26. Harper
HARPER
Ginger’s mid-rinse in the bath when she stops scrubbing shampoo out of her own hair long enough to point directly at my stomach.
“Your tummy’s getting big.”
I glance down at myself, at the curve that’s gone from barely noticeable to genuinely visible over the last couple of weeks, and I should have expected this conversation sooner than sixteen weeks in, honestly.
“It is,” I say. “That’s the baby. Growing.”
Ginger’s whole face changes, curiosity overtaking the half-finished bath entirely. “The baby’s in there? Right now?”
“Right now.”
“How’d it get in there?”
I choke slightly on absolutely nothing. “That’s a conversation for when you’re older.”
“Older like next year?”
“Older like considerably more than next year.”
She accepts this with the particular grace of a kid who’s learned some questions get answers and some just get deflected, and moves straight on to the next one without missing a beat.
“Does it hurt? Having a whole baby in your tummy?”
“Not really. Sometimes my back aches a little. Mostly it’s just strange, feeling something move around in there that isn’t me.”
“It moves?”
“A little. You’ll be able to feel it soon, if you put your hand right here.”
She presses her wet palm flat against my stomach with total concentration, waiting, disappointed when nothing happens on command. “I don’t feel anything.”
“It’s still pretty small. Give it a few more weeks.”
“Okay.” She goes back to rinsing her hair, apparently satisfied for exactly ninety seconds before the next question surfaces. “Is it going to take my room?”
“No, honey. The baby’s getting its own room. Nobody’s taking yours.”
“Good. Because I just got my room how I like it.” She says this with the gravity of someone discussing a major real estate decision rather than a collection of stuffed animals and one lopsided dinosaur poster. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Can you find out?”
“We could. We decided to wait and be surprised.”
Ginger considers this decision with visible skepticism, clearly finding the whole concept of voluntary suspense baffling. “That seems hard.”
“It is a little hard.”
“I’d want to know right away.” She dunks her head briefly, resurfacing with water streaming down her face. “Can it hear us right now?”
“Actually, yes. Its ears are working by now, I think. It can probably hear your voice.”
Ginger’s eyes go enormous at that information, and she leans down toward my stomach with the total seriousness of a diplomat addressing a foreign dignitary.
“Hi, baby. It’s me. Ginger. I’m going to be your big sister, and I already know how to push swings really high, so you’re going to like me a lot. ”
“Very compelling introduction.”
“I practiced it a little.” She says this with no embarrassment at all, as if rehearsing speeches for an unborn sibling were a perfectly reasonable use of her time. “Does it know Viktor’s voice too? Or just yours?”
“Probably both, actually. He talks to it sometimes.”
“He does?”
“When he thinks I’m not paying attention. He’ll put his hand on my stomach and just talk, like it’s already listening.”
Ginger considers this information with visible delight, filing it away for later use, no doubt. “What does he say?”
“I don’t always hear all of it. Mostly that he can’t wait to meet them, and that they’re already loved, whoever they turn out to be.”
Her face does something soft and pleased at that, and she doesn’t ask another question for a full thirty seconds, which for Ginger might be a personal record.
I laugh, helpless, and pull her back up before she inhales bathwater mid-introduction, and she lets herself be pulled with the easy trust that’s taken months to build between us, unbothered by the interruption to her speech.
That night, once she’s in pajamas and stalling bedtime with the usual determination, she corners Viktor in the hallway with a fresh round of questions that apparently didn’t get fully resolved during bath time.
“Does the baby have a name yet?”
“Not yet,” Viktor says, crouching down to her level without being asked, the way he’s done since practically the first week. “We’re still deciding.”
“Can I pick it?”
“You can suggest names. We’ll consider all serious submissions.”
“What if I want to name it Dragon?”
“That would be considered, and then almost certainly declined, but you’re welcome to submit it formally.”
Ginger seems satisfied by the process itself more than the likely outcome and moves on without missing a beat. “Will the baby like me?”
Viktor’s expression softens at that, like the question landed somewhere more tender than the ones before it.
“The baby’s going to love you,” he says, steady, certain. “You’re going to be the first person it really knows outside me and your aunt Harper. Big sisters are important. Some of the most important people a baby ever has.”
“More important than parents?”
“Differently important. Parents keep you safe and fed and make you do homework. Big sisters teach you the actually interesting stuff. How to have fun. What’s worth being scared of and what isn’t.”
“Like the dark isn’t actually scary, but the crawl space under the porch definitely is.”
“Exactly like that.”
Ginger nods, clearly filing this new job description away with real seriousness, already recalibrating her sense of self around the upcoming promotion. “Will you still read to me every night? Even with the baby here?”
“Every night,” Viktor says, without hesitation, without needing a second to consider it. “That doesn’t change because someone new joins the family. If anything, you’ll probably end up reading to the baby yourself eventually, once it’s old enough to sit still for a story.”
“I’m a good reader.”
“You are. I’ve heard you practicing on your stuffed animals.”
Ginger looks briefly betrayed at being caught, then decides to let it go, and finally allows herself to be steered toward her actual bedroom instead of the hallway, chattering the entire way about names she’s already rejecting for being, in her words, boring.
I watch the whole exchange from the top of the stairs, unnoticed, and my chest goes tight and warm at once, watching a man who once told me plainly he never expected to want children answer every single one of a six-year-old’s questions like each answer actually mattered to him.
He doesn’t perform patience. He isn’t managing her the way some adults manage children, waiting them out until the questions stop.
He’s actually present for every single one, treating the crawl space under the porch and the baby’s potential name with equal weight, equal care.
Once she’s finally asleep, book abandoned halfway through the seventh chapter, Viktor finds me still standing at the top of the stairs.
“How much of that did you hear?”
“Most of it. The crawl space bit especially.”
“She’s not wrong. That crawl space is genuinely unsettling.” He leans against the wall beside me, tired in the particular way that comes from answering forty consecutive questions from a six-year-old with total sincerity. “She’s going to be a good big sister. Bossy, probably. But good.”
“You’re going to be a good dad.”
He goes quiet at that, studying me for a long moment before answering. “I hope so,” he says finally. “I didn’t have much of a model for it, growing up. I’m mostly figuring it out as I go, based on what feels right instead of what I actually know.”
“For what it’s worth, what feels right to you looks a lot like actually being a good father.”
He kisses my temple, unhurried, grateful in a way that doesn’t need words attached to it, and we stand there together at the top of the stairs a while longer, listening to the quiet house settle around a family that’s grown considerably bigger than either of us originally planned for, in every sense that matters.
“For what it’s worth,” I say eventually, “watching you tonight, I don’t think you need a model. I think you’re just naturally good at this part, whether you had one or not.”
“You’re biased. You’re carrying my child.”
“I’m allowed to be biased and also correct.”