38.
LEONARDO VILLAR
We tell Manuela after twelve weeks.
Olívia wants to wait.
I agree.
Even though I almost reveal it twice by accident.
The first time, Manuela asks why her mother isn’t drinking wine.
The second, she finds prenatal vitamins.
Olívia comes up with better excuses.
When we finally sit down with her, my daughter looks at both of us.
“You have secret faces.”
“We need to tell you something,” Olívia says.
“You’re traveling without me?”
“No.”
“Buying another house?”
“No.”
“You’re pregnant?”
Complete silence.
“How do you know?”
Manuela rolls her eyes.
“She sleeps all the time, threw up in the garden, and you won’t let her carry anything.”
Olívia looks at me.
“Excellent discretion.”
“I didn’t know she was watching.”
“I’m a child, not blind.”
“So…” Olívia begins. “Yes.”
Manuela goes still.
“There’s a baby?”
“There is.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“One?”
“One,” I answer.
The ultrasound confirmed that.
She looks at Olívia’s still mostly flat stomach.
“It’s in there?”
“Yes.”
“Boy or girl?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Can I choose?”
“That is not how this works.”
“I want a girl.”
“It might be a boy.”
“Then I want that too.”
She comes closer.
“Can I touch?”
Olívia takes her hand and puts it over her stomach.
Manuela waits.
“It didn’t move.”
“Too early.”
“When does it come out?”
“In a few months.”
“A lot?”
“About six.”
“That’s almost a year.”
“It is not,” I say.
“For a kid, it is.”
She rests her face against Olívia’s stomach.
“Hi, baby. I’m your sister.”
Olívia starts crying.
“You cry a lot now,” Manuela says.
“Hormones.”
“What are those?”
“Pregnancy things.”
“Is the baby going to need surgery?”
The question changes the room.
Olívia holds her hand.
“We don’t know of any problem.”
“Your heart condition developed because of several factors,” I explain. “The doctors will watch the baby very closely.”
“Could it have the same thing?”
“There may be some risk,” Olívia says honestly. “But everything looks good so far.”
Manuela thinks.
“If it does, I’ll help.”
My throat tightens.
“You’ll help either way.”
She runs for paper.
Returns with a list of names.
Most belong to cartoon characters.
“Dragon is not a name,” Olívia says.
“It’s for a boy.”
“No.”
“Bento Two?”
“Also no.”
“Leonardo?”
I look at my wife.
“There is already one.”
“There can be two.”
“Confusing.”
“Then Leo.”
“Still confusing.”
Over the following months, Manuela talks to the baby every day.
So do I.
Usually when Olívia is asleep.
One night, she opens her eyes.
“Are you negotiating with the baby?”
“Explaining schedules.”
“It does not understand you.”
“Needs to start early.”
“No spreadsheet.”
“There is no spreadsheet.”
Lie.
There is one.
I never show it to her.
The pregnancy progresses well.
Every appointment scares me.
The first fetal echocardiogram takes forty minutes.
Forty minutes during which I barely breathe.
The physician finishes.
“The heart is developing normally.”
Olívia squeezes my hand.
“Normally?”
“We do not see any structural abnormalities.”
I cry again.
I am beginning to accept that this happens now.
In the car, Olívia rests her head on my shoulder.
“Relieved?”
“Yes.”
“Still scared?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
“One day.”
“At a time.”
The baby is a girl.
Manuela celebrates.
“I asked.”
“That is not why.”
“You don’t know that.”
It takes weeks to choose a name.
Laura.
Marta cries.
álvaro builds the crib.
I prepare the nursery.
I ask before every decision.
Olívia approves half.
Changes the rest.
I do not argue.
Much.
Sometimes I go into the nursery alone.
Look at the crib.
Imagine a daughter I will know from the first second.
The joy comes with guilt.
I tell Helena.
“Loving Laura from pregnancy does not diminish Manuela.”
“It feels unfair.”
“It would be unfair to withhold from one daughter what you can offer because you failed to offer it to another.”
“Manuela may feel it.”
“Then talk to her.”
I do.
I find her drawing in the office.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“Are you happy about Laura?”
“Yes.”
“And sad?”
“A little.”
“Why?”
“She’ll have you from when she’s a baby.”
The honesty goes through me.
“That makes me sad too.”
“Are you going to love her more?”
“Never.”
“How do you know?”
“Because love doesn’t divide. It grows.”
“That sounds like a greeting card.”
“Your mother would say the same thing.”
“Then definitely.”
I sit beside her.
“Nothing I experience with Laura will erase what I missed with you.”
“But you’ll get to do it with her.”
“Yes.”
“That’s good.”
“It is.”
“Just don’t forget our things.”
“Never.”
“The dragon story is ours.”
“Forever.”
She accepts that.
Then writes LAURA beside DAD on the office door.
Our family grows before the baby is even born.