He taught me to drive a stick in a church parking lot. He told me a man is just somebody who shows up, over and over, until showing up is the whole of what he is.
Wade had been gone two years. Hearing his name come out of Brianna in that room took the last of the air out of me.
“Wade,” I said down at the baby. “Hey, Wade.”
He gripped my finger. They do that, it is a reflex, Rosa told me later it does not mean a thing.
You will not ever talk me out of what it meant. Seven pounds of brand new person wrapped his whole fist around one of my fingers and held on.
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He held on in a room where a grown woman had spent nine months telling everybody I would not hold on to anything.
Across the room Lynette sat back down slowly. She was watching us.
Her face had gone from a line to something I had not seen on her before. Something uncertain. Something almost afraid.
She did not say my name again.
Brianna reached over the rail and put her finger on the baby’s cheek. “Look at his hair,” she said. “He is going to look just like you.”
“Poor kid,” I said, and she laughed, a wet, tired laugh, the first one of the night.
Rosa checked the monitor and wrote something on the board. She looked at the three of us, the baby, Brianna, me in the chair in my coat, and something soft went over her face.
“I will give you a minute,” she said. “Hospital is not going to fall down if I take my eyes off it.”
She went out, and for a little while it was just us, the three people that mattered and the one in the corner learning she was not in charge of this anymore.