“Why?”
“You’re staring.”
I smiled.
“Just thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
“Very.”
Then I said:
“One year ago, I wanted to punch you.”
He nodded.
“Reasonable.”
“Today I only occasionally want to.”
“Progress.”
Vanessa laughed.
Then the baby dropped a piece of cake onto Ethan’s shirt.
He looked down.
“Perfect.”
That word stayed with me.
Perfect.
Not physically perfect.
Not financially perfect.
Not the perfect future they had imagined during six years of trying to become parents.
Real.
Messy.
Medical appointments.
Debt repayment.
Marriage counseling.
Therapy.
A baby learning to crawl in her own time.
A father who had once run from the first terrifying moment and then spent every day afterward learning not to.
Years later, Ethan told me something I had never known.
“When I handed her back to you at Willowcrest, I thought that was the worst thing I’d ever done.”
“It was pretty high on the list.”
He smiled sadly.
“But it wasn’t.”
“What was?”
“The four months before.”
I understood.
