31. Laney
LANEY
The contractions came closer together, each one squeezing harder than the last. I gripped Massimo's hand and breathed through it, counting the way the midwife had told me to.
The numbers dissolved halfway through. The midwife said something calm from the end of the bed, but I couldn't hear her over the roaring in my ears.
"Almost there," Massimo said quietly near my ear. His voice cut through the noise.
God, I hoped so.
Another wave hit and I bore down, my whole body clenching with the effort.
The pressure was enormous, impossible, like my body was trying to turn itself inside out.
Everything narrowed to that single task, that one impossible push.
Massimo's hand tightened around mine and I squeezed back hard enough that I probably hurt him.
Then crying. Sharp and outraged.
I fell back against the pillows, gasping. My hair stuck to my forehead. The midwife moved quickly, doing something I couldn't see, and a moment later she placed a small, red-faced bundle on my chest. The baby — my son — kept wailing, furious at the world and everyone in it.
"Hi," I managed. My voice came out hoarse and wrecked. "Hi, little one."
His crying quieted as he settled against my skin.
The heat of him soaked through the thin hospital gown I'd put on hours ago.
He was so small. I hadn't forgotten how small newborns were, but feeling the weight of him reminded me anyway, the fragility of bones like bird wings under skin.
His eyes were squeezed shut, his face scrunched up in concentration.
His hands curled into tiny fists, flexing against my collarbone.
Massimo brushed his fingers over the baby's head, careful and wondering. "He's perfect."
I laughed, still catching my breath. My whole body ached. "He's very angry."
"He gets that from you."
I would have elbowed him if I'd had the energy.
Instead I just watched our son, the way his chest moved with each breath, the wrinkled softness of his skin where it pressed against mine.
He looked nothing like Sofia had at birth.
She'd been quiet, observing everything with dark, solemn eyes from the moment she arrived. This one had opinions already.
The midwife cleaned up around us with quiet efficiency, her movements practiced and sure.
Massimo stayed beside the bed, one hand on my shoulder, his thumb moving in small circles.
He looked tired. Lines showed at the corners of his eyes that hadn't been there this morning.
I probably looked worse. I didn't want to know.
"You did well," he said.
"I had help."
His mouth curved a little. "Some."
The midwife finished her work and left instructions I barely heard, something about rest and nursing and calling if I needed anything. Then she was gone and it was just the three of us in the bedroom that smelled like sweat and effort and something sharp I couldn't name.
Later, after I'd managed to get the baby to nurse and he'd fallen asleep in the bassinet beside the bed, Sofia came in. She'd been downstairs with the neighbor who'd stayed with her during the birth. Now she crept into the room like she wasn't sure she was allowed, her steps careful and measured.
"Come here," I told her.
She climbed onto the bed carefully, avoiding my legs. Her eyes stayed fixed on her brother the whole time. "He's really little."
"You were this little once."
"No, I wasn't." She sounded absolutely certain, like I'd suggested the earth was flat. I bit back a smile.
"Want to hold him?"
She nodded, solemn and serious. I helped her settle against the headboard with pillows supporting her arms, arranging them the way I remembered from when she was born and my mother had visited.
Then I lifted the baby from the bassinet and placed him in the cradle of her lap.
She stared down at him, barely breathing, her whole body gone still with concentration.
"What's his name?" she asked.
Massimo and I looked at each other. We'd had months to decide and still hadn't settled it. Every name we'd considered felt wrong somehow, too formal or too casual or carrying weight we didn't want.
"We're working on that," I said.
Sofia touched the baby's hand with one finger, tentative. His fist opened and closed around it, reflexive and strong. Her face lit up like someone had turned on a lamp inside her. "He likes me."
"Of course he does."
She sat there for a long time, holding her brother and whispering to him.
I couldn't hear what she said. Massimo stood at the window with his arms crossed, watching them both, his expression soft in a way that made something in my chest go tight and warm.
He looked like he was memorizing it, like he was afraid if he looked away the moment would disappear.
I leaned back against the pillows and closed my eyes for just a moment. I was so tired it sat like a weight behind my ribs, heavy and impossible to shift. My body felt wrung out, emptied.
When I opened them again, Sofia was gone and the baby was asleep in the bassinet beside the bed. The light had changed. Late afternoon now, the sun slanting through the curtains. Massimo sat in the chair by the window with a package in his lap, something brown and rectangular.
"What's that?" I asked. My voice came out scratchy.
He looked up. "It came this morning. I signed for it while you were in labor."
My brain felt slow, wrapped in cotton. "What is it?"
He stood and brought it over, setting it on the bed beside me.
The return address made my heart kick hard against my ribs.
The university press in Rome. I'd known it was coming — Professor Benedetti had written to tell me the publication was scheduled for this month — but I'd lost track of the date somewhere between the last weeks of pregnancy and giving birth in my own bedroom in Portland, thousands of miles from where the work had started.
I sat up too quickly and had to grab the headboard. Everything spun for a second. "Can you open it?"
Massimo used his pocket knife to slice through the tape, the blade making a clean sound against the cardboard. Inside were five hardcover copies of the monograph, their spines dark blue with gold lettering. He lifted one out with both hands and passed it to me like it was something precious.
The weight of it surprised me. Heavier than I'd expected. I turned it over in my hands, running my fingers across the embossed title on the cover. Material Culture and Kinship Networks in the Roman Countryside: Evidence from the Lombardo Estate. Below it, smaller: Elena Corrigan Lombardo.
My name. Right there on the cover, the way it should be. Not buried in an acknowledgments page, not listed as a research assistant. My name.
I opened it to the title page, the table of contents, the first chapter with its careful argument about settlement patterns and kinship ties.
My words. My arguments. The photographs I'd taken at the dig house, the site maps Chiara had drafted under my direction, the pottery reconstructions we'd pieced together over years of patient work in the sun. All of it here, permanent and real.
"Let me see," Massimo said.
I handed it over, still feeling like the floor had dropped out from under me.
He paged through it slowly, stopping at the photographs.
One showed the excavation grid I'd laid out across the site, the trenches cut through ten years of accumulated dirt and stone and the patient layers of history.
Another showed my hands holding a fragment of terra sigillata, the red glaze still visible after two thousand years in the ground.
He stopped at the acknowledgments page. I'd forgotten what I'd written there, the words I'd drafted late one night in Rome when Professor Benedetti had asked for them.
To Sofia, who has never known her mother as anything but an archaeologist. To the hands who dug beside me. To everyone who believed this work mattered.
"It's good work, Laney," Massimo said. He looked up from the book, meeting my eyes. "I'm proud of this."
The words landed differently than they would have a year ago.
Two years ago. He wasn't proud I'd fit it around the family's expectations, wasn't patting my head for keeping myself occupied while he handled the real business.
He meant the work itself. The research. The argument I'd built, the evidence I'd assembled, the conclusion I'd defended.
I swallowed hard. My throat felt tight. "Thank you."
He set the book on the bedside table, careful with it, and kissed my forehead. His lips were warm. "Get some rest. I'll bring you something to eat."
After he left, I picked up the book again.
I couldn't help it. I turned to the center where the photographs were printed on glossy paper.
One of them showed the foundation of a modest villa, the stones still fitted together after all this time, after empires had risen and fallen and the names of the people who'd lived there had been forgotten.
We'd found a coin hoard beneath the threshold, evidence of someone's attempt to protect their wealth before fleeing.
I'd spent months reconstructing the family that had lived there, tracing their names through fragmentary records and cross-referencing with other sites.
Someone knocked on the door frame. Massimo came back in with a sandwich and a glass of water. He set them on the table and glanced at the baby, still sleeping, his small chest rising and falling.
"Sofia wants to know if she can name him," he said.
I laughed. It came out more like a cough. "What does she want to call him?"
"She wouldn't tell me. Said it's between her and her brother."
God. I took a bite of the sandwich even though I wasn't hungry. The bread tasted like nothing. I needed to eat or I'd regret it later, but my stomach felt uncertain. Massimo sat back down in the chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed.