16. Heather #2
In the corner sits a rocking chair, its wood worn smooth by decades of use.
It belonged to his grandmother, the one Diane wanted to throw away after Eleanor’s funeral.
I saved it, had it refinished, placed it here where I can imagine rocking our daughter in the same chair that once held generations of his family.
Above the crib, in careful hand-painted letters I’ve spent three nights getting perfect: Eleanor.
Grayson stops in the doorway.
His breath leaves him in a rush, like someone has punched him in the chest. His hand tightens around mine almost painfully, and when I turn to look at him, tears are streaming down his face, his expression shattered with an emotion too big to name.
“You-” His voice breaks completely. “You named her after my grandmother?”
“She was the only person in your family who was ever kind to me.” I move to stand beside the crib, running my hand along the smooth wooden rail.
“Every dinner where your mother made me feel like an outsider, like I didn’t belong, like I wasn’t good enough for you, Eleanor would find me afterward.
She’d take my hand and tell me how glad she was that you’d found someone with spine. Someone who stood up to her daughter.”
Grayson makes a sound that isn’t quite a word.
“She called me on my birthday every year until she died.” I smile at the memory, at the way Eleanor’s voice always sounded like warmth, like welcome.
“She’d sing happy birthday completely off-key, and then she’d tell me stories about you as a little boy.
She loved you so much, Grayson. And she made me feel like I was part of the family when no one else did. ”
He can’t speak. Tears are streaming down his face, and he isn’t even trying to wipe them away, just letting them fall while his whole body trembles with the force of what he’s feeling.
“Eleanor Grace,” I say softly. “If that’s okay with you.”
He crosses the room in three steps and pulls me into his arms.
His whole body is shaking, sobs breaking out of him in waves, and I hold him as best I can with my belly between us. His face presses into my neck, hot tears soaking into my skin, and I run my fingers through his hair and let him cry.
“It’s perfect,” he manages finally, his voice cracking on every word. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect. This is-”
“I’m not perfect.”
“You’re perfect for me.” He pulls back, cups my face in his trembling hands, wipes my tears with his thumbs even though his own face is still wet.
“You’ve always been perfect for me, Heather.
And I almost lost you because I forgot that.
Because I let fear and doubt and my mother’s poison make me forget everything I knew about who you are. ”
“You didn’t lose me.”
“I almost did.” His voice is raw, scraped clean of any pretense. “I came so close.”
“Almost isn’t the same as did.” I take his hands and press them to my belly, to the place where Eleanor is kicking up a storm, as if she knows her father is finally here, finally home. “Feel that? She knows you’re here.”
He drops to his knees in front of me.
Both hands spread across my stomach, his forehead pressed to the place where our daughter is moving beneath my skin. His shoulders shake with sobs he can’t control, his breath coming in ragged gasps against my belly.
“Hi, baby girl,” he whispers. “Hi, Eleanor. I’m your dad.
” Another sob. “I’m so sorry I almost missed this.
I’m so sorry I almost ruined everything.
” His voice breaks completely, and he has to stop, has to just breathe against me for a moment before he can continue.
“But I’m here now. And I’m never leaving again. I promise you. I promise both of you.”
I run my fingers through his hair, watching him talk to our daughter, watching him cry against my belly, and I feel something I thought was gone forever stirring back to life in my chest.
Hope.
Not the fragile kind, the kind that shatters at the first sign of trouble.
The kind that’s been tested and broken and rebuilt stronger than before.
***
We don’t make it to the bedroom right away.
We stand in the nursery doorway, his hands on my waist, both of us tear-streaked and trembling, and then he’s kissing me. Slow and deep, his mouth tasting like salt from both our tears, his hands gentle on my body like I’m something precious.
I pull him toward our bedroom without breaking the kiss, walking backward down the hallway, trusting him to guide us safely.
Our bedroom, our bed, the sheets that still smell faintly like my perfume because he never washed them, because he wanted to hold onto whatever he could, because sleeping in the ghost of my scent was the closest he could get to having me back.
This is different from the hotel. That was reclamation. Me taking back what was mine, demanding what I needed, asserting control over a body and a situation that had felt out of my control for too long. This is something else entirely.
This is homecoming.
“I missed you,” I whisper against his mouth, the words catching in my throat. “I missed you so much.”
“I’m here.” He lays me back on the bed, his movements careful, mindful of my belly, mindful of the life we’d created together. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
We move together slowly, gently, learning each other again. He touches me like I’m a miracle, his hands reverent on every curve and angle, mapping the changes pregnancy has made with fingers that tremble slightly against my skin.
“You’re incredible,” he murmurs, his mouth tracing a path along my collarbone. “Growing her. Carrying her. Being brave enough to let me back in when I gave you every reason not to.”
“Being brave isn’t the same as not being scared,” I admit, my voice catching.
“I know.” He kisses my forehead, my cheeks, my lips. “That’s what makes it brave.”
I tell him what I need in whispers instead of commands, because in this house, in this bed, I don’t have to perform strength anymore. Being soft with him again is its own kind of taking back control. Letting him see the tender parts I’ve been protecting, the vulnerability I’ve been afraid to show.
“I love you,” he says against my skin, the words repeated like a prayer or a promise or a spell that could hold us together through anything. “I love you. I love you.”
“I know.” I pull him closer, as close as he can get. “Show me.”
He does.
Slow and tender, his eyes on mine, both of us crying at some point without knowing exactly when it starts, tears sliding down our temples and into the pillows.
Our wedding rings are back on the nightstand where they belong, mine returned, his never removed.
His hand finds mine, our fingers intertwining, and we hold on while we move together.
Afterward, my body pressed along the length of his, his palm spread over my belly like a signature on a contract, like a promise written in skin and warmth, I listen to his heartbeat slow beneath my ear.
“Stay,” I say.
“Always.”
And I believe him.
***
We’re tangled in our own bed for the first time in months, his arms around me from behind, his hands on my belly where Eleanor is finally settling down, when I feel something shift.
Not a kick. Not movement.
Something else.
“Grayson.”
“Mm?”
“I think my water just broke.”
His hand flies to my stomach. The sheets beneath me are wet, spreading.
“It’s too early-”
“I know.”
“The hospital is twenty minutes-”
“I know!”
We stare at each other for one suspended moment.
Then he’s out of bed, grabbing pants, tripping over the rug in his haste, looking exactly like the panicked first-time father I always knew he’d be.
“The bag - where’s the bag-”
“Closet. Already packed.”
“The car seat-”
“Installed last week.”
“The - the phone - I need to call someone-”
“Grayson.” I catch his arm as he spins past me. “Breathe.”
He stops. Looks at me. Takes a breath.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay. I’m breathing.”
“Good. Now help me up.”
He does, his hands steady now, and I lean into him as another contraction starts to build.
“Well,” I say, and despite everything - the terror, the joy, the absurdity of this timing - I start to laugh. “At least we had dessert first.”
He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Then he’s laughing too, both of us laughing and crying and holding onto each other in our bedroom while our daughter decides to make her entrance three weeks early.
“Move, move, move!”
We move.