Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 137119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 548(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 548(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
But I was Polly.
So they expected it.
* * *
Two Months Later
We were sitting on the sofa, me with a glass of wine, Heath with a beer. He was reading, and I was doing some research for new versions of meditation at the studio.
It was a normal night.
Whatever passed for normal for us at least.
“What do you think about Luna?” I said, snapping my head up.
Heath glanced up. “For a girl or a boy?”
I scowled at him. “For a girl, of course.”
“You suggested Malin for a boy yesterday,” he shot back.
“It’s a unisex name!” I protested.
“Any unisex name is a girl’s name,” he muttered.
“That’s such an alpha male thing to say,” I snapped.
He grinned, yanking me in for a kiss without spilling our drinks. “I remember you seem to like all of the alpha things I do to you.”
I blinked once he was done kissing me.
“What were we talking about again?” I whispered.
“The name for our daughter,” he reminded gently.
“Right,” I breathed.
We had been talking about names since I’d broached the subject a month ago. I’d expected him to be tense, tentative, to mention it being too soon.
Instead, he’d made slow, beautiful love to me, then he’d made an appointment at an adoption agency. We’d gotten on a list quickly and without hassle, which was strange considering it was notoriously hard to get on such lists.
But Heath was Heath, so we got on.
Judy, our caseworker, warned us it could be a long wait.
“It’s okay, we’ve got time,” Heath had murmured, yanking me to his side.
And he was right. We did have time.
The ringing of my phone jerked me out of the past. And then of course I had to dig around in the sofa to find it.
“Hello,” I answered on the last ring, about to sip my wine.
“Polly? We’ve got a baby for you.”
I froze, the glass halfway to my mouth.
Heath was instantly alert.
“I’m going to warn you,” Judy continued. “She is currently suffering from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She’s in an incubator since she’s premature and will be for the next three weeks at least. She will be hard,” Judy said, her voice hard as if she were trying to prepare me. “And not in terms of her health, but that will be a struggle too. But because we’ve seen various behavioral and mental health issues. This is a big commitment. This is harder and uglier than the reality of a normal baby. There will be no judgment if you say no.”
I had put the phone on speaker the second she spoke her first sentence, so Heath had heard everything too.
“We’ll take her,” Heath said immediately, snatching the words from my mouth, and my heart.
If there was ever a moment when I thought my love for him might kill me, might literally explode my heart, it was then. It was his lack of hesitation, the look on his face, the love he had for a child that we hadn’t seen, that was full of all the ugly realities of the world and that would be the most beautiful thing we’d ever seen.
Our child.
* * *
“I will never get right with the fact that I lost my baby for a reason,” I said, looking at the little baby in the incubator. She was so small. So small but somehow she took up all the space in the room. “But I think if there ever was one, it’s lying right there.”
I nodded at the tiny, helpless, damaged human being.
Heath’s arms tightened around me.
“It’s because the universe knew that there were little beautiful people like this that needed us. And that we’d need them,” he murmured the profound words with enough force to bowl me over, if he wasn’t holding me, that was.
We continued to watch the little being in the incubator.
Our daughter.
Epilogue
We found our son only three months after we brought our daughter, Skye, home. Everyone said it was too soon. Especially with the extra care Skye needed. A lot of people thought it was because we were sleep deprived and delirious.
“I bought kitten heels in the first three months of Amelia’s life,” Lucy said. “It’s like when Mercury’s in retrograde, no big decisions. And the kitten heels, thankfully I could return when I was lucid...ish. But a child, you cannot—well, not without people judging you, at least. Not me. There have been times where I would’ve returned Amelia for a houseplant or something that didn’t cry for six hours straight if I could. Of course, I love her more than life, but they don’t tell you about how fucking insane lack of sleep can make you.”
Lucy was right, we were sleep deprived. But I operated off little to no sleep as it was, and Skye seemed to like being awake in the night, just like her mom, so it worked out.
And I was her mom.