Epilogue #5
Becca shakes her head. “No.” She looks at Ally. “You open it.”
Ally reaches into the bag and pulls the tissue paper aside, then stops. I see the blanket before she gets it completely out — butterflies, soft watercolor ones scattered across pale fabric, and little rainbows between them.
Ally looks at Becca, whose eyes fill. “I saw the butterflies first.” Her thumb moves unconsciously over the bracelet at her wrist. “The forget-me-nots and baby’s breath on this are for ours. But I wanted Piper to have butterflies that weren’t sad.”
Danny’s hand closes around the back of her neck. “I wanted her to have happy ones.” Ally presses the blanket against her chest. “And then Danny found the one with rainbows.”
Danny shrugs, his eyes red. “I liked it.”
“He said the group baby needed both,” Becca says.
I look down at Piper. “The group baby?”
Danny looks at me like I’m stupid. “Obviously.”
A laugh breaks out of Ally.
Becca smiles through her tears. “She’s the first.”
Then her smile wavers. There it is. The other truth. Their baby should have been the first. Danny’s hand slides from her neck to her shoulder, and Becca looks at him. He doesn’t look away.
“We can be happy about this,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
“And still miss ours.”
Her eyes close. “I know.”
He kisses her forehead. When she opens them again, she looks at Piper. “I do. I am so fucking happy you’re here.”
From the other side of the room: “One dollar.”
Becca starts laughing through her tears. Tobias holds out his hand, and Becca digs into her pocket, but Danny stops her. “I’ve got it.”
He gives Tobias a dollar. Tobias looks at Becca. “You said it.”
“We share finances,” Danny says.
Tobias accepts this. Then Danny takes another dollar from his wallet and puts it in Tobias’s hand. Tobias looks confused. “You didn’t say one.”
“Advance payment.”
Becca laughs harder.
I take the blanket from Ally and unfold it. “Put her in it?”
Becca’s expression goes soft. “Yeah?”
I lay the blanket across my lap, Danny brings Piper over, and together Becca and I tuck it around her — butterflies across her chest, a little rainbow near her tiny fist. Becca touches it, then her butterfly bracelet.
Danny stands behind her with both arms around her waist, his chin resting on the top of her head. Piper sleeps.
Becca looks at her for a long time. Then at Ally. “She’s perfect.”
“She is.”
Becca looks at me. “You know we’re all going to spoil the shit out of her.”
“One dollar,” Tobias says.
Danny reaches for his wallet again. “I’m going to need more cash.”
And for a while, nobody moves. My daughter sleeps wrapped in butterflies and rainbows from Danny and Becca.
The pelenashka Katya made from Jane’s clothes and blankets rests with Piper’s things.
Tobias sits beside the bassinet, keeping watch like it’s his job.
Kaid and Cat are arguing quietly over who won the betting pool.
Penny is tucked beneath X’s arm. Bella is leaned against Iz.
Our parents fill every spare chair and half the hallway. Ally is beside me, her hand in mine.
Piper Jane has been alive for less than a day.
She has no idea who any of these people are yet.
She doesn’t know how far they drove, or how many flights they took, or how long they sat in that waiting room, or how many of them cried the first time they held her.
She doesn’t know what it cost some of them to get here, or what they’re carrying while they love her.
Someday she will. For now, she just sleeps. Safe. Wrapped in pieces of all of us.
Four Years Later
Ally
There is a penny in Piper’s birthday cake. Not on it. Inside it.
I know this because my four-year-old daughter is standing on one of the kitchen chairs with both hands tucked behind her back, staring at the suspicious hole in the green buttercream like she’s never seen this cake before in her life.
Her copper-red hair is already escaping the braids I spent twenty minutes fighting it into this morning — one hanging on through sheer determination, the other mostly surrendered, leaving half her hair loose around her face.
There’s frosting on her cheek. I haven’t cut the cake.
“Piper Jane.”
“Yes, Mommy?”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
Tobias snorts from the other side of the island. I look at him, and he immediately shoves another strawberry into his mouth. The strawberries are for the party. He’s eaten at least ten.
“Something funny?” He shakes his head while chewing. “Then stop eating those.”
He reaches for another one, and I slap his hand away. “Ally.”
“They’re for the party.”
“The party is here.”
“That doesn’t make them yours.”
“I live here.”
“So do I.”
“Exactly. Our strawberries.”
Ten. He’s ten years old. Sometimes that still hits me at the weirdest times.
Not the birthdays. Not the first days of school.
Not when I have to buy another pair of shoes because his feet apparently grow overnight.
It’s this. Him standing in our kitchen in a T-shirt and shorts, hair falling into his eyes because he refuses to let anyone cut it, eating strawberries he’s been explicitly told not to eat.
His soccer cleats are by the back door. His backpack is dumped beside the stairs.
There’s a half-finished science project spread across the dining room table, and three boys from school are coming to Piper’s party before sleeping over tonight.
Four boys, apparently — he informed me yesterday that one of them found out about the sleepover and leaving him out would be “socially shitty,” then immediately handed Piper a dollar.
I look back at my daughter. “Hands.” She slowly brings one around. Empty. “The other one.” Also empty. She smiles. I narrow my eyes. “What is in the cake?”
Her eyes flick toward Tobias, who looks at the ceiling. “Don’t tell.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were gonna tell with your face.”
“My face doesn’t talk.”
“Your face talks a lot.”
“Tobias.” He looks at me. “Piper.” She looks at me. “The cake.”
She sighs. Deeply. Like I’m exhausting. “My penny.”
I stare at her. “You put a penny in your birthday cake? Why?”
Her little forehead wrinkles. “For luck.”
Apparently I’m stupid. “Okay. Why does the lucky penny need to be inside the cake?”
“So everybody gets some.”
Tobias chokes on his strawberry. I close my eyes. “That’s not how pennies work.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, baby. Somebody could choke on it.”
Her face changes instantly. “They can’t eat my penny.”
“No. They absolutely cannot.”
She whips around toward the cake. “My penny!”
I catch her around the waist before both hands go directly into the frosting. “I’ll get it.”
Tobias slides off his stool. “Back corner.”
My head turns slowly. “You knew?”
“I saw her do it.”
“And you didn’t stop her?”
He shrugs. “She said it was lucky.”
“You’re ten.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re supposed to have more common sense than the four-year-old.”
“That feels like a lot of pressure.”
I point toward the back door. “Take the chips outside.”
He grabs the bowl from the counter, and I turn back to the cake and carefully dig into the corner with a butter knife. It doesn’t take long. The penny comes out covered in green buttercream.
Piper gasps. “My lucky!”
“Your choking hazard.”
I wash it under the faucet, dry it with a paper towel, and drop it into her waiting palm.
She closes both hands around it. “Still lucky?”
“Yes.”
“Even after cake?”
I look down at the penny. And something old brushes against my ribs. A lake. A boy. A penny. Luck. A version of myself who couldn’t imagine this kitchen because she couldn’t imagine getting far enough to have one.
I look back at Piper. “Maybe it’s luckier now.”
She smiles and kisses the penny before shoving it into the tiny pocket on the front of her dress.
Louise made that too — soft green fabric, tiny embroidered flowers around the hem, a little Piper Jane label sewn inside, because somewhere over the last four years Louise Rorke went from making clothes for my daughter because she couldn’t help herself to building an entire children’s clothing line named after her.
The first time she showed me the label, I cried.
Piper screamed because her name was inside her dress. Very different reactions.
She pats the pocket. “Can’t lose it.”
“You’re not putting it in anything else we’re eating.”
“No.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” Then she holds her hand toward Tobias. “Pozhaluysta.”
He’s almost through the back door. He stops. Looks at her. Looks at the strawberries. Then at me. “Don’t.”
“You created this.”
“She said please.”
“In Russian.”
“Still please.”
Piper wiggles her fingers. “Pozhaluysta.”
Tobias sighs, sets the chips down, takes a strawberry from the tray, and hands it to her.
“Spasibo.”
“Good.”
“Merci.”
He stares at her. “You already thanked me.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you do it again?”
“Cause I speak French and Russian."
“You cannot speak both.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Okay. Say something.”
She takes a bite of her strawberry. “Grenouille.”
He closes his eyes. I laugh. “That doesn’t count.”
“Grenouille.”
“That’s frog.”
“I know.”
“That’s one word.”
“I know lots.”
“Then say something else.”
Piper looks at him. Then at me. Then down at my stomach. She abandons the argument and presses both hands against the curve beneath my dress. “Baby.”
Tobias points at her. “That’s English.”
“I know.”
“You’re hopeless.”
At five months, there’s no hiding this baby even if I wanted to.
I don’t. I spent too much of my first pregnancy trying to disappear.
This one gets dresses stretched over my stomach.
Pictures. People touching my belly because I invite them to.
Piper kissing it whenever she feels like it.
Tobias talking directly into it in languages neither Ryan nor I understand because he thinks it’s hilarious that our unborn child might learn Russian before we do.
Piper presses her ear against me. “Is the baby awake?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ask.”
“Ask who?”
She lifts her head and gives me a look. “The baby.”