CHAPTER 5
Four Weeks Out
Emma's due date arrived on the calendar with four weeks still to go, and Ryan, distracted by post-round hiring and a board meeting Victor had scheduled with characteristic disregard for anyone's due date, agreed absently to a birth plan he hadn't fully read, signing off on logistics he wasn't tracking closely.
She recorded a second voice memo that week, shorter than the first. I don't think you're going to be the one who catches him when he's born, Ryan.
I think some part of me has known that for a while now.
I hope I'm wrong. She saved it beside the first, still unsent, still waiting for a version of the truth she wasn't ready to deliver out loud.
She spent that week reading everything she could find about birth plans on her own, without Ryan's input, compiling a document he would later find, after everything, still sitting unopened in his email, evidence of exactly how much of the preparation had fallen to her alone by the final month.
She thought, finishing the birth plan alone at her kitchen table, about the specific loneliness of preparing for the most significant event of her life without a true partner in the preparation, and found herself, for the first time, genuinely frightened rather than simply disappointed by what that loneliness might mean for the actual day.
She began, that final month, attending her remaining prenatal appointments with Sasha instead, a substitution neither of them named directly but both understood, Sasha holding her hand through the final ultrasound with the same steady presence a partner might have offered, had one been available to offer it.
She packed her own hospital bag alone, methodically, checking items off a list she'd compiled from several parenting books, and found herself, zipping it closed, wishing for a version of this specific, ordinary task that included someone else's opinion about what to bring, someone else's hands helping fold the tiny clothes.
She thought, in that final month, about writing Ryan an actual letter after all, something concrete and permanent rather than another recording he might never hear, and drafted several openings before abandoning each one, understanding, finally, that the voice memos had already said everything she had the capacity to say, and that repeating it in a different format wouldn't change whether he was actually listening.
She thought, in the quiet hour before her final prenatal appointment, about calling Ryan to ask him to come along one last time, and decided against it, some tired, practical part of her already anticipating the specific disappointment of asking and being told, gently, that the timing wasn't good.
That night, alone in bed, she found herself doing quiet math about who she could call if labor started early, and understood, running through the short list, exactly how much of her support system by that point consisted of people who lived considerably closer to her than her own husband's actual attention did.
She thought, dressing for that final appointment alone, about her own mother walking her through early motherhood decades earlier, largely without a partner present for much of it either, and wondered whether she carried more of that particular resilience in her than she'd previously had reason to test.
She spent one full evening that final month simply sitting with her hand on her stomach, narrating quietly to the baby everything she hoped their life together might eventually look like, regardless of what happened with Ryan, a private, hopeful monologue that had nothing to do with anyone else's approval.
She began, in that final month, quietly arranging a support system independent of Ryan entirely, confirming with her sister and two close friends exactly who would be reachable and when, a private contingency plan she built without ever framing it to herself as evidence of anything specific about her marriage.
She thought, packing her hospital bag that final week, about the specific loneliness of checking items off a list meant for two people, and found herself adding, almost as an afterthought, her own phone charger and a spare set of clothes for whoever ended up actually staying the night beside her.
She thought, in the final days before her due date, about the specific version of the birth story she'd once imagined telling their child someday, both parents present, both parents overwhelmed together with love, and understood, packing the last of her hospital bag, how far that particular imagined story had already drifted from whatever was actually about to happen.