Chapter 24: Eat the Lamb

My water broke at two in the morning on the fifteenth of March, standing at the kitchen counter.

I was not afraid for the first time in months.

I said "Renzo" in an ordinary voice, and he was beside me before I finished the word.

The drive to Scranton took forty minutes, and he took every curve slowly.

My obstetrician met us at the doors in her coat over a nightgown.

She had my chart in her hand, and she looked at my face and said, "Ready?"

"No," I said. "Yes."

Labor lasted until noon.

I gripped Renzo's hand through all of it, and he never once told me to breathe.

He only said my name in two languages, low and steady, until I stopped hearing anything else.

Just after noon, the baby came out of me with her mouth open, furious and slick and warm.

"A girl," the doctor said. "Seven pounds, and loud."

They laid her on my chest.

She was perfectly pink, and she screamed at the ceiling, and she was alive.

I put my hand over her whole back.

I cried with my face open, and nobody told me to stop.

This time I said the name out loud.

"June," I said. "For the first one, and for this one."

Renzo, beside me, had his hand over his eyes.

"June," he said, hoarsely, and then again.

He took his hand away.

He looked at his daughter, and he looked at me, and he said, "Thank you," in a voice I had never heard from him.

I understood that he did not only mean the baby.

He meant the truck at the curb, and the seven years I had spent learning Italian.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Seven Weeks Pregnant, until I Found His Secret Chat from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.