Chapter 24: The First Night Home

The second pain came before the quartet finished the song.

"Rowan," I said.

"I'm here."

"Get the car."

"The car is downstairs. My driver has been downstairs since four."

He was already steering me toward the doors with an arm around my back.

"Mother!" he called.

Margaret was on her feet before he finished the word.

Jodie had her phone up, and then she put it down and took my other arm.

"No filming," she said, to herself. "Not this one. This one's ours."

We left a rooftop full of white roses and guests with their glasses in the air.

It was a long night, and I will not tell all of it.

I will say that I swore at him for six hours in a vocabulary I picked up at the clinic.

I will say that he took it, and held my hand, and wiped my forehead with a cloth.

He said "You're doing it" at every pain, whether or not it was true.

The doctor was a calm, broad-shouldered woman with her hair under a cap.

Near dawn she said, "Now, Willa. Now."

I pushed with everything I had.

Rowan's hand was crushed in mine, and he did not make a sound.

Then the room changed.

There was a cry, thin and furious, and the doctor lifted something small and slick and red into the light.

"A girl," she said.

"A girl," Rowan said. His voice was hoarse. "Willa, it's a girl."

"I heard."

They laid her on my chest, wet and hot and shouting.

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