Epilogue
MILLIE
It turned out there was a learning curve to breastfeeding.
Nobody had mentioned that part. The books mentioned latch and letdown and supply and demand in the cheerful, confident tone of books written by people who had presumably figured it out, and the lactation consultant at the hospital had been lovely and thorough and had left me with seventeen pages of notes that I had read four times and apparently retained none of.
Bea was a week old and hungry and frustrated and I was sitting up in bed at two in the morning trying to remember if I was supposed to compress or not compress and whether the pain meant the latch was wrong or just that everything was new and tender, and I was approximately forty-five seconds from crying about it.
Gage appeared in the doorway.
He'd been doing that—materializing whenever something was wrong, some rancher's instinct for the herd that apparently extended to his wife and daughter. He took in the situation in one sweep: me, Bea, the seventeen pages of notes on the nightstand, my face.
He came and sat on the edge of the bed.
"Talk to me," he said.
"She won't latch. Or she latches and then—" I gestured vaguely. "It's not working. I don't think anything's coming out. The consultant said sometimes the milk takes longer to come in and I just—" I stopped. Pressed my lips together. "I'm not going to cry."
"You can cry."
"I'm not going to." Bea made a small frustrated sound against me and I felt the specific helplessness of not being able to give her what she needed. "I just don't know what I'm doing."
Gage was quiet for a moment. He looked at Bea. Looked at me. Then he said, carefully, "Can I try something?"
I looked at him. "What."
"Something that might help." He met my eyes, steady. "You can tell me to stop."
I had no idea what he was suggesting and also I had been awake for most of the past week and I trusted him completely. "Okay."
He shifted closer. His hand came up—warm, careful—and cupped my breast with the same matter-of-fact competence he brought to everything on the ranch. Not sexual. Or not only. He pressed gently, a slow firm compression toward the center, and I felt something shift.
"Gage—"
"There," he said, quiet. "Feel that?"
I did. A strange releasing pressure, a warmth.
"This is what you do with a fresh heifer," he said, still working, slow circles. "When the milk first comes in. You have to encourage it. Can't force it." He glanced up at me. "Try her again."
I blinked. "Did you just compare me to a cow."
"I compared the principle," he said. "Do you want my help or not."
I looked at his hands. At Bea, fussing. "Yes," I said. "Obviously yes."
He kept going—that slow, deliberate compression, warm and sure—and I brought Bea back up and she latched and this time something happened, a proper letdown, and she went quiet immediately, and the relief of it hit me so hard my eyes went wet.
"There she is," Gage said softly. He didn't move his hand.
"Don't say I told you so."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were thinking it."
"I was thinking," he said, "that you're doing a good job." He pressed his mouth to my temple. "Both of you."
I leaned into him, Bea nursing, Gage's hand still warm and steady, and felt the specific exhausted gratitude of being taken care of by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
Bea went down easier than she had all week.
I lay her in the bassinet and stood there for a moment with my hand on her back, waiting to see if she'd startle awake the way she sometimes did, but she stayed down—milk-drunk and boneless, her little mouth still making the faint sucking motion of a baby who'd gotten exactly what she needed.
I straightened up.
And immediately felt it—the uncomfortable fullness on the other side, tight and heavy, the letdown that had happened whether Bea had gotten to it or not. I pressed my hand against myself and winced.
"Still full," Gage said. He'd been watching from the bed.
"She only took one side." I looked at the pump on the nightstand, at the instructions I'd read approximately nine times. "I should probably—"
"Come here," he said.
I looked at him.
"You've been fighting with that pump for four days," he said. "Come here."
I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed and he shifted to sit behind me, his legs on either side of mine, and his hands came around and he cupped me the way he had before—careful, warm, that same steady pressure.
"Better?" he said.
"A little." I let my head drop back against his shoulder. "It's just uncomfortable. Full and—" I exhaled. "Tight."
"I know." His hands moved—firm, purposeful, working inward the way he had before but with more intention now, his palms warm against me. I felt the pressure shift, the tight fullness starting to give, and made a sound I couldn't quite help.
"There," he said.
"That's—" I lost the sentence. His hands were thorough in the way he was thorough about everything, methodical, finding the spots that were hardest and working them until I felt the relief spread outward in waves. "God, that's better."
"Been watching you wince for four days," he said. His mouth was at my shoulder. "Should've done this sooner."
"I didn't know you could—" Another wave of relief. "Where did you learn this."
"Told you. Ranch."
"You are never going to let that go."
"Not while it keeps working." His thumbs moved, pressing in, and I felt another letdown and gasped at the sudden sharp release of it. He held me through it, steady, one arm banding across my ribs. "Easy. Let it happen."
"I am letting it happen," I said, a little breathlessly. "You try letting it happen."
He made a low sound against my neck that might have been a laugh.
His hands gentled as the pressure eased—less therapeutic now, more just warm, cupping and holding rather than working.
I was boneless against his chest, every muscle I'd been holding tight for a week finally unknotted, the specific relief of a body doing what it was supposed to do after days of fighting it.
"Better?" he said.
"So much better." I turned my face into his jaw. "I could cry."
"You said you weren't going to."
"That was an hour ago. Circumstances have changed." I pressed my mouth to the side of his throat. “Gage?”
“Mm.”
“That was great, but I’m covered in milk now.”
He laughed against my throat. “Sorry.”
“You gonna run me a bath and watch the baby while I clean up?”
He kissed me again. “Anything, darlin’.”
The bath helped.
I sank into it and stayed until the water went lukewarm, which was the longest I'd been alone in a week, and I could hear Gage through the door talking to Bea in that low, unhurried voice he used with her—the same voice he used with the horses, I'd noticed, and had chosen not to mention because he'd give me the ranch instincts line and I didn't have the energy.
I got out. Dried off. Pulled on a clean sleep shirt and padded back into the bedroom.
Gage was in the rocking chair by the window with Bea against his chest, one big hand spanning her entire back. He was looking out at the dark ranch, not at me, just—sitting with her. Holding her the way he held everything he intended to keep.
I stood in the doorway and watched them for a moment.
He looked up. Found me. Something moved across his face that I didn't have a word for and didn't need one.
"She wake up?" I said quietly.
"Fussed a little. Settled." He looked back down at her. "She's good."
I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed and watched him watch her.
The October dark outside the window. The creek somewhere below.
The ranch sitting quiet around us, three generations of limestone and cedar and stubbornness, and now a fourth—asleep against her father's chest, one tiny fist curled against his collarbone.
"Hey," I said.
He looked up.
"I love you," I said. "I know I say it now. I know it's not—I know it took me a while to—"
"Millie."
"I just want you to know I mean it every time." I pressed my lips together. "I'm not saying it because of the baby or the ranch or the—"
"I know," he said.
"I'm saying it because you sat down next to me when there were four empty chairs."
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he stood, transferred Bea to the bassinet in one practiced motion—a week of middle-of-the-night practice, both of us learning—and came to the bed and sat beside me.
He took my face in both hands.
"I know," he said again. Quiet. Certain. "I've always known."
He kissed me—soft, unhurried, the kind that didn't need to go anywhere. I leaned into him and he put his arms around me and we sat like that for a while, his chin on top of my head, my ear against his chest where I could hear his heartbeat.
In the bassinet, Bea slept.
Outside, the Hill Country was dark and enormous and ancient, the creek cutting through limestone the way it had for a thousand years, the way it would for a thousand more.
I thought about a spreadsheet that didn't add up.
About a judge who timed an eleven-minute ceremony and looked at us over his glasses.
I'd made room for this. All those years of other people's weddings, other people's perfect days. All those spreadsheets and timelines and plans that kept not working out. I'd been making room for this the whole time without knowing it.
The table with not enough chairs.
The man who knew where every piece went.
THE END