Chapter 13 - The Quiet Weeks Before
The phone rang at seven thirty on a Tuesday and I didn't have to answer it.
I was sitting on the floor of the nursery with my back against the wall, sorting tiny clothes by size. My husband was in the doorway with his phone to his ear. I could hear her voice, thin and bright through the speaker, asking if Sunday might be a good time to drop off the blanket she'd bought. Just to leave it on the porch.
He didn't look at me for permission. He just said, "Not yet."
There was a pause on the other end. He listened, his jaw tight. "I know you want to help," he said. "We're taking space before the birth like we talked about. When she's ready to have visitors, we'll let you know together."
I watched his hand. It was steady. He didn't fidget with his collar or glance toward me to make me be the one to say no. He said goodnight and hung up before she could negotiate it into something else.
That was the second call that week. The first had been on Thursday, about the pediatrician his mother had researched. He'd used the same even tone, the same words we'd agreed on. I hadn't realized how much air I'd been holding until I heard him do it twice without wavering.
Later that night he sat down on the floor beside me. The pile of pink sleepers was between us.
"You don't have to thank me for that," he said before I could say anything.
"I wasn't going to," I said.
He smiled a little. "Good."
For weeks I had hated pink. The color had been on my skin for hours after that garden party, under my nails, in my hair no matter how many times I rinsed. The dress I'd worn had gone straight into the trash. I couldn't look at the balloons in the grocery store without my chest tightening.
Now I was painting the nursery pink on purpose.
I did it on a Saturday morning while he was at the hardware store. I had picked out a soft, warm pink, not the harsh frosting color but the color of peony petals. I taped the trim myself, awkward with my belly in the way, and rolled the first stroke up the wall. My arm ached quickly. I kept going.
When he came home he stood in the doorway holding two coffees and just looked.
"You didn't wait for me," he said.
"I wanted to start it," I said. I had a smear of paint on my wrist.
He set the coffees down and picked up the second roller without another word. We worked in silence for a while, the windows open, the smell of paint filling the house. At one point he reached over and wiped a spot of pink off my cheek with his thumb. His touch was light.
"It's a good pink," he said.
"It is," I said. I stepped back and put my hand on my belly. The baby kicked, hard, against my palm. "She's going to like it here."
We hung the curtains together. We assembled the crib. I folded that same stack of pink blankets and put them in the drawer. Each thing felt deliberate, like I was taking the color back stitch by stitch. Not irony. Not a joke. Just mine again.
The OB clinic was cold like it always was. I sat on the paper-covered table in my gown, my feet in the socks I'd brought from home, and he sat in the plastic chair pulled close beside me. The nurse had found her heartbeat immediately, fast and strong on the monitor.
Dr. Patel smiled as she measured. "She's head down, looking perfect. How are you feeling?"
"Tired," I said. "Ready."
She glanced at my husband. "And dad? Ready for a daughter?"
I felt my shoulders tighten before I could stop it. For months his readiness had been the question that lived under every other question.
He didn't hesitate. He put his hand on my knee, his palm warm through the thin gown.
"We're so ready for her," he said. His voice was clear, not performative, not loud for the doctor's benefit. He looked at me when he said it. "We've been getting her room ready. It's pink and it's hers. We can't wait to meet her."
Dr. Patel nodded like it was the most ordinary answer in the world and made a note on her chart. I stared at the monitor where that steady whoosh-whoosh filled the room.
On the drive home I didn't cry, but my eyes stung. He drove with one hand and kept the other on my thigh.
"You meant that," I said quietly.
"I did," he said. "I've been practicing saying it like I should have from the start."
We went to the grocery store on the way back. In the parking lot, a young dad was loading a pink car seat into his truck. I watched him struggle with the straps for a second before he got it right. My husband saw me watching and didn't say anything. He just squeezed my hand.
May you like
That night the house was quiet. The nursery door was open and the lamp cast a soft pink glow into the hallway. I stood there longer than I needed to, just breathing in the paint smell and the clean cotton smell, feeling her turn inside me. The phone didn't ring again.
We weren't healed. I knew that. But for the first time since that afternoon in the garden, I felt like we were building something ahead of us instead of just guarding against what had already happened.
