Chapter 26
As she caught up with her children and told them the PG-version of the birth of baby Nick, Rod was in the kitchen, finishing a roasted lamb. Another Christmas film played on the television, one they’d watched a thousand times that they could mostly ignore but still get the meaning of.
“Can I hold him before I go?” Maddie asked delicately.
Bethany helped her eldest daughter cradle baby Nick, making sure that his head was supported.
Bethany’s heart surged with love at the sight—a sixteen-year-old girl on her way to adulthood, and the sibling she would know for the rest of her life.
She wondered if Maddie wanted to have children sometime down the line.
She wondered whether Maddie would fall in love with someone in high school or college, and whether that person would change her life and father her baby.
There were so many stories that opened up when you had a baby.
Bethany allowed herself to imagine her children after she was gone, gathering together for Christmas, talking about her and their Christmas pasts.
There would always be a before and an after, she knew.
They would tell Nick, “That was before you were born.” Or they would say, “That was the Christmas Nick came home.”
With Nick fast asleep in the bassinet, Bethany joined her family at the dinner table for the feast. Rod had cooked all morning and into the afternoon, perfecting a recipe that he’d watched late at night on The Cooking Channel when Bethany had been fast asleep.
For hours and hours he’d been awake, struggling with insomnia, worrying about the baby and about the upcoming delivery, and he’d decided to burrow his mind and heart into a new hobby.
With the first bite, Bethany knew that Rod was on to something. “This is divine, honey,” she said.
Rod blushed.
That evening, they video-chatted with Rod’s daughter to show off baby Nick. She was floored, cooing over the beautiful sight. “I’ll be back in Nantucket soon to see you all,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.”
Privately to her father, Rod’s daughter told him, “I can’t believe you get to do this all over again. I’m so happy for you.” She knew how difficult it had been to raise her by himself.
Now, the idea was that Rod and Bethany got to raise a baby together, in love and hope.
When Nick was two weeks old, Bethany felt organized enough to cross the island and visit Helena and Matteo.
She left Nick with Rod, as she didn’t want to give Nick or Helena unwanted germs, not when Helena was so early in her recovery.
Bethany decided to wear a mask, and when she entered Helena’s place, she scrubbed her hands before she sat down and gushed with joy at seeing both of them.
Helena and Matteo were living the life of newlyweds, it seemed like.
They’d decorated the house with countless photographs and paintings.
They’d bought new furniture. They seemed to operate as a unit, each anticipating the other’s needs before they went anywhere in the house.
Mostly, Helena was resting on the sofa, with Matteo hopping up and down.
But Helena told Bethany that she had plenty of strength.
“I feel good. I feel better than I have in years,” she maintained. “But the doctor told me I have to keep resting and relaxing and biding my time.”
“I want that, too!” Matteo called from the kitchen.
“I’m a prisoner,” Helena joked. “Of course, it’s no different from how I lived since my diagnosis.”
“The difference is, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” Bethany told her, grinning behind her mask.
Helena waved her hand. “Tell me about you. Tell me about Nick. I want to know everything about him. I can’t believe I can’t meet him yet!”
Bethany told Helena everything she could think of—that Nick still slept hours and hours a day, that he looked remarkably like his father, and that Maddie was borderline obsessed with him.
“I remember you said it was difficult for your kids at first,” Helena said. “News of the pregnancy.”
“It was,” Bethany said, thinking back to that long-ago summer’s day when she’d told them what was going to happen. “They were worried about me. They were worried that everything would change. And to be honest, I was worried, too. I can’t believe that all this change has been good, actually.”
“It’s been so good,” Helena breathed.
Although Matteo wanted Helena to stay for dinner, she insisted on keeping her mask on and then going home. The couple looked disappointed, but they understood.
“Soon,” Helena made Bethany promise.
“In the summertime, we’ll have so much time together,” Bethany said. “I won’t go back to work till the end of summer, so I’ll be free and easy. We can spend hours on the patio, in the sunshine, talking the days away.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Helena said.
Helena and Matteo walked Bethany to the front door.
When Bethany got situated in her car, grateful for the space between herself and the steering wheel that hadn’t been there when she’d been so very pregnant, she waved at them through the snowfall.
They stood together, a perfect couple, their arms entwined.
Bethany told herself to take a snapshot in her mind’s eye.
She wanted to remember them like that forever, before everything changed.