Epilogue #2
Then Tobias appears beside Penny. “Ally! I picked both. I paid twice.”
“You still can’t pick both, buddy.”
“Why?”
“Because then you can’t lose.”
His forehead wrinkles. “I don’t want to lose.”
Ryan laughs quietly beside me.
“You’re supposed to pick what you think the baby is,” I say.
Tobias looks thoughtful. “I think it’s a baby.”
For a second nobody says anything. Then Danny starts laughing. “He’s got us there.”
Tobias looks pleased with himself.
“What do you want?” I ask him.
“A frog.”
“Toby.”
“For the baby?”
“Yes.” I laugh. “I mean a boy or a girl.”
He shrugs. “Either. Girls catch frogs. And boys catch frogs. So either.”
My eyes sting. “Either,” I agree, looking at Ryan, who’s smiling. T
hen another contraction begins, and I must make a face, because Ryan is already moving and Penny sees it too.
“We’ll let you go.” Becca leans closer.
“Love you.”
“Love you.” Danny lifts his hand.
“We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Tobias says it loud enough for the whole waiting room. “Ya tebya lyublyu!”
My eyes fill. “Ya tebya lyublyu.”
Ryan takes the phone from me. “We’ll update you,” he says, and
Penny nods. “We’re right outside.”
_
It hits me somewhere in the long middle hours, between contractions, when I’m too tired to hold it back. Cassandra is holding me, and I’m crying about things I have no way to know.
“I want my mommy.” The word comes from somewhere so deep inside me that for a second I’m not here anymore. I’m not eighteen. I’m not in a hospital. I’m not somebody’s mother yet. I’m just Mom’s little girl, and I want her. “I want my mommy.”
Cassandra makes a broken sound and wraps both arms around me. “I know, baby.”
Darla’s fingers tighten around mine. Ryan presses his mouth to my shoulder.
“She should be here,” I say. “She should be holding my hand. She should be telling me what it was like when she had me.” My chest heaves. “I never asked her.”
“Oh, Ally.”
“I never asked. I should have. I should’ve asked her everything.”
Cassandra pulls back enough to look at me, tears covering her face, and cups my cheeks. “You were her daughter. Listen to me. You were supposed to be her daughter. That’s all. You weren’t supposed to sit beside your mother and memorize her because someday she wouldn’t be here to tell you again.”
I break, completely. “I don’t remember enough.”
“You remember her.”
“Not enough.”
“It will never feel like enough.” My hand goes to my stomach, and the grief shifts — gets bigger — because Mom isn’t only missing this for me. “She doesn’t get to meet our baby. She should get to know if it’s a boy or a girl. She should get to hold them. She should get to be a grandma.”
Cassandra cries harder. Darla turns away, wiping her eyes. “She should be here.”
“She should,” Cassandra says.
Ryan’s arm comes around me, and when I look past him, Walter is crying too. He looks at me, at Cassandra, at Darla — and something passes across his face. He doesn’t say anything. He just turns and leaves. I barely register it, because another contraction is starting.
Nobody tells me she’s watching. Nobody tells me she’s here in some other way. Nobody tells me this happened for a reason. My mother is gone. She should be here. There’s nothing beautiful about that.
Darla just presses her hand into my back and says, “You don’t have to stop needing her. You can miss her. You can cry for her. You can want your mother every second of this. And you can still bring your baby here.”
The contraction finally fades and I collapse against Ryan. I don’t know how long we stay like that. Then the door opens, and I don’t look up — until I hear her.
“Oh, my sweet girl.” Katya.
Walter stands behind her, and tucked carefully against her chest is a tiny bundle of blue and cream fabric. I know it instantly. But she doesn’t bring it to me. She sets it gently on the chair beside her purse, and comes straight to me instead, gathering me against her.
“I want my mom.”
“I know, little love.”
“I want her so bad.”
“I know.” One hand cradles the back of my head, and she rocks me, slowly, gently.
“She should be here when our baby comes,” I say. “It’s not fair.”
She pulls back and cups my face, and her answer is immediate, certain. “No. It is not fair.” Her thumb wipes beneath my eye. “You are allowed to want your mommy. You are always allowed to want your mommy.”
Cassandra’s hand stays on my back. Darla stays beside me. Ryan never lets go. Walter comes back into the room and quietly takes his place beside his son. Nobody moves away because Katya came in. Nobody tries to fill Mom’s place. They just make room around it.
When my breathing finally slows, I look toward the chair. “You brought it.”
“Of course I brought it.”
The pelenashka. I know every piece of it.
The faded blue fabric came from one of Mom’s shirts — the soft one she wore at the lake.
Bare feet, hair pulled up, a book open in her lap while Tobias chased frogs and I pretended I wasn’t watching Ryan next door.
Not the ones she wore to dinners, or when Dad had people over, or when she had to dress like Roman O’Toole’s wife.
Just Mom. Another piece came from the blanket that used to live on the back of our couch — the one Tobias crawled under with her, the one I wrapped myself in and cried into until I couldn’t anymore after she was gone.
Months ago, Katya sat with me while I chose the pieces, and made them into this. For our baby.
“I forgot it,” I say, crying again.
“No. You had other things to think about today. So I remembered for you.” She kisses my fingers. “You never have to thank me for this.”
Another contraction begins. Ryan moves closer, Darla stands, Cassandra reaches for me, Katya keeps my hand — and this time, when the pain comes, I let every one of them help me through it.
By the time Darla tells me we’re close, I don’t believe her. I’ve lost all sense of time. The only things that exist are the people around me and the baby I’m trying so hard to bring into the world.
“Again,” Darla says gently.
“I don’t have anything left.”
“You do.” Ryan takes my face in his hands. He’s exhausted, his hair a mess from running his hands through it, his eyes red. He has never looked more beautiful to me.
“Look at me. There she is. That’s my girl.” His forehead rests against mine. “You don’t have to do the next hour. You don’t have to do the next ten minutes. Just stay here with me. Right here.”
I grip his wrists and nod. “It hurts. I’m scared.”
“I know. We’re not going there.” His eyes hold mine. “Stay with me.”
The contraction hits. I push, and the pain tears through me, and Ryan tells me I’m doing it, and Cassandra cries beside me, and Katya tells me I’m strong, and Darla tells me exactly when to breathe and when to push again, and Walter’s hand is on Ryan’s shoulder. Again. Again. Again.
“I can’t!”
Ryan’s forehead presses to mine. “You are. You’re bringing our baby here. Our baby, Ally.” His voice breaks. “Bring them here.”
I push. I scream. I think I call for Mom again.
Then everything changes. A cry fills the room — tiny, sharp, angry, perfect. My whole body goes still. Ryan stops breathing beside me.
“It’s a girl.”
A girl. I stare at Ryan, his eyes going wide. “A girl?”
The nurse smiles. “You have a daughter.”
Ryan makes a sound I’ve never heard from him before, half laugh, half sob. Then she’s on me — warm, wet, furious, tiny. My daughter.
She cries against my chest, and I press my hand to her tiny back, and my voice breaks. “Hi. Hi, baby.”
Ryan is crying openly beside me — not trying to hide it, not wiping it away, just staring at her.
I touch his face. “Ryan. We have a daughter.”
He nods, another tear falling. “We have a daughter.”
His hand covers her tiny back so carefully, like the whole world might disappear if he presses too hard.
“Does she have a name?” the nurse asks softly.
Ryan looks at me. We picked two — one for either answer. But looking down at the tiny girl screaming against my chest, there is only one name in the world.
“Piper.” Ryan’s face crumples. “Piper Jane.”
Mom. I close my eyes for just a second, then kiss my daughter’s head. “Piper Jane Harrington.”
Cassandra sobs. Darla is crying. Katya covers her mouth. Walter bows his head. Ryan kisses my forehead, then Piper’s, then mine again.
“She’s here.”
Tobias comes in first. Nobody has to discuss it.
Cassandra goes to get him once Piper and I are settled, and Ryan sits beside me on the bed with his arm around my shoulders while Piper sleeps against my chest. She’s been weighed, measured, checked.
Seven pounds, eight ounces. A head full of soft hair.
Ten fingers, ten toes — Ryan checked those himself, more than once.
The door opens. Tobias steps inside and stops. His eyes don’t go to Piper. They go to me. “Ally? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, buddy.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
His shoulders drop. Then he looks at Ryan. “Are you okay?”
Ryan smiles. “Yeah, dude.”
“You cried.”
Ryan laughs softly. “Yeah.”
“A lot?”
“A lot.”
Tobias nods, like that’s what he expected. Then he looks at Piper, and his whole face changes. “That’s the baby?”
“That’s the baby.”
“What is it?”
“A girl.”
His eyes get huge. He comes closer, to the side of the bed, slowly, carefully, all the wild energy that usually lives inside him disappearing. “What is her name?”
“Piper Jane.”
He stops. “Jane?”
I nod. “Like Mommy.”
His eyes move back to the baby. “Piper Jane. She’s really little.”
“She is.”
“Is she okay?”
Ryan’s voice gets rough. “She’s perfect.”
Tobias looks at me. “Can she hear me?”
“She can.”
He leans closer. “Privet, malysh.” My eyes fill. He smiles at her. “I’m Uncle Tobias. I told you already.” A laugh breaks through the tears in my throat. “Can I hold her?”
“Absolutely.” Ryan gets the chair, Cassandra brings pillows, and Tobias climbs up and sits very straight while Ryan kneels beside him. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Ryan settles Piper carefully into his arms. “Keep this arm right there. And I’ve got her too.”
“I know,” Tobias says.
“I know you know.” T