Chapter 9
Molly
Two days feels like two months.
My body doesn't belong to me anymore. Every movement is a negotiation: the stitches pull when I stand too fast, my breasts ache with a heaviness I wasn't prepared for, and there's a bone-deep exhaustion that sleep doesn't seem to touch.
I've showered twice since delivery and both times I cried through it, not because I was sad exactly, but because the water was warm and no one needed anything from me for seven whole minutes.
But Clem. God, Clem.
She's sleeping on my shoulder right now, this tiny warm weight that smells like new skin and hospital soap, and I keep pressing my nose to the top of her head because I can't believe she's real. Can't believe I made her. Can't believe she's mine.
I'm folding a onesie one-handed, moving slowly because everything hurts and because I don't want to wake her, when the door opens and Taz walks in.
Early. He's early.
He's carrying a car seat that I know wasn't in this room yesterday, and there's a small bunch of sweet peas in his other hand, pale pink and purple, tied with twine.
Like the ones at our wedding. Like the ones he grew in the garden that first summer when we were so stupid in love I used to cry about it.
"Hey," he says quietly, setting everything down. "I practiced installing the seat. In the parking garage. Three times." He rubs the back of his neck, sheepish. "The YouTube videos made it look easier."
I want to be unmoved. I want to look at him and feel nothing but the cold clarity that comes with being done. But my throat tightens anyway, because he's here, and he practiced, and those are sweet peas.
"Did you bring the instructions too?" I ask. "I don't have enough working brain left to solve a buckle puzzle."
"They're in the bag. I marked the page." He crosses to me carefully and brushes his knuckles against Clem's back. "How is she?"
"Perfect." My voice cracks on the word. "She's perfect, Taz."
"She really is." His eyes are on our daughter, soft and wondering and full of a look I recognize. He looked at me like that once. "Molly, I know I—"
"Don't." I shift Clem higher on my shoulder, adjusting my grip. "Not right now. I can't do the apology speech right now."
He nods, jaw tight. "Okay. What do you need?"
"The bag by the window," I tell him. "And the blanket in the bassinet."
He moves without arguing, gathering things efficiently while I lower myself into the chair by the bed. The stitches protest and I hiss through my teeth.
"You okay?" He's at my side immediately, hand hovering near my elbow.
"Fine," I tell him. "Just sore."
He glances at the clock. "The nurse said they're discharging you this morning. I can pull the truck around, have everything loaded before—"
"I know the timeline, Taz," I say.
"Right." He backs off, gives me space. "Sorry."
The quiet stretches between us, filled with all the things we're not saying.
I watch him tuck the blanket into the bag, his big hands careful and precise, and I think about how those same hands held mine through the bleeding scare.
How he read that pamphlet to me and stayed beside me while I tried to stop being afraid.
And then missed her birth anyway. Showed up an hour late to meet his daughter because he couldn't check his goddamn phone.
"The sweet peas are beautiful," I say, because I'm not a monster and they are.
His whole face changes: hope flickering in those green eyes, cautious but real. "I remembered you said the ones at the wedding were your favorite. That you pressed one in your journal."
"I did." I still have it, dried flat between the pages where I wrote about our honeymoon. About how I thought I'd finally found someone who would choose me first, always, no matter what.
Funny how wrong a person can be.
"Molly." He crouches in front of me, careful not to crowd, and his voice is rough. "I know I messed up. I know 'sorry' doesn't cover it. But I'm here now, and I'm not going anywhere. Whatever you need—"
"I need you to buckle her in," I cut him off. "I don't trust myself to do it right. I'm too tired."
He blinks, thrown by the pivot, then nods. "Yeah. Of course."
I transfer Clem to him slowly, supporting her head, and watch his face as he takes her. The way he stops breathing. The way his arms curve around her like she's the most precious thing he's ever held.
Which she is. She is.
He carries her to the car seat and starts adjusting straps, and I see his hands shake. These hands that have broken horses and built fences and held me through nightmares, shaking over a car seat buckle.
"Like this?" He looks up at me, uncertain.
"Check the instructions again," I tell him. "I want us to get this right."
He gets it right on the second try, then checks it three more times. When he steps back, Clem is secure and sleeping, her tiny fist curled against her cheek.
"Okay," he breathes. "Okay, she's good. You ready?"
I'm about to answer when movement catches my eye. Someone in the doorway.
Kendall.
She's wearing a hospital robe, her hair pulled back, and she looks pale and drawn in a way that might make me feel sorry for her if I didn't know what she was. She stops when she sees us, one hand on the doorframe.
"Taz." Her voice is thin and urgent. "Thank God. I was just coming to find you."
"What do you want?" The warmth drains from his voice completely.
"It's Hudson." Her chin trembles. "He's crashing. The doctors—they need you in the NICU right now. His heart's failing."
I watch my husband's face drain of color.
Maria, the nurse who's been helping me gather discharge papers, looks up sharply. "I can call the NICU right now. Verify his status before anyone goes anywhere."
"Yes," I say, reaching for Taz's arm. "Let her call. We'll know in two minutes, and then we can figure out what makes sense. Together."
But Taz is already moving toward the door, toward Kendall, his eyes wild with something I recognize. Fear. He looks past Kendall, toward the elevators.
"Five minutes," he says, and his voice cracks. "I'll run up, see if he's okay, and I'll be right back. I swear, Molly, I just need to see—"
"Taz." My voice is steady even though my hands are shaking. "If you walk out that door without waiting for Maria to verify, if you make one more decision without me—I'm not coming back to the LA house. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
He pauses. For one second, I think he'll stay.
"Five minutes," he whispers. "I promise."
His footsteps echo down the hallway, fading with Kendall's.
Then I stand up, ignoring the pull of stitches, the ache in my whole body. I walk to the bassinet tray where the sweet peas are lying in their little bunch, and I twist my wedding ring off my finger.
It takes effort. My hands are swollen from the IV fluids, and the band catches on my knuckle. But I work it free and set it down on the tray, right next to the flowers.
There.
The ring sits there, gold and gleaming, and I go very quiet inside, the quiet of being finished, like a door closing.
I leave Clem's car seat where Taz set it and pick up the discharge folder the nurse left an hour ago. Everything's signed. I've been ready to leave since before Taz walked in.
Now he's walking out again, chasing Kendall's latest emergency, and I'm done.
I pull out my phone and scroll to the medical transport number the hospital gave me yesterday. A woman named Rosa answers on the second ring.
"Hi, this is Molly Edward," I say, and my voice only wobbles a little. "I'm being discharged from maternity and I need a ride to Ojai. I have an infant car seat but no base; it's the kind that secures with the vehicle belt."
"No problem, honey," she says, warm and unhurried. "I've got the right setup. Give me twenty minutes."
"Thank you." My voice wavers and I hate it. "We'll be at patient pickup. Main entrance."
Az is Grandma June's granddaughter. She took over Juniper Hill after June passed and lives there now with her husband and their baby, named June after her great-grandmother, and in a handful of weekends she's become the closest thing I have to a friend in Ojai.
I text her next: Heading to the farm. Can you meet me there? Might need help getting settled.
Her response is immediate: I'll come after dinner and bring food. We've got you.
Maria returns to the doorway. She has checked with NICU: Hudson is stable, and there was no emergency call for Taz.
"Ready to go?" she asks.
"Almost. Could you carry the car seat down for me?" I'm still not supposed to lift anything heavier than the baby.
"Of course." She takes in my face, the space where Taz stood a little while ago. "Transport?"
"Medical transport," I tell her. "Rosa. She's meeting me at pickup."
Maria nods like this is perfectly normal, like women leave the hospital alone with their newborns every day. Maybe they do. Maybe I'm not even special in my abandonment.
Clem makes a small sound and I lift her against my chest, breathing in her new-baby smell. Milk and warmth and the scent that's just her.
"Okay, little one," I murmur. "Let's go home."
Maria walks us down. The discharge wheelchair feels like overkill but hospital policy is hospital policy. Rosa's van is already waiting at the curb, white and clean, with a little Transport Services logo on the side.
Rosa herself is maybe sixty, with gray-streaked hair pulled back and a face that's seen a lot and doesn't judge any of it.
I buckle Clem back into her seat, then let Rosa position it in the van.
"Let's get this baby girl secured," she says, and I watch as she threads the vehicle belt through the car seat's path with practiced hands, clicking it tight, tugging to test. "There. She's not going anywhere."
I settle beside Clem in the rear seat and click my own belt.
"Would you like the radio?" Rosa asks.
"Not if anyone on it is happily married," I say.
She leaves it off. "You tell me if you need a stop. We have time."
"Everybody keeps telling me that," I mutter.
Rosa meets my eyes in the rearview. "I mean for the ride. That's all I'm in charge of."