Page 74

Andi traces her finger down Ella’s cheek. Across her eyebrow. Along the curve of her ear. She’s memorizing her. I can see it in the way her eyes move—slow, deliberate, cataloging every detail with the focus of someone who knows she’s running out of time to look.

“You’ve gotten so big,” Andi murmurs. “Look at these cheeks.” She cups one gently, and Ella makes a cooing sound, reaching for Andi’s scarf—pale blue today, silk, covering what’s left. Andi guides Ella’s hand to it and lets her grab on.

“She likes the blue one,” I offer from my chair, my voice coming out rougher than I want.

“She has good taste.” Andi smiles, but her chin is trembling. She presses her lips to Ella’s forehead and holds them there, eyes closed, breathing her in. Her perfect baby scent.

I look at the window. I look at the floor. I look anywhere but directly at them because if I do, I’ll lose it, and today isn’t about me.

“I brought some things,” I say, reaching for the bag at my feet. I pull out a small album—photos from the past couple of months. Ella in the bath, covered in bubbles. Ella on the floor with her stuffed pig. Ella asleep on Alexei’s chest, his hand covering her entire back. Ella in the Hawks onesie, fists up, ready to fight.

I hand it to Andi, and she opens it one-handed, Ella still tucked against her. She turns the pages slowly.

“Who took this one?” She’s looking at a candid I didn’t know about until I found it on Alexei’s phone—me and Ella on the couch, Ella’s hand wrapped around my finger, both of us asleep. He must have taken it and never mentioned it.

“Alexei.”

She nods. Keeps turning pages. When she gets to the ones from our last visit—the professional photos Alexei arranged, Andi holding Ella, Ella’s tiny fingers wrapped around Andi’s thumb—she stops.

“These are beautiful,” she says, and her voice breaks on the last syllable.

“We’ll give them to her when she’s older. So she knows you.”

Andi closes the album and sets it on the bed. She’s quiet for a minute, just holding Ella, rocking her slightly even though the motion is barely perceptible. The room is so quiet I can hear the drip of the IV and the muffled sound of a TV somewhere down the hall.

“Can I tell you something?” Andi says.

“Of course.”

“When I found out I was sick again—the third time—I was a couple months pregnant. They wanted me to terminate. Said the treatment would be easier, said carrying to term was a risk.” She looks down at Ella. “I told them no. I told them I’d already lost everything else, and I wasn’t losing her too.”

My throat closes.

“She’s the only good thing I ever made, Ryleigh. The only thing in my whole life that I got right.”

I press my hand over my mouth. The tears are coming whether I want them to or not.

“And I know—” Her voice cracks, and she takes a breath. “I know I did everything wrong. I left her with you without asking. I disappeared. I put you in an impossible situation, and I’m sorry for that. I am. But I watched you for months when we were roommates. The way you kept that apartment together, your life together. The way you went to work every night even when you were exhausted. You held doors and made small talk with cashiers and were just… kind.”

I didn’t know she noticed any of that. We barely talked.

“I knew you’d take care of her. I knew it in my bones.” She meets my eyes across the room. “And then you went and found someone like him.”

I let out a wet laugh. “I didn’t find him. He found me.”

“Either way. She’s going to have a family. A real one.” Andi’s eyes are bright with tears, but she’s smiling. “That’s all I wanted. That’s the only thing I needed to know before I could . . .”

She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to.

I sit on the edge of the bed, careful, and Andi reaches for my hand.

“Thank you,” she says. “For everything. For signing those papers. For the photos. For bringing her to see me even when I know it’s hard.”

“It’s not hard.”

“Liar.” She squeezes my hand, and her grip is weaker than last time. “It’s the hardest thing in the world, and you do it anyway. That’s why I chose you.”

Ella babbles between us, grabbing at Andi’s shirt with determined fingers. Andi laughs—a real laugh, the kind that sounds like who she was before all this—and lifts Ella’s hand to her lips.