you been?” Calvin asked.
I glared at him. Anne introduced me to the gray-haired woman, Dr. Gould.
“Becca’s doing great,” the doctor told me. “She’s fully effaced and five centimeters dilated. The baby is fine. Heart rate is strong. Everything looks good.”
“Ten hours of labor and she’s only halfway dilated? Doesn’t that seem like a long time?”
“Not for a first-time mother,” the doctor said. “It’s probably going to be a while yet. You might want to find a hotel and get some sleep. We can call you when Becca’s getting close to delivery.”
I shook my head. “No, I’d rather stay here.”
The doctor smiled. “Somehow I thought you’d say that. We’ve got a waiting room with comfy chairs and bad coffee. But maybe you want to come to the birthing suite and say hello to Becca?”
Anne glanced at me. “Becca’s mom and dad are in there.” I took the hint. The Cavanaughs didn’t like me any more now than they had before. Best to avoid a face-to-face meeting. “I’ll be fine in the waiting room. I could use some bad coffee.”
“Somebody will come find you as soon as the baby’s born.” The doctor laid her hand on my arm. “Don’t worry, Mom. We’re going to take good care of your baby.”
My throat felt thick.
It was the first time anyone had ever called me Mom.
ANNE CHECKED INTO a hotel. After some arguing, I convinced Calvin to do the same but refused to join him. “There’s no point,” I told him. “I’m not going to be able to sleep anyway.”
For a long time I didn’t. But even adrenaline rushes don’t last forever. In the middle of a dream that I can’t really remember, something involving Teddy and a baby squirrel, I felt a hand gently shaking my shoulder.
“Mrs. Fairchild?”
I opened my eyes, blinked, pushed myself up off the vinyl sofa. A dark-skinned young man in green scrubs was looking at me.
“It’s Miss—Miss Fairchild.”
“Dr. Gould asked me to come find you. Would you like to see your daughter?”
I jumped up, ran a hand over my messy hair, grabbed my purse.
“Yes. Thanks. Is she—”
He smiled. “She’s absolutely perfect.”
Oh, yes. Yes, she was.
Ten toes. Ten fingers that gripped tight when I placed one of mine in her palm. A full head of black hair as fine and fluffy as down. Little rosebud lips that opened wide to reveal a tiny pink tongue when she yawned.
Most miraculous of all were the two slate-blue eyes that opened and blinked and gazed in mine when I leaned close and whispered, “Hello, little girl. I’m Celia. I’m your mommy.”
The nurse smiled down at us.
“What do you think, Mom?”
It took me a moment to know what to say. I’d never felt anything like this before.
“That this is the person I’ve spent my whole life waiting for.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Calvin, hurry! I don’t want to be late.”
Calvin shifted one of the huge Target shopping bags to his other hand, balancing out his load, but quickened his pace not at all. “Calm down. You said you’d be here at ten. It’s five minutes past. You think they’re going to give the baby to somebody else if you’re a few minutes late?”
Well . . . no. At least highly unlikely. But today was my first full day as a mom and I wanted to get it right. Being anything less than one hundred percent on time felt like stepping off on the wrong foot.
So did the fact that I’d had to delay picking Peaches up by an hour because I’d forgotten to bring the car seat from Charleston. Calvin and I had been standing outside the doors of Target fifteen minutes before opening, waiting to buy a car seat, formula, disposable diapers, and a baby blanket, since I hadn’t finished knitting mine. Yes, she had been born early, and yes, the race to Philadelphia had been a little frantic. And of course it would all work out. But having to go out and buy things at the last minute was making me feel unprepared and a little overwhelmed at the prospect of being responsible for an entire tiny human.
This was not the way I had envisioned starting out.
“I’m pretty sure that’s the way every new mother feels,” Calvin said when I shared all this with him.
“You think?”
“Absolutely. I think it’s just part of the deal.”
This was oddly comforting.
“Okay. Well . . . good.”
We went straight from the lobby to the seventh floor; the elevator didn’t stop once, which seemed like a good sign. Anne was standing there when