9. Nora
NORA
That's the day I stop trying to tell Daniel. Not forever, I tell myself that, just not like this. Not through Charlotte, not through project offices and fluid schedules.
The baby and I build a village. That sounds sweet. It's also practical.
My mother starts a binder. I wish I were joking. The binder is white with tabs inside labeled Appointments, Insurance, Baby Gear, Food, Daniel, and Miscellaneous, which is where she puts things she doesn't want to admit belong under Daniel.
"The binder has a tab for my husband."
"Your husband has become paperwork."
I laugh so hard I have to sit down.
My father paints the guest room green. Not pink, not blue. Green. It's the color of new leaves and mint ice cream and the tiny glass jade plant Daniel bought me our first year in the house because I said I missed having living things on the windowsill.
I don't tell my father that.
I stand in the doorway with one hand on the curve of my stomach and cry while he rolls paint onto the wall. He pretends not to notice.
That's love too.
Bex takes over Honey & Rye's Instagram and announces limited custom orders without asking me first.
"You need money," she says.
"I have money."
"You have Daniel's money."
I flinch. She sees it and winces.
"Sorry."
"No. You're right."
Daniel has always been generous, and that's part of the problem. He would never let me struggle, not materially. He doesn't understand that being provided for isn't the same as being seen.
I need my own money. I need work that feels like mine. I need something to do with my hands besides hold my stomach and wait for a man on another continent to become available.
So Honey & Rye creeps back in. At first it's six orders a week, then ten, then a birthday cake for a woman who used to come to the Newark Avenue shop every Friday.
"I thought you closed," she says when she picks it up.
"I did. A little."
She smiles. "Good."
I cry after she leaves. By then, crying is basically cardio.
The ultrasound room is dim and too warm.
My mother sits on one side of me with tissues already in hand.
Bex sits on the other pretending she came only because my mother needed a ride, which is a lie because she arrived twenty minutes early with a coffee she couldn't drink in front of me out of solidarity.
My father is in the waiting room because he says he is fine out there. He's not fine. He's probably reading a brochure about cord blood and panicking.
The technician moves the wand and the screen shifts. Then there is a shape. Not a baby like people draw babies, not yet, but something. Someone.
The room goes quiet.
"There," the technician says. "Nice strong heartbeat."
The sound fills the room, fast and wild and certain.
My hand flies to my mouth. My mother starts crying. Bex says, "Holy shit," and then immediately says, "Sorry," to the technician.
Daniel should be here.
The thought comes so hard it almost knocks the air out of me. He should be standing beside the bed with one hand on my shoulder, staring at the screen like he is trying to understand a miracle through sheer concentration.
Instead, my phone is in my bag, silent, because I turned it off. Because I couldn't bear the idea of him calling in the middle of this and making me decide whether to answer.
"Do you want a picture?" the technician asks.
"Yes," I say. My voice is wrecked.
Bex leans forward. "Can we get one where the baby looks less like a bean with ambition?"
The technician laughs. I laugh too. Then I cry again.
That night, I hold the ultrasound photo in bed.
Daniel texts at 1:12 a.m.
Daniel: Found the Central Park photo.
A picture loads underneath. Me at twenty-four, blonde and laughing on a blanket, my face turned toward him like he is the sun.
Then:
Daniel: You were trouble.
Then:
Daniel: Send me a picture?
I read the messages over and over.
My first reaction is not anger. That would be cleaner. My first reaction is want. I miss him so much my body answers the text before my brain can stop it.
I remember being blonde, I remember feeling pretty because he looked at me like I was, I remember that version of us.
Then I look down at my stomach. The body he wants a picture of is changing. I've got an ultrasound photo on my nightstand and saltines in the drawer and a secret inside me that has a heartbeat.
He's asking for the old Nora, from a bed in Singapore, probably with his phone fixed by Charlotte.
I type:
Me: I had an ultrasound today.
My hand shakes. I delete it.
Then I set the phone facedown. I don't send him a picture.
In June, our anniversary passes like weather I watch through glass. No call, no flowers, no text. Nothing.
At first, I think maybe he is waiting for a time that works for both of us. That's embarrassing, but true. Hope is humiliating in small doses.
By dinner, my mother brings over lasagna and doesn't mention the date. That's how I know she knows.
Bex sends one text:
Bex: Want me to egg a building?
Me: Which building?
Bex: I'll choose by vibe.
I laugh for the first time all day. Then I cry into lasagna.
Two days later, Daniel calls. I don't answer.
He texts:
Daniel: I know I missed it. I'm sorry. I want to make this up to you.
Then:
Daniel: I mean it, Nora.
I believe that he means it. That's not enough anymore.
Because I can see it now. Daniel is always going to mean it after. After the meeting, after the call, after the closing, after the flight. After I stop needing him right now.
I put the phone in the drawer with the ultrasound photo and go downstairs to help my mother wash dishes.
The world finds out Daniel is becoming a billionaire before Daniel's wife tells him he is becoming a father.
That sentence is so ugly I almost admire it.
It starts with a profile. Welling's Billion-Dollar Engineer Behind the Linden Tower. There he is in a black suit, no tie, standing in front of glass and skyline. The article calls him "the private force behind Welling's most ambitious global expansion."
I read that phrase three times and then make a noise so unpleasant my mother comes in from the living room.
"My husband is a private force."
"Is that a medical problem?"
The photos keep coming. Daniel at a black-tie dinner, Charlotte beside him in silver. Daniel shaking hands with Linden's chairman while Charlotte stands just behind his shoulder.
There are comments. People I don't know writing things like Daniel and Charlotte are an unbeatable team.
Team.
That word again.
I'm part of a different team now.
The baby kicks for the first time while I'm kneading dough. Not a dramatic kick, just a flutter, a strange tap from the inside.
I freeze with both hands in dough.
"What?" Bex asks.
I put one floury hand on my stomach. The baby does it again. Tiny. There.
"Oh," I whisper.
Bex drops her piping bag. "Is the baby doing something?"
"I think so."
"Can I touch?"
"My hands are covered in dough."
"I don't care."
She presses her hand to my stomach with the seriousness of a person disarming a bomb. Nothing happens.
"The baby hates me," she says.
"The baby has taste."
The baby kicks again later that night when I'm alone in bed. I reach for my phone before I think. Daniel's name is right there. My thumb hovers over it.
The want is so strong I almost press call. I want to say, "Your baby moved." I want him to know and be destroyed by knowing and then fix everything by wanting us enough.
Instead, a news alert slides down over his name. Welling's Singapore Bet Pays Off as Linden Tower Nears Completion.
I stare at it, then I turn the phone off.
He sends flowers after the anniversary, huge white roses. They arrive in a vase so heavy my father has to carry it in.
The card says:
Nora,
I know I missed it. I hate that I did. I'll make this up to you when I'm home.
D.
I stand over the flowers with one hand on my stomach.
When I'm home.
Not I'm coming home now. When. Some floating future where he's always better than he is today.
"Do you want me to throw them out?" Bex asks.
"Leave them," I say.
The roses last almost two weeks. Even his apologies are hard to kill.
By the third trimester, Honey & Rye is a real thing again. I've got a client list. A deposit account. A weekly menu. Bex makes me sit on a stool when I ice cakes because she says my center of gravity is "a lawsuit with ankles."
The baby rolls and kicks and presses a foot under my ribs like she is trying to expand the property.
She.
We find out on a rainy afternoon when the technician says, "Do you want to know?"
I say yes before I can be brave about not caring.
A girl. My daughter. Our daughter. Daniel's daughter.
I don't text him. I buy a tiny green sweater instead.
My mother cries in the baby aisle. My father builds the crib while reading the manual out loud like scripture.
"Do not over-tighten bolts," he says.
"Frank, nobody is arguing with the crib."
"I'm establishing tone."
I sit in the rocking chair with both hands on my stomach and let them fill the room around me.
This is the village. It's loud. It's bossy. It's not Daniel.
That last part hurts every time. It doesn't stop hurting because other people love me well. Love should cancel other love out when you need it to. It doesn't.
The night I go into labor, I'm boxing cookies in the Jersey City commercial kitchen.
Of course. Oatmeal cream pies for a baby shower, which feels personally aggressive.
Bex left an hour ago after making me promise to sit down between batches. My mother is home, close enough to get here fast if I need her. My father is probably watching late-night baseball highlights with the volume too low.
The kitchen is quiet. Rain ticks against the high windows.
My back has been aching all day, but my back always aches now. I press the last cookie sandwich together. Then pain wraps around my lower belly, hard and low and mean.
I freeze with powdered sugar on my fingers.
"No," I say.
The baby doesn't listen. The pain builds, holds, then lets go.
Then my phone buzzes on the table. Not a call. A news alert.
Welling Closes Landmark Singapore Deal, Cementing Daniel Welling's Billionaire Status.
I stare at the words. My daughter chooses that moment to press down hard enough that I grip the edge of the table.
Another contraction starts. This one is worse.
I reach for my phone. My hand shakes so badly Face ID fails.
"Come on," I snap, because apparently I'm going to fight technology during labor.
The screen opens. Recent contacts. Mom, Bex, Dad, Daniel.
His name sits there like a door. Daniel Welling. My husband, my daughter's father, the billionaire in the headline. The man who doesn't know he's about to miss the thing I once thought he would never survive missing.
Another contraction grips me. I bend over the table and make a sound I've never made before.
My thumb hovers over his name. I almost press it. I almost let the phone ring across the world.
Then I see the headline again. Cementing Daniel Welling's Billionaire Status.
My husband is becoming a billionaire while I'm going into labor beside a tray of oatmeal cream pies.
I laugh once. It turns into a sob.
Then I press Mom.
She answers on the first ring.
"Nora?"
"I think it's time."
I hear her inhale. Then the whole house on her end comes alive.
"Frank! Shoes! Now!"
I look down at Daniel's name on my screen. My thumb still wants him. My heart does too. That's the embarrassing part.
But wanting him has never made him come.
So I don't press call. I put the phone facedown on the table and grip the edge with both hands.
And I let my mother come for me instead.