Chapter 17: Skin to Skin

Orin's POV

They let me hold her at three in the morning.

The special care nurse said it was skin to skin, and I would need to take my sweater off.

I took it off.

She put a baby on my chest, in a knitted cap that came down over her eyebrows.

She weighed about four pounds.

She was warm, and she had one hand curled against my collarbone, and she breathed in short quick puffs that I could feel on my skin.

"Sit back," the nurse said. "Don't be afraid of her."

"I'm not afraid."

"Your hands say otherwise."

I looked down.

I had hauled traps for twenty years, and I had never been so careful with anything.

Gwendolyn was asleep two floors down, on a drip, with Maeve beside her.

They had told me to sit with the baby, because someone had to, and because Gwendolyn had said my name before she went under.

She had said, "Orin, stay with her."

I had said, "I will."

I meant to keep it.

"Hello," I said, to the top of the knitted cap. "I'm the neighbor."

She breathed against my chest.

"Your mother says you're early. She's a woman who is never late, so I'd say you came early to make a point."

One tiny foot kicked my ribs.

"Yes," I said. "That's about what I'd have done."

I stayed in that chair until the window turned gray.

I thought about the dock, and what I had said on it.

I thought about how I had been sure.

I had been sure for years about a lot of things.

Then a woman kissed me in my own truck and told me nobody had asked her what she wanted.

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