Epilogue #2
I stare at her.
“That one?”
Her eyes flick up to mine.
“There’s been more?” I ask.
She makes a face I don't care for. Guilty. My brave, maddening wife looks guilty while sitting nine months pregnant in a glass building because she has apparently been hiding contractions from me.
“They weren’t that serious.”
I take one slow breath. “Charlotte.”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Interesting strategy. Deeply unsuccessful retroactively.”
“They were irregular.”
“How many?”
“Logan.”
“How many, Charlotte?”
She looks over my shoulder, which is never good. “A few.”
“A few like three, or a few like a number that gets a congressional hearing?”
“They stopped.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
My heart tries to leave my body through my throat.
“Last night?”
“They were Braxton Hicks.”
“That's what people say before they give birth in inconvenient places.”
“I am not giving birth in the conservatory.”
As if the universe has been waiting for its cue, her expression shifts again.
Then fluid spills beneath her, sudden and unmistakable, darkening the stone between her feet.
For one second, neither of us moves.
Charlotte looks down.
I look down.
The conservatory, which has survived demolition plans, rain damage, neglect, one assault, and my early attempts at glazing, stands very quietly around us.
Then Charlotte says, “Well.”
My brain becomes a playbook thrown into a ceiling fan.
“Truck,” I say.
“Logan—”
“Hospital bag is in the back seat. Towels are in the emergency kit. Lucy is on the call list. Doctor first, then Lucy, then your mother if you still want that order. Route A if the bridge is clear, Route B if there’s construction near Main. I checked this morning.”
She blinks at me. “You checked traffic to the hospital this morning?”
“I check traffic to the hospital every morning.”
“Of course you do.”
I already have one arm around her back and one beneath her elbow. “Up.”
“I can stand.”
“You can stand with me.”
“That sounds suspiciously like helping.”
“It is helping. File a complaint later.”
She lets me bring her up, but halfway to the door she stops.
I nearly pick her up on instinct.
“No,” she says, planting one hand against my chest.
“No?”
“Stop.”
I stare at her. “Your water just broke.”
“I know.”
“We have to go.”
“We are going.”
“You said stop.”
“For a moment.”
“For a moment,” I repeat, because maybe language has left her too.
She cups my face with both hands.
That does it. That always does it. Her palms on my jaw, thumbs near the corners of my mouth, her eyes holding mine until the noise inside me starts to sort itself into something I can manage.
“I’m not going to have the baby here, Logan.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that.”
“People have had babies in elevators.”
“We're not in an elevator.”
“Cars.”
“Also not in a car yet.”
“Fields.”
Her mouth twitches. “Are you taking me to a field I don't know about?”
Another tightening takes her. I feel it move through her body before she makes a sound. Her fingers press into my jaw, and my hands settle at her waist, useless except for being there.
She breathes through it.
I breathe with her because I can't take it from her, and that remains the hardest lesson of loving Charlotte Emerson. I can stand between her and a man. I can burn down contracts. I can hand prosecutors files. I can lift, carry, fix, pay, build, wait.
I can't do this part for her.
When it passes, she opens her eyes.
“I just want this one moment,” she says softly. “Before everything gets hectic.”
The word is too small for what is coming.
Hectic is dropped keys and bad weather. Hectic is Lucy arriving at the hospital with coffee for everyone and threatening a nurse into bringing Charlotte better ice chips.
Hectic is forms and monitors and my hands shaking where she can see them.
Hectic is life arriving with blood and noise and no respect for the fact that I'm not ready to deserve this much.
But I stop.
Because she asked.
Because once, I made pain in her life by hearing only the part of my own fear that shouted loudest. I've spent a year learning the quieter language. The grip of her fingers. The set of her mouth. The pause that means don’t fix this yet. Just stay.
So I stay.
Around us, the glass house holds the afternoon light.
The palms rustle faintly in the conditioned air.
The new viewing point waits behind us, framed exactly the way she wanted, river shining through old iron and green leaves.
Somewhere outside, traffic moves along the road by the water. The world has the nerve to continue.
Charlotte looks up at me.
Her face is flushed. Her hair is coming loose. Her dress is damp at the hem, her body working toward the impossible, and she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
I think of a morning with burned toast. A doorstep box. A locked drawer. Rain on the conservatory glass. Her bag in her hand. Her voice at the door telling me I had made them right.
I think of how close I came to living the rest of my life and never experiencing this moment.
My throat tightens.
“Char,” I say.
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
Her eyes soften.
“I almost lost you,” I say. The words come out rough. Plain. Still not enough. “I almost lost this. I almost lost us. And now you’re standing here about to give birth to our child in the one place I thought I was only saving because I couldn’t save anything else.”
Her thumbs move over my cheekbones.
“You saved more than the building,” she says.
I close my eyes for one beat.
When I open them, she's still there.
My wife. My home. My second chance, standing in sunlight with our future pressing hard between us, impatient as hell and right on time.
Another contraction starts. Her fingers tighten.
“Okay,” she whispers.
I put my hand over hers. “Okay.”
This time, when I guide her toward the doors, she comes with me.