Chapter 25
The following few months were everything that “nesting” was meant to be, with a caveat.
Wren was happy to build up the nursery. She was happy to focus on her nutrition and get cozy with Ben and her family for Christmas.
She was happy to plan and dream for her baby’s future.
But one thing about Wren was that she couldn’t sit still, not for long.
Any day she had a bit of energy, she either drove herself or had Ben drive her along the coast so she could photograph Maine through all its most delicious seasons of snow, rain, fog, and clouds.
Everything was beautiful to her. Everything seemed sensational and different, especially after so many years away.
Around Christmastime, Wren decided to start her own social media account to showcase the photographs she couldn’t sell to clients.
Within a week, she had more followers than she knew what to do with, and she’d sold several hundred prints.
This opened up a window to a reality she hadn’t allowed herself to dream of.
What if she didn’t need any bosses? What if she could sustain herself?
She thought back to Max, who’d lorded his power over her and told her that she couldn’t have become anything successful without him.
She wanted to laugh about it, although she still had endless compassion for her younger self, who’d been frightened of what would happen if Max ever ended their professional relationship.
Maybe his ending of their relationship was the best thing that had ever happened to her, minus what had happened to Angelos immediately after that.
By the beginning of January, Wren and Ben stopped pretending that they weren’t living together.
Because they’d both opted for tiny, one-bedroom places, they decided to find a beautiful three-bedroom rental not far from Landon and Celia, and they signed a two-year lease.
Wren watched her pen scribble her name on the signature line and searched her gut for some sign that this wasn’t the right move. But she felt no hesitation.
For the first time in her life, she was settling down—and it made her happy.
For a few weeks, Wren still had the energy to decorate their place.
They talked about paint colors and future plans.
They talked about one day buying a house of their own, if they decided to stay in Bluebell Cove.
Ben made it clear that he would go wherever Wren wanted to.
But Wren told him, “I really think I want to be close to my sisters. I want our baby to know her family.”
At this, Ben beamed.
Wren had begun calling her baby “our baby,” including Ben in the story.
Although she wanted to list Angelos as the biological father, she wanted to set Ben up as the legal guardian and legal father as soon as possible.
She spoke with a lawyer and made the necessary steps.
When she informed Ben that everything was taken care of already, he sat on the sofa and cried quietly, a smile on his face.
“But this means that we have to agree on her name,” Wren said, squeezing his hand.
Ben laughed. “You can name her whatever you want! I just want to be there.”
But Wren insisted that Ben needed to help her. “I want you to be included in every major decision. This is where it begins,” she said.
That first week of February, three weeks before her due date, Wren and Ben made list after list of potential names.
They spoke of Sylvia, Jennette, Avery, Cleo, Sadie, Mary-Jane, Mary-Anne, Gwen, and Natalie.
They vetoed countless others. For more than three days, they decided on Sally before Wren woke up in the middle of the night and decided she absolutely hated it.
It was Ben who first pitched Nelly. Wren looked at him, mystified, remembering the older woman who’d brought them together, who’d brought Pierre into their lives, and who’d once known and loved her mother and held baby Wren in her arms.
“Her name is Nelly,” she breathed. “Of course it is.”
That settled that.
As the winter months wore on, Angelos’s parents called more and more frequently.
Their excitement about their grandchild was palpable, and their English got better in leaps and bounds.
Both Wren and Ben took Greek lessons on their phones, but the different alphabet made things especially difficult, and both Andreas and Maria assured them they’d pick up the slack in English instead.
“We’re retired now,” Maria said over the phone one morning. “We have plenty of time to devote to learning a language.”
Wren couldn’t believe how clearly Maria spoke. By contrast, her letters, which she now wrote herself, were childish and informal, but that made them all the more fun to read.
Every day, Wren grew more and more impressed with Angelos’s parents.
In her head, she spoke to Angelos, telling him how proud he would be of them, how shocked he’d be at their open-mindedness and open-heartedness.
But I guess they are your parents. They raised you, Wren thought of Angelos, picturing his handsome and sunny smile.
You got all that goodness from somewhere.
Now that Wren was so close to becoming a mother herself, she was conscious of what she wanted to pass on to baby Nelly and what she wanted to keep to herself.
For one, Wren didn’t want to pass on her flightiness to her daughter.
But she did want her daughter to be spontaneous and confident.
She wanted her daughter to travel widely and know the world.
More than that, she wanted Nelly to learn from her father, Ben. She wanted her to be kind, gentle, and intelligent, like Ben was. She wanted her to learn how to care for animals. She wanted Nelly to know Pierre as her beloved puppy from a young age.
Pierre, of course, was one of the best companions a pregnant woman could have asked for.
All day, every day, he was content to sit beside her and smile at her and watch television with her and eat snacks with her.
“I miss going outside, too, Pierre,” she said to him, eating a bowl of popcorn and watching the snow fall.
There was too much ice on the road and sidewalk for her to brave a walk. “We’ll be back out there soon.”
A few days before Wren’s due date, Ben went out with Landon, and Wren had her sisters over. Celia brought a carrot cake, Ivy brought a lasagna, and Juliet brought Theo’s homemade hummus and bread. Together, they sat in the living room, listening to music and eating to their hearts’ content.
“I just can’t wait to meet her!” Ivy cooed, speaking of Nelly. “It’s been so long since there was a baby in the family.”
“I guess the next baby might be Sophie’s,” Celia said, looking stricken.
“She’s a little too driven to have a baby so young, don’t you think?” Wren asked. Sophie was only in her mid-twenties, with plenty of professional goals before her.
“Maybe Danica can babysit for you,” Juliet said, raising her eyebrows. Danica was nearly sixteen, which made her the perfect age.
They asked about Angelos’s parents, who would visit at the end of March. Celia suggested that they stay at the Eco-Lodge, and Wren agreed that it sounded like a perfect plan.
“We can give them the suite,” Celia said.
“Is it their first time in the United States?” Ivy asked.
Wren wasn’t sure. “But probably,” she said. “Gosh, their English is insanely good now. They make me feel pathetic.”
All the sisters laughed. Language learning felt like something Europeans were wonderful at, and Americans were subpar at. Wren told herself that she’d pick up the slack later on, maybe with Nelly’s help.
When Wren went into labor, it was three in the morning.
She allowed herself to feel it, recognize it, and reckon with this fact before she woke Ben up and explained what was going on.
Ben’s eyes widened, but he remained calm.
He was used to emergencies. He was used to dealing with health, even if it was the health of animals.
Ben and Wren waited in the living room, watching yet another snowfall and counting the minutes between contractions. The doctor had told them that when they were three to five minutes apart, they could come to the hospital, but that it would be a waste of time to come before.
It was true, Wren thought, that it was better to be in such discomfort from the comfort of your home, at least for a while.
When it was time, Ben drove them through the darkness toward the hospital.
Wren squeezed her eyes shut with each contraction, then opened them again to watch the snow melt against the heat of the windshield.
Once at the hospital, Ben cut the engine at the drop-off point, then helped her to the door and into a chair before hurrying back to park.
The hospital was empty save for a young boy who’d broken his arm and his mother, whose cheeks were red with panic.
A nurse wheeled Wren to the L&D ward. Ben followed, showing a bit of franticness that wasn’t customary.
But soon, Wren and Ben were all settled in and ready for the hours that stretched before them.
As nurses and doctors came and went to check on Wren, it occurred to her that this very thing had happened to her mother not once but four times.
She wondered what her mother had been feeling while in the hospital bed, waiting for her babies to be born.
She wondered if she’d felt endless dread, or if she’d felt hope and excitement.
Wren asked herself what she felt. She decided on those very words: Hope. Excitement.
A baby meant a fresh chapter. And Wren had needed a fresh chapter. She hadn’t fully known it before.
After a fifteen-hour labor, Wren held baby Nelly in her arms. She weighed seven pounds and eight ounces, with chubby cheeks, pink eyelids, and a full head of black hair. This hair, Wren knew, had been the source of her heartburn, but it was so adorable that she couldn’t care.
Ben and Wren were in awe of her. All they could do was look at her and lightly squeeze her hands and her feet. All they could do was look at each other and say, “This is it? This is it?”
It wasn’t it, Wren knew. There was so much more to come.
When they settled into their new home, Wren and Ben found that the love they’d initially built doubled or perhaps tripled in size, now that they had baby Nelly around.
They took a thousand photographs a day. Ben took a leave of absence from the vet clinic, sending his patients to the other vet clinics in town, telling Wren that he was needed right here for now.
Wren couldn’t have imagined a better partner.
Of course, her thoughts often drifted to Angelos. She wondered what he would have been like with baby Nelly. She wondered what songs he would have sung for her.
But she knew her current reality was the best reality she could hope for, because it belonged to her.
Ben was her partner, her best friend. Not long before Angelos’s parents came to visit, Ben got down on one knee and asked her to marry him.
She said yes, of course. Before Maria and Andreas arrived, Wren made sure to tell them about her engagement, about the arrangement she had with Ben, who was and also was not Nelly’s father.
Maria and Andreas wept, then told Wren they were so happy that she’d found new love in her life. “Everyone deserves love,” Andreas said.
Truer words had never been spoken, Wren thought.
The night before they had to pick Maria and Andreas up from the airport, she kissed her baby and her fiancé and thanked her lucky stars for having so much.
There was no telling what would happen next in her story.
But she’d be ready for it, face forward and heart open. She had to be, for Nelly’s sake.