Later, when the bag was by the door and my coat was on, he went quiet. He stood in the nursery doorway, looking at the two white cribs he’d built with his own hands.
“Can I say something dumb?” he asked.
“Only smart things allowed today.”
“Ten years.” He swallowed. “All those needles. All those waiting rooms. The doctors said it plain, you know. It was me. My numbers.” He hung his head. “If I’d just been different, you wouldn’t have had to go through any of it.”
I had heard him blame himself before. I hadn’t expected to hear it today.
I crossed the room and took his face in my hands.
“Listen to me. I don’t see our girls as something you failed to give me. They’re ours. Your side, my side, a lab dish, and a whole lot of luck. We did this together.”
PART 2
“I know. I just…”
“We did it together,” I said again. “And in a few hours, we get to meet them.”
His forehead dropped against mine, and he let out a shaky breath.
I remembered the bathroom floor then, just for a second. The cold tile against my back. The test on the rim of the tub with its one stubborn line. I had cried until I couldn’t breathe, and Kevin had slid down beside me without a word.
He hadn’t said it would be okay. He didn’t have an answer. He just sat there, his shoulder pressed against mine, for an hour.
That was what mattered. He stayed.
At the hospital, the tests took longer than they should have. Then a doctor with kind, tired eyes came in.
“There’s a complication,” he said. “We’ll need general anesthesia.”
My stomach dropped. “So I won’t be awake?”
“No. But you’ll be safe, and so will they.”
I gripped Kevin’s hand until my knuckles went pale. “Promise me you’ll be there when I wake up. Promise.”
“I promise.” He kissed my knuckles. “First face you’ll see.”
They wheeled me down the hall. I watched Kevin until the doors closed, already imagining him holding our daughters when I woke.
The first face I saw was a nurse’s.
“Congratulations, Mom,” she said, smiling. “Two beautiful girls. Both doing great.”
She tucked them into my arms, one at a time, her hand steady under my elbow. They were so small. One of them wrapped her whole fist around my pinky, and I swear the whole world narrowed down to that grip.
Kevin has to see this, I thought.
I turned my head, ready to say look.
The chair by the window was empty.
Okay, I told myself. Bathroom. Coffee. Calling his mother. There were a hundred harmless reasons he might have broken his promise.
I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand and called him. It rang and rang. Voicemail.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said, still smiling. “I’m awake. Come see your daughters.”
I waited a minute, then called again. The smile got harder to hold. He had promised. First face I’d see. Kevin didn’t break promises. He assembled cribs on a schedule, for heaven’s sake.
“Excuse me,” I said to the nurse, trying to keep my voice light. “Have you seen my husband?”
Her smile slid right off her face.
“I’ll get the doctor.”
Nobody gets the doctor over a missing husband. My pulse started to climb.
The doctor came in with his hands folded in front of him, and he looked at me strangely.
“Yes, your husband saw the babies.” He paused. “You really don’t know why he left?”
“Left?” My mouth was dry. “What are you talking about? Where is he?”
He pulled a chair close.
“While you were still asleep after the surgery, Kevin came to talk to me. He told me something I absolutely wasn’t expecting to hear.”
“What did he say?”
He exhaled slowly.
“He said his mother had called. She said she had proof the girls weren’t his.”
“What?” I stared at him. “He knows everything we went through. He was there for every single shot.”
Something hot rose in my chest and pushed the disbelief aside. Kevin hadn’t answered any of my calls, so I scrolled to his mother’s name and hit call, my thumb shaking.
She picked up on the second ring.
“What did you tell him?”
