Chapter 14
When Noah was three, I became pregnant again.
The test sat on the bathroom counter like a question from God.
I stared at it until Caleb knocked.
“Hannah?”
I opened the door.
He saw my face first.
Then the test.
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“That is also what I said.”
He laughed once.
Then cried.
Then asked, “Are you scared?”
I nodded.
The honesty came easier now.
“Yes.”
This pregnancy was different because we made it different.
No surprise hospital visitors.
No family access.
No papers brought into the room unless Dana approved them.
No one except Caleb and Maya knew the due date.
Dr. Martin stayed our doctor even though he joked he was too old for our drama.
At thirty-eight weeks, our daughter arrived during a thunderstorm.
Caleb never left my hand.
Not once.
When nurses took her to check her lungs, he looked at me first.
“Go with her,” I whispered.
He did.
He stayed where I could see him through the glass.
No closed rooms.
No missing husband.
No forged signature.
Our daughter came back wrapped in a yellow blanket.
We named her Grace.
Because that was what healing had required from us.
Not the soft kind.
The fierce kind.
Noah met her and immediately tried to give her his truck.
“She can’t hold that yet,” Caleb said.
Noah frowned.
“She needs it.”
I laughed so hard I cried.
Dr. Martin checked on me before discharge.
He looked at Grace.
Then at me.
“How do you feel?”
I thought about the first birth.
The fear.
The papers.
The pen.
Then I looked at my daughter sleeping on my chest.
“Present,” I said.
May you like
He smiled.
“That’s a good word.”
