“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

There were several answers. I worried for her safety. I didn’t want her near him. I feared the legal consequences of what I’d done. But none of them were the truth. “I was afraid if I told you, you wouldn’t think of me as your mother anymore.”

I felt foolish enough just saying it, but waiting for her to reassure me felt more foolish. You’re my mother, I wanted her to say. You’ll always be my mother. But she didn’t reassure me. She didn’t say anything. I wanted to hang my head, to cover my face with my hands. But I forced myself to hold her gaze. This wasn’t about my need to be validated as a mother. It was about Grace.

“Am I … like him?” she asked. “Bill?”

“No. You’re like Elizabeth.” I forced myself to say the words. “You’re very much like your mother.”

“I am?”

I nodded. “In looks and in personality. Elizabeth was great fun. Loving. Adventurous. A midwife too. She was the one who gave you and Neva your beautiful hair color.”

Grace glanced up abruptly, catching her reflection in the window. She turned her head from side to side. It was almost as if she was seeing herself for the first time.

Her lips upturned slightly. Not a smile exactly. But not that lost, empty look I’d seen on her face a moment earlier. It made me wonder if Lil was right. Perhaps it wasn’t the lack of a father that had damaged Grace. Perhaps it had been the secret all along.

30

Neva

Mark was in the doorway. He looked the same. Tall. Dark. Clean-cut. Still, I nearly didn’t recognize him, his expression was so cold and disbelieving.

“Come in,” I said when he made no move to enter.

He surveyed the room. Mark wasn’t stupid. I was sitting up in bed, propped up by several pillows. My daughter lay in my arms. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that you didn’t call an insignificant ex-lover to come and visit you and your newborn in the hospital if you didn’t have a bombshell to drop.

He walked inside cautiously, as if any step might set off a grenade. His eyes found the baby. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“A girl.”

“And she’s mine?”

“Yes.”

He cursed quietly and twisted away from me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t think she was yours. But she arrived last night … and she’s full term. Full lung capacity, a good size. Black hair.” I paused. “So she’s yours.”

He took a couple of steps toward the door, then abruptly turned back. “So … you’re not on the pill?”

“I have this condition, polycystic ovaries, so the chances of getting pregnant spontaneously are slim. It was just…” Looking down at my daughter, I couldn’t use the word “unlucky.” Instead I let my voice trail off. Mark didn’t seem to notice.

“But you’re a midwife,” he cried. “How can you miscalculate a date by a month?”

“Because of my condition, I rarely get periods. I went on the baby’s measurements.… Turns out she was small.”

Mark looked desperate. He strode to the fogged-up window, placed both hands on the sill. “What about the other guy? Has he been given the good news, that he’s off the hook in daddy duties?”

“I never told him. He was married and … it was complicated. I didn’t think he needed to know.”

“Lucky him,” Mark said. He remained that way, at the window, for several seconds, breathing audibly. Then he whipped around to face me. “Imogen and I got engaged last week, did you know that?” He barely paused before continuing. “Anyway, how do I know you’re not lying now?”

It was a valid question. After everything I’d put him through, why should he take my word for it? He didn’t know me well, and what he did know of me was that I was a liar, a liar who’d turned his world upside down. “I guess we’ll have to look into a paternity test,” I said.

He nodded. “I guess we will.”

We remained in silence for several minutes. I wanted to talk to Mark, to beg for forgiveness, to throw myself on his mercy. But this wasn’t about me.

“Can I hold her?” he asked.

Instinctively, my arms tightened around her. But with a little effort, I loosened them again. Mark was her father; he had a right to hold her. In fact, he had many more rights, and I’d denied them all so far. Yet, here he stood before me, waiting patiently for my agreement. “Yes,” I said. “Of course you can.”

I held her out and he froze, as though he couldn’t believe I’d said yes. But when he took her, he cradled her with the utmost care, barely moving an inch. He reminded me of a child carrying a mug of hot coffee.

“She looks like my mother,” he said quietly.

“She does?”

He nodded. “She passed away two months ago.”

I closed my eyes. Another person who’d suffered because of my decision. Deep inside, I felt a quiet resolve build. “What was her name? Your mother?”

“It was … Mietta.”

“Mietta,” I repeated. “I love it.”

Mark’s eyes met mine briefly. Then he dropped his gaze back to the baby. “Is that your name?” he asked her. “Mietta?”

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to call her Mietta Grace,” I said. “Then she’ll be named after both her grandmothers.”

He nodded. “It’s all right with me.”

We remained that way, staring at our daughter until someone cleared their throat.

Mark and I looked up simultaneously. Patrick was standing in the doorway. He was wearing his hospital accreditation on his lanyard, probably for ease of getting around the nursery. Security was tight in maternity wards.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you had company.”

“It’s all right, Doctor,” Mark said. “I’m not going anywhere, so you may as well examine her now.”

Mark looked back at Mietta, so he missed the slap of pink that hit Patrick’s cheeks.

“Oh…,” I said. “No … this isn’t the doctor—well, he is a doctor, but he’s actually, he’s…” I twisted my mouth around, trying to find the right thing to say.

“Patrick Johnson,” he said, extending his hand. His eyes flickered to mine, then returned to Mark. “And you are…?”

Mark slid the baby up his arm, freeing one hand with which to shake Patrick’s. He smiled, oblivious.

“Mark Bartolucci. I’m the baby’s father.”

I’d never seen Patrick at a loss for words before. Perhaps from his experience dealing with anxious parents, he’d learned to be quick to smile or make a joke or just come up with the right thing to say at the right time. That skill deserted him now.

Mark, by now, looked wary. He was starting to get the picture.

“Mark, can you give us a minute, please?” I asked.

I thought Mark was going to refuse, which would have been understandable, considering he had just been introduced to the daughter he knew nothing about. But eventually he handed Mietta back to me.

“Actually, I’m going to go, Neva. I have to talk to … family and things. I’ll call you tomorrow and we can, um, make a plan.”

Vaguely I wondered what on earth that plan would look like, but I didn’t want to be bothered with those details now. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll speak to you then.”

He jerked forward and planted an awkward kiss on Mietta’s head, then hovered there for a couple of beats, smelling her, maybe. “See you soon,” he whispered.

“So that’s the guy?” Patrick said, once Mark had left. “Seems nice enough.”

“He’s engaged,” I said, though I don’t know why.

Patrick sighed. “So what happens now?”

The plan Patrick and I had to share the child care while both working part-time seemed too perfect to have ever been real.

“Go back to my apartment, I guess. Start my life with my daughter.”

He nodded. I wanted him to say that he’d be there. That all the plans we’d made still stood, and this was just the beginning for us. He didn’t.

“You’ll be a great moth—”

“Patrick?” The words leapt out of my mouth before I could process them.