One night in early winter, after Paige had learned to crawl and before she learned to weaponize it against every unsecured cabinet in the house, Wendy found herself standing in the nursery doorway watching Mitchell kneel on the rug while their daughter pulled books from the bottom shelf one by one. He looked up and caught Wendy smiling.
“What?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Just realizing how different this feels.”
“Different from what?”
“My childhood.” She leaned against the doorframe. “Different from always waiting to be blamed for needing something.”
Mitchell set the board book down. “That’s the whole project, isn’t it.”
She knew he meant parenthood, marriage, healing, all of it.
Months later, at Paige’s first birthday, they kept the party small. A few friends. Mitchell’s aunt from Asheville. Neighbors who had become the kind of people you can ask for an extra carton of milk or emergency baby wipes. There were balloons in muted colors because Wendy hated overly themed chaos, a homemade cake because store frosting tasted like chemical optimism, and a tiny crown someone put on Paige’s head for fifteen seconds before she tore it off and tried to eat it.