Epilogue
One Year Later
Archer
Eden’s asleep on my chest.
She’s been asleep for forty minutes, since right after the visit from the lactation consultant, and I haven’t moved because I don’t want to be the man who wakes the baby.
Sydney’s asleep too — propped up against the hospital pillows, her hand curled near my elbow, her head tipped slightly toward us.
The blinds are half-open, and the morning light slants across the foot of the bed.
Eden’s hand rests on my collarbone. Her whole hand. Five perfect fingers, and the entire thing is the size of my pinky.
I am—uh. I’m a wreck. In the calmest possible way. Every part of me is firing at half speed because the only thing that matters in this room is the six-pound-something baby breathing against my sternum, and everything else can wait.
She makes the little chirp she does when she’s about to wake up. Her mouth purses. I rub my thumb in a slow circle on her back, and she settles.
I’ve done this before. The twins were preemies—five weeks early, and I lived in the NICU for two weeks while Bree healed from the C-section and we figured out how to be parents through plexiglass.
I held them through hospital gowns and arm wraps, and the constant beeping of monitors.
I learned how to feed a baby who couldn’t latch yet.
I learned how to swaddle one-handed because the other hand was always supporting a head.
So yeah. I’ve done this. I know how to hold her. I know that the noise she’s making right now is fine, and the noise she made twenty minutes ago—the high one in her throat—was the noise that means something is happening to me and I’d like an adult to acknowledge it.
I acknowledged it. We’re good.
The door cracks open, and my mother slips in, her purse over one arm and a coffee in the other.
She sees Sydney asleep first. Then me. Then the baby on my chest, and her face does the same thing it did when she met Lily and Luke—her eyes go shiny, and her mouth tucks in at the corners like she’s trying not to cry.
“Oh, son.”
“Shh. Syd just fell asleep.”
She crosses to the bed on careful feet, sets the coffee on the rolling table, and leans down to look at Eden. I tilt her a little so she can see the baby’s face—the round cheek, the dark lashes, the corner of her mouth that’s still smushed into my shirt.
“Archer.”
“I know.”
“She’s so—”
“I know, Mom.”
She presses her hand over her mouth and doesn’t say anything for a minute.
Sydney’s mom is on a flight from Minneapolis right now, due in around six, and my dad is in the hallway because he stepped out to call my brother.
My mother stands there, looking at her granddaughter like she could burst with pride.
“Your father is going to lose his mind.”
“He already did. In the hallway. Twice.” I could hear him from here.
“What’s her middle name? You haven’t told me.”
“Sydney didn’t want to say until everyone was here.”
“Archer Daniel.”
“What?”
“Tell me her name.”
“Mom.”
“I am the woman who carried you. Tell me her middle name.”
I look down at Eden. Her eyelid twitches. The little fist on my collarbone uncurls slightly and recurls, and I think about Sydney, nine months pregnant, still teaching hip-hop to seniors and beautiful as ever.
I picked the middle name. Sydney let me. She said she’d pick the first one and I could pick the second, and I chose without telling her until the night before the induction.
“Eden Margaret,” I say.
My mother goes very still.
“Oh, Archie.”
“After Grandma.”
“You—”
“She would’ve loved Sydney, Mom. You said it yourself. So I—” I clear my throat. “So yeah. Margaret. After her.”
My mother sits down in the chair next to the bed, presses both hands over her face, and cries without making any sound, which is how my mother cries when she’s really crying—quiet, shoulders shaking.
Sydney stirs.
“Mm.” Her hand finds my arm. “What’d I miss?”
“My mother’s having a moment.”
“Why is your mother having a moment?” She rubs her eyes.
“I told her the middle name.”
Sydney’s eyes open all the way. She looks at my mom.
My mom looks at her. My mom puts her hand on Sydney’s hand on my arm, and Sydney’s eyes fill up because Sydney has cried at approximately everything since Eden was born—her own mother on FaceTime, the wrong flavor of Jell-O, a commercial for car insurance—and she lets her head fall back against the pillow and laughs wetly at the ceiling.
“Margaret was going to be the surprise, Connie. Archer ruined the surprise.”
“I asked,” my mother says defensively.
“She asked, Syd.”
“And you folded immediately.”
“She’s my mother.”
“Unbelievable.”
Eden makes the chirp again, louder this time. Working up to a real one. Her mouth opens, and her eyes blink, and I recognize that scrunch that means food, please, immediately, do not make me ask twice.
I sit up carefully. Slide one hand under her head, the other under her bottom. I lift her like I used to lift the twins and rest her against my shoulder. Her head turns into my neck. She quiets for a second, deciding whether to forgive me.
“You’re so good at this.”
I look down. Sydney’s watching me from the pillow, her eyes still wet, a small smile pulling at one side of her mouth.
“I’ve had practice.”
“I know you have. I’m just saying.”
“What?”
“You’re really good at this, Arch.”
I don’t have anything to say to that because saying I’ve been waiting my whole life to be good at this with you is the kind of line I can’t get through without losing it, and I’m trying to maintain in front of my mother.
I bend down and kiss the top of Sydney’s head instead.
Eden’s breathing goes warm and steady against my neck.
The door cracks open again.
“Daddy?”
It’s Lily.
She’s in the doorway in her good dress—the sparkly one Bree must have let her wear because Bree dropped them off a few minutes ago and stayed long enough to hug Sydney, meet Eden, and cry once in the hallway with my mother before leaving.
Lily’s holding a card she made. Luke is behind her with a book because, of course, Luke brought a book.
“Come here, bug.”
She tiptoes in, climbs onto the bed next to Sydney, careful of the IV, and Luke follows, standing at the rail because he is a man who assesses before he commits.
“That’s Eden,” Lily whispers.
“That’s Eden.”
“She’s smaller than I thought.”
“Babies are small, Lil.”
“I was small?”
“You were smaller. You fit in one of my hands.”
She considers this, pats Sydney’s leg through the blanket, and looks up at me.
“Daddy.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I hold her?”
“Sit with your back against the pillow. I’ll put her in your arms.”
She arranges herself, very serious, against the pillow next to Sydney. Tucks one arm into a cradle. Looks up at me with the focused expression she uses for important jobs. I bring Eden over and lower her into Lily’s arm, keeping one hand under Eden’s head to help support it.
Eden settles into her sister.
Lily doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move. Just looks down at the baby in her arm with her mouth slightly open, and I watch my older daughter meet my younger daughter, and yeah. Okay. I’m not maintaining anymore. My mother passes me a tissue without looking at me.
“Hi, Eden,” Lily whispers. “I’m Lily. I’m your big sister. I’m gonna teach you everything.”
Luke leans over the rail. “Including about colossal squid.”
“Especially about colossal squid,” Lily says very solemnly.
Sydney is laughing into her hand. I’m using the tissue. My mother’s gone again. Luke nods like he’s just witnessed an important transfer of family knowledge, which he has, and pushes his book onto the foot of the bed in case anyone needs it.
“Daddy.”
“Yeah, Luke.”
“Can I read to her?”
“Eden would love that, buddy.”
He climbs onto the bed at the foot, opens his book—about deep-sea creatures, naturally—and starts reading aloud in his careful, measured voice. The anglerfish lives in waters deeper than anywhere sunlight reaches. It uses a glowing lure to—
Eden, asleep in Lily’s arm, makes the smallest sound. A breath. Maybe a sigh.
Sydney reaches over and takes my hand.
I look at her. She’s crying. Smiling—watching one twin hold our newborn while the other twin reads to her.
“We did this, Arch.”
“We did.”
“All of it.”
“All of it.”
She lifts our joined hands and kisses my knuckles.
Luke reads about anglerfish. Lily holds Eden. Down the hall, my dad is laughing about something with a nurse, his voice carrying.
I look at the ceiling. Take a breath.
Yeah.
This is it. The feeling I’ve waited my whole life for. And it turns out, yeah, it was worth waiting for.
* * *
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