gently on my stomach with the wand. “It’s a good size, growing nicely. There’s the heart. Everything looks great so far.”
He explains the phases of our baby’s development as he presses buttons on the machine, snapping photos and sliding the wand around. But I can’t take my eyes off the grainy image—my baby. There’s the head and stomach. Is that an arm or leg? A tiny circle—its heart—flutters. My chest blooms with warmth. I’m so happy, so in love with this moment, but still, Michael’s missing.
Someone bangs on the door, and a nurse pushes her head inside. “Doctor, there’s someone here to see…”
Her voice fades as the door swings open.
Michael rushes inside, his eyes wide and worried. “Did I miss it?”
I smile, tears rolling down my cheeks now. “No, you didn’t miss anything. You’re just in time. But what are you doing here? I thought you had to work.”
Commandeering the swiveling stool beside me, he leans over and takes my hand. “I got halfway there before I realized I was being an idiot. I can’t miss this, and I’m—is that…?” We listen to the rhythmic pulsing of the baby’s heart echo through the room. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s our baby.”
My heart bursts, right then and there, and I rest my hand on his cheek. “Yeah. That’s our baby.”
“And here is your baby’s first picture.” Dr. Souza moves the wand over my stomach.
“That’s the head,” Michael gasps, staring at the screen. “Look at that, Colleen. Look, he’s perfect. Is that his hand? Is he sucking his thumb?”
Our tiny baby holds his hand to his mouth. “Looks that way,” Dr. Souza tells us.
“He?” I ask Michael. “What if it’s a girl?”
He squeezes my hand. “Then she’ll wrap me around her little finger the way you have, and I’ll love her for it.”
This is the first time I’ve heard him talk about the baby this way, with tenderness in his eyes and a grin on his face, and it’s more than my heart can take. The tears keep coming. Michael catches them with his thumb and brushes them away.
“Would you like to know the sex of the baby?” Dr. Souza asks softly.
Before blurting out my answer, I look to Michael. His cheeks are pale, his eyes locked on the blurry image on the screen.
“What do you think?” I ask him. “Do we?”
He nods eagerly, and I’m thrilled we’re on the same page.
Dr. Souza maneuvers the wand again. “From the looks of it, you’re having a boy.”
“I knew it!” Michael exults, and then kisses me. “A boy!”
After letting us ogle the images for another few minutes, Dr. Souza shuts the machine down. He shows us a roll of black-and-white photos printed on thin, glossy paper.
“I’ll take those,” Michael says, grinning wide, as he holds them up to study them. “The baby’s first photo shoot. Unbelievable.”
Yes, it is. Just when I thought I was going to be alone in all of this, going solo to my pregnancy appointments and keeping the joys and anxieties to myself, Michael shows up and makes everything right again.
It isn’t possible that this man mistreated Joanna the way Dean and Samara suggested. This man is thoughtful, caring, and so deserving of a loving family. This man doesn’t have a violent bone in his body.
“Come on.” Michael lifts his eyes from the gorgeous photos of our son, and takes my hand again. “Let’s go home and find a place for these.”
DETECTIVE SHAW
After Patel declined my request to add Rachael Martin to the growing list of suspects to follow, I decided to take matters into my own hands. If he couldn’t afford the manpower to tail her, I’d do it myself. Though I’d never tell him, I don’t think his decision had anything to do with the number of officers at the station.