25. Willow #2
“Glad to be back, Mr. Knightley.” I look down at the ring, back where it has always belonged, and one loose thread tugs at me. “The divorce papers. The ones I said would get filed the day the doctors cleared me.”
“I’ll have them shredded. Along with that repayment contract you never signed.”
“I never signed it because you never sent it.”
“I know,” he says, entirely unashamed, and I laugh, and for the first time in six months it doesn’t hurt anywhere.
Our daughter chooses that moment to wake up fully, her face scrunching in preparation for what promises to be an impressive display of newborn fury.
“She’s hungry,” I say, already shifting her toward my breast. “The nurses showed me how before, well, before everything. But I’ve never actually…”
“We’ll figure it out together.” Corey is beside me instantly, adjusting pillows, supporting my arm, making sure the baby is positioned correctly. “That’s how we do everything from now on. Together.”
And we do.
Later, when the baby is fed and sleeping and Corey has finally been convinced to close his eyes for a few minutes in the chair beside my bed, Glenn appears in the doorway.
He looks exhausted, red-eyed, rumpled, like he’s been sleeping in waiting rooms, but when he sees me awake, his face transforms.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he says, crossing to the bed. “Four days, Willow. Four days of not knowing if you were going to wake up.”
“I’m sorry.” I reach for his hand. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Don’t apologize. Just, don’t ever do that again.” He squeezes my hand, then looks at the baby sleeping in the bassinet beside my bed. “She’s beautiful. She looks just like you.”
“She has Corey’s eyes.”
“She has your spirit. The nurses told me she screamed for two hours straight the first night. Wouldn’t stop until Corey held her.” He smiles. “She’s already got him wrapped around her tiny finger.”
“He’s going to be a good father.”
“Yeah.” Glenn’s smile softens. “He is. I didn’t think I’d ever say that, but, he’s different now. The last few months, watching him with you, watching him face down his mother, he’s not the same man who walked into my foundation and threw a punch.”
“People can change.”
“Some people. The ones who want it badly enough.” He pauses. “John used to say that. That change isn’t about willpower, it’s about love. You have to love something more than you love staying the same.”
I think about that. About Corey, working through his fears in therapy.
About the company he walked away from. About the mother he finally cut off.
About all the ways he’s dismantled himself and rebuilt from the foundation up, brick by brick, because he loved me more than he loved the armor that was killing us both.
“He loves me more than he loves being afraid,” I say quietly.
“Yeah.” Glenn wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “That’s exactly it.”
We sit in comfortable silence for a moment. Then Corey stirs in his chair, blinking awake, and when he sees Glenn, he doesn’t tense up or look away. He just nods, a small acknowledgment between two men who’ve learned to respect each other.
“We were just talking about you,” I say.
“All good things, I hope.”
“Mostly.” Glenn’s smile turns slightly wicked. “I was just about to tell Willow about that time you fell asleep in the bathroom at your place after we finished the second bottle of whiskey.”
“That never happened.”
“I have photos.”
“Those photos are doctored.”
“They really aren’t.”
I laugh, actually laugh, for the first time in what feels like forever, and the sound seems to fill the room, seems to push back the shadows and the fear and the memory of those four days I spent somewhere between life and death.
“I want you to be her godfather,” I say suddenly. “Both of us do. We talked about it. We want you to be part of her life. Part of our family. If that’s something you’d want.”
Glenn goes very still.
“You don’t have to…”
“We want to.” Corey’s voice is firm. “You’ve been there for Willow through everything.
You’ve been there for both of us, even when I didn’t deserve it.
And you’re…” He stops, seems to struggle for words.
“You’re a good man, Glenn. The man I want my daughter to have in her life.
So yeah. We want you to be her godfather. If you’ll have us.”
Glenn doesn’t answer right away. When he does, his voice is rough.
“What’s her name?”
“We haven’t decided on a first name yet.” I look at Corey. “But we know her middle name.”
“Jo,” Corey says quietly. “Her middle name is Jo. For John.”
Glenn’s face crumbles.
“You don’t have to…” he starts again.
“We want to.” I reach for his hand, hold it tight. “John was important to you. Which means he was important to us. And we want our daughter to carry a piece of him with her. So that he’s still part of our story.”
Glenn doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, tears streaming down his face, looking at the baby who will carry his husband’s name.
“Thank you,” he finally manages. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to…” He shakes his head. “Thank you. Both of you. This means more than I can possibly express.”
He leans down, presses a gentle kiss to the baby’s forehead.
“Hi, little Jo,” he whispers. “I’m your Uncle Glenn. And I’m going to spoil you absolutely rotten.”
I look at my husband, at my best friend, at my daughter sleeping peacefully in her bassinet.
Six months ago, I thought my life was over. I thought I’d lost everything, my marriage, my trust, my faith in the man I’d loved since I was sixteen.
But I was wrong.
I didn’t lose everything. I gained it: a husband who finally learned how to be present, a friendship that survived the worst test it could face, a daughter who fought her way into the world six weeks early and refused to let go, a second chance I didn’t know I was brave enough to take.
The monitor beside my bed beeps steadily, measuring the heart that almost stopped. And I watch my husband watch our daughter, and I think: this is what it looks like when broken things heal. Not perfectly. Not without scars. But whole enough to hold weight again. Whole enough to build on.
Whole enough to last.