“But come in.”
She came in.
She didn’t say anything.
She sat down at the kitchen table and folded her hands and waited.
That was the right thing to do.
It didn’t fix anything.
But it was the right thing.
Josephine Ruth arrived three weeks later, at 4:47 in the morning, seven pounds and two ounces, with dark hair and a furious expression that made the midwife laugh.
I named her after my grandmother and Mark’s mother, in that order.
Ruth cried when I told her.
She was in the waiting room, and when the nurse brought her in she stood at the edge of the room with both hands pressed to her mouth and didn’t move for a long moment.
“Come meet her,” I said.
She came.
She held Josephine very carefully, like something she wasn’t sure she deserved.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, to the baby or to me or to both of us.
