Chapter 18: Home

Regina never got Jasper on a plane.

The hospital's lawyer went to a judge on Sunday morning.

By noon there was a temporary order keeping him in his room at Rowan Children's.

The hearing was set for the second week of December.

I thought about it every day, and I put it down every night, because the baby came home on the eleventh.

She weighed five pounds and one ounce.

The NICU nurses stood at the doors in a row and clapped when Dennis carried the car seat out.

I cried in the elevator, which I had not planned.

Birdie was waiting in Dennis's living room in a paper crown.

She had not been allowed into the NICU.

The nurses said winter germs were bad for babies.

For five weeks she had known her sister only as a photograph on my phone.

She stood very straight on the couch while I settled the baby into the crook of her arm.

"Support the head," I said.

"I know. Daddy showed me with a doll."

Randall was by the door, and he did not come any closer.

Birdie looked down.

The baby slept, with her small fists curled beside her face and her cap pulled low.

"She's the smallest person I've ever seen," Birdie said.

"She is."

"Why does she look so mad?"

"She was in a hurry to get here."

"That's not a good reason to look mad."

"I'll tell her you said so."

Birdie considered the baby for a long time.

"I'm going to call her peanut," she said. "Until she's bigger."

"All right."

"And I'm going to teach her to blow out candles."

"Not for a while," Dennis said, from the kitchen.

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