened yesterday. We haven't spoken.” He says it with the same flat weight I used.

"Thirty weeks," I tell him, because he's looked at my stomach enough times that I know the question is there.

"I know."

I know he wants more, but by now I also know he won't ask, and I'm not sure why I keep expecting either one of us to suddenly become people who do.

Neither of us says anything for a second. He didn't know I'd moved to Florida. I didn't know he'd brought Hildie back. We talk every two weeks, exchange the necessary information, and somehow manage to leave most of our actual lives out of it.

In about two months, we're going to be co-parents to two children. And the man standing in front of me is still, in almost every way that matters, a stranger.

THIRTEEN

Carson

O come, O come, Emmanuel / And ransom captive Israel / That mourns in lonely exile here

Mackie looks at me, waiting to see if I'm going to give her anything else. For once, I want to.

"The doctors up there told me⁠—"

Manny is at the front desk, twenty feet off, sorting a stack of med sheets. He looks up as soon as I say doctors. An aide comes down the hall pushing a laundry cart, one wheel ticking against the tile with every turn. She nods at me as she passes.

This isn't something I'm going to say in pieces while the whole floor moves around us. I've only really talked about it with the staff here. Not Wade, who covered my feeding while I flew back and forth, or even Dutch, who sat across from me the night the doctors called and never pushed. I gave them the short version, the one that fits in a sentence.

I pick up my hat and turn it once by the brim.

"Have you eaten?"

Mackie blinks at me. "I had a few pieces of cantaloupe this morning. I'm actually starving."

"Then I'm buying you lunch, and I'll tell you all about it."

For once, I don't mind the idea of telling somebody who isn't paid to listen.

Lis comes back up the hall from the day room. Mackie's gathering herself off the bench, and I can't tell if helping would be useful or insulting.

"We're going to lunch," Mackie tells her.

Lis doesn't ask or look at me sideways, which I appreciate. She reaches into her bag, pulls out a water bottle, and puts it in Mackie's hand.

"Drink that whole bottle before you order anything."

“Yes, ma'am."

I don't think much of it. Lis has been hovering around her daughter since I met her, and Mackie is carrying two babies.

Mackie lowers her feet off the chair and starts to stand. I put a hand under her elbow after all, and she lets me. Neither of us says anything about it.

We go through the courtyard doors into the heat. Lis heads the other way.

My rental car sits in the row by the fence, a white compact with a dealer frame around the plate. I open her door, look at the room, and run the seat all the way back on the rails before she tries to get in.