48. Avery #2
“We will.” Cruz has nothing to ask about trust. The system makes one kind of betrayal harder, which is all the policy needs to do. He leaves the folder in my hands and returns to the grill, where Bones has apparently offended the meat.
Tessa takes one look at my face, slides the cake farther from June, and refills my water. “That file will keep until Monday. Roxanne is about to find out what Gage did to the second tray, and you’ll want to be watching for that.”
“The tray.” I tuck the folder into my purse beside a page that now carries three marks and look toward the smoke rising beneath Gage’s tongs. “I have spent enough of my life discussing what men failed to read.”
Roxanne reaches the grill, swears at the blackened food, and confiscates the tongs while Gage insists fire is supposed to be involved.
The argument grows until even Cruz moves his chair away from the smoke.
I laugh with June and Tessa simply because the men are ridiculous.
When Declan finally sits after I point to the empty chair beside me, he accepts the lemonade I pour and tells Gage the meat can be used as building material.
Roxanne hears him and makes him eat one piece.
We leave in separate vehicles after sunset.
The new car-seat base for Declan’s truck waits in my living room beside the manual, a fitting-station checklist, and the carrier from my car.
My original base passed its inspection after our first installation fight; Declan bought the second from the same manufacturer under the co-parent budget we agreed to in writing, then left it unopened until we could inspect every label together.
Dating Declan now involves comparing model numbers instead of flowers, and I find that more reassuring than flowers.
Declan locks his weapons inside the garage box, uses the front-door key on my text from the driveway, and carries the base back outside when I tell him we are doing the installation tonight instead of Saturday.
The hospital bag is packed. The birth plan is signed.
The fourth line says second base, and I refuse to let our child arrive while his truck contains nothing but loose blankets and confidence.
“The recline foot has to match the vehicle seat,” I say, standing beside the open rear door while Declan kneels inside the cab. “The checklist says start in position two.”
“The manual says position three for this seat angle.” He turns the booklet toward me, his phone light clipped above the page. “Truck bench, illustration C.”
“Illustration C is for the middle position. You are behind the passenger seat.”
Declan squints at the drawing, scrolls through the screen reader, and points to the tiny outline of a headrest. “That is a passenger seat.”
“That is a badly drawn steering wheel.” I take the manual, rotate it, and discover we are both looking at the French side.
The same mistake caught us with the first base, and for one second neither of us speaks because becoming the kind of people who repeatedly lose arguments to multilingual baby equipment is not the reunion either of us imagined.
Declan begins laughing first, head dropping against the open door. “We checked the cover.”
“We checked the cover two weeks ago.” I laugh hard enough to have to put one hand against the truck, and the baby presses down in a way that makes me regret every breath. “The manufacturer moved the English pages to the back because they hate exhausted parents.”
“The baby is going to learn three languages before we install one seat.” He flips the booklet and finds the correct diagram. “Position two. You were right for the wrong reason.”
“That is still right.” I hand him the fitting-station checklist, then watch him use the lower anchors, press the base into the bench, and tighten each side until the movement stays within the marked limit.
He reads the steps aloud. I check the indicator, test the base myself, and make him repeat the final buckle because neither of us is too proud to check the other’s work.
When the carrier clicks into place, the empty seat looks ready in a way the nursery never has.
Declan stands beside me with one hand on the truck roof. “I’ll leave it in until the baby comes.”
“Good. You are one of the approved drivers.” I close the rear door and rest against the metal when another practice contraction tightens across my stomach.
It has no pattern. My body has rehearsed often enough this week that a single warning has stopped meaning anything, and I hold the door handle until it lets go.
Declan watches my face and keeps his hands at his sides. “I’m fine. It passed.”
“I’ll put the carrier back on the base in your car before we go in.”
“I want you to bring the name notebook.” I use my key while he retrieves the small book we started after the birth plan, and I take my own page out of my purse with one line still unmarked on it.
He has written suggestions and left the anatomy scan alone, and I have guarded the baby’s sex because one surprise remains mine to give at birth.
“We need to settle what we are willing to choose before we are exhausted and somebody from the club starts calling the baby Hammer.”
At the kitchen table, I cross out Hammer before Declan can claim Gage deserves consideration.
We read the remaining names aloud, argue over initials, and remove anything that belonged to a man either of us once threatened.
The baby’s sex stays behind my teeth. Reconciliation, sex, and the car seat in his truck are all part of this conversation, and he does not use any of them as an excuse to ask.
“Nora stays at the top if the baby is a girl,” I say, drawing a line beneath it. “But I’m not finalizing a name before birth. I want to meet the baby first.”
Declan runs one finger beneath the name and reads it twice, keeping his voice flat on the second pass. “Then Nora stays at the top. We choose after we meet the baby.”
“And the sex stays private until then.” The information belongs inside my office safe with the first scan and the records I chose not to share.
Keeping it no longer feels like punishment.
It feels like one part of pregnancy I carried entirely as mine, and I am not required to surrender it because Declan has earned other things. “Do not guess aloud to the club.”
“I won’t.” He closes the notebook and holds it out. “Hospital bag?”
“Front pocket.” I pick my page up again while he carries the notebook down the hall and add a sixth line under the fifth, because five was never going to be the number.
Who gets told the baby has come, in what order, and which of them hears it from my mouth rather than from the family group.
June’s name goes down first. I have started the second one when a tightening comes across the front of me hard enough to lift the pen off the paper, and I sit with my palm flat on the table until it lets go of me.
“Avery.” Declan stops in the doorway with the zip of the bag still open under his hand and stays there.
“It’s practice. It has been practice for two weeks.” I cap the pen and leave the page where it is, one name finished and one name half made. “I’ll do the rest of it in the morning. Stay tonight. I don’t want to call you across town if this child stops practicing.”
Declan waits for me to lift my mouth and then kisses me, sleeps in the guest room because I did not invite him into my bed, and leaves both doors cracked so he can hear me call.
The hall stays empty all night. I fall asleep with the birth plan on my nightstand and wake sometime before dawn when a tightening pulls me from a dream about Bell losing the foreclosure file.
I sit up and wait it out. The next one comes after I walk to the bathroom.
Another catches me at the bedroom door while I am telling myself the pattern is imagination and the pressure is only the baby settling lower.
By the time I reach for my phone, the contractions have stopped behaving like rehearsal, and every instruction Dr. Evans gave me becomes harder to remember than the one thing I know without checking the birth plan.
My page is still on the kitchen table under the lamp with a name and a half at the bottom of it.
Declan is beneath my roof, close enough that I could shout. I call him instead because the choice matters. His name is the first one I want when fear, pain, and joy arrive together, and I refuse to pretend I called only because he happened to be close.
He answers before the second ring, the guest-room door opening down the hall while his voice reaches me through the phone. “Avery?”
“I think it is time.” I grip the bedroom doorframe as another contraction builds and listen to his bare feet stop outside the room rather than enter. “Come in. Bring the bag, and then take me to the hospital.”
“I’m here.” Declan holds the threshold with the white-capped key hanging from his fingers and fear stripped across his face until I nod. “The bag’s at the office door. Tell me the order.”
“You first,” I say, reaching for the hand he has learned to keep at his side until I ask, and when his fingers close around mine, I pull him into my bedroom because this time I want him beside me when our child comes.