“I thought the baby was yours.”
His eyes widened.
“Okay,” he said weakly. “That’s considerably worse.”
I laughed.
Then immediately started crying.
James wrapped his arms around me.
And suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about Anna.
Not James’s former girlfriend.
Not some woman from his past.
Just a mother.
A mother who had almost nothing left she could control.
And with whatever clarity remained, she had used the last name she could remember to try to protect her daughter.
“Can I hold her?” I whispered.
James pulled back.
“What?”
“The baby.”
The nurse smiled.
“I’ll see what we can arrange.”
Ten minutes later, I was sitting in a hospital chair with a newborn girl against my chest.
She weighed a little over six pounds.
She was barely twelve hours old.
Her fingers opened against my shirt.
Something inside me broke open.
James knelt beside the chair.
“Are you sure?”
I looked down at her.
“We spent years wishing our sons had a little sister.”
He held his breath.
“Maybe we were just waiting for the wrong miracle.”
James covered his face.
That was the second time I ever saw my husband cry.
But nothing magically became easy after that.
The process took nine months.
There were background checks.
Home studies.
Court hearings.
Social-worker interviews.
Temporary arrangements.
And repeated reminders that Anna saying James’s name did not automatically give us any legal claim to her daughter.
Nor should it have.
