Page 81 of Exiled

“Isabel?” You, on the floor in front of me, looking up at me. Searching me with Your one vivid blue eye.

“Twins, Logan.” I speak the truth out loud, and I am no less afraid for saying it.

“Twins, Isabel.” You seem calm. Too calm.

I look down at You. “You seem unaffected, Logan.”

A shrug. “It’s two babies rather than one. More diapers, more bottles, more everything. More love.”

“I wasn’t ready foronebaby. Now we’re havingtwo?” I try not to cry, but it is futile. The tears leak.

You slide up onto the couch, shift me onto you, and now I am lying on top of you, hearing your heartbeat, slow, steady, reassuring. “It’s going to be okay, babe. We’ve got this.”

“We do?” I am not so sure, and I sound it.

“Of course we do. I’ve got love to spare, sweetness.” You kiss me. Make me look at you so I understand, so I do not just listen, but trulyhear. “If I have enough love for you and one baby, I’ve got enough for you and two babies. And Isabel? So do you.”

“But I don’t know how to have a baby. I don’t know how to be a mother, Logan.”

“Yes, you do.”

I shake my head. “I barely remember my mother. All I have are a few random memories. How will I know what to do?”

“The memories you do have, what are they like?”

I breathe in, and then out, thinking. “I have the impression that she was a wonderful mother. She took care of me. She loved me. And she took care of and loved my father.”

“That’s all you need to know, Isabel. She loved you, she took care of you. And these babies inside you”—Your palm goes to my belly—“You will love them,bothof them. You will take care of them. The how? The mechanics of being a parent? I don’t think anyone is really ready for that, babe. But you do it. You learn,you figure it out. We’ll figure it out together, okay? We’ll love them,together. We’ll take care of them,together.”

I nod. I feel somewhat reassured, but still scared.

And it dawns on me that You found a way, once again, to tell me it would be okay without saying so.

The next several months are spent becoming increasingly big with pregnancy, and getting the nonprofit corporation set up.

I’ve decided on a name—for the corporation, not the babies: The Indigo Foundation. It’s your money, Caleb. You earned it. You worked for it. It will be your legacy, carried out by Logan and me.

I couldn’t begin to explain or understand the complexities of setting up something of this scale, so I am thankful every single day for You, Logan, for how easily You facilitate the process, creating accounts and interviewing staff and moving the money around and thousand other things, on top of running Your own business. For my part, I have been researching charities, looking into the laws and regulations regarding donations and funding, deciding what I’m going to do once the whole thing is set up.

It is a lengthy process.

This will not be a small undertaking. It will be, as You said, a lifelong project. It is a gobsmacking amount of money, and there are an unlimited number of causes in need of funding and support. I am overwhelmed just thinking about it, compiling the lists. There is so much to know, so many causes that are worthy and in need. Which do I pick first?

You are in the chair beside me, working as well; You work from home almost exclusively now, having made some promotions in the office and rearranged things in order to be with me as much as possible. I am nearing my due date—any day now, our doctor tells us—and You don’t want to be away from me for even a moment. You have attended every doctor visit. You personally painted the nursery—green, a neutral color,because, as we discovered at the gender-reveal ultrasound, we are having a girl and a boy.

Camila, for my mother, and Luis, for my father.

You put together bassinets and cribs and bouncers, picked out onesies and bibs—blue ones for Luis, and pink for Camila—stocked up on diapers and wipes and ointments from the Honest Company. If I feel them kicking, you put your palm to my belly. And what a belly it is. I feel mammoth, so enormous I can barely move. Everything hurts. Being pregnant is definitely real now. Too real. Camila and Luis are there, inside me, ready to come out. I need them out, I need to be done being pregnant. It is exhausting, taxing, draining. I am in a fog, and merely walking down the stairs from the bedroom to the kitchen takes an eternity, and I have to rest halfway down, and then again once I reach the bottom.

I try to picture doing this alone, being a mother, having an unexpected child. No Logan to comfort and provide for and protect and love. I try to picture a woman, large with child, making her way down the streets of New York, on aching feet, exhausted from working to keep the roof over her head, food in the kitchen.

And I know what The Indigo Foundation’s first project will be: a resource center for single mothers, a chain of them across the country, even. Bills paid. Pantries stocked. Nurseries prepared. Childcare provided. Postpartum depression therapy. Regular get-togethers of other single moms in the area, for mutual support and willing ears who understand the hardship.

I draft an e-mail outlining my idea and send it to You. Within fifteen minutes, You have returned the email with practical next steps: find a location for the first center, begin interviewing staff, set up the charter and structure, find additional donors, locate resources to tie in, food pantries and daycares and patient advocates and babysitting services. The list is massive,and daunting. But it provides me with additional steps to begin working on.

I decide the first center will be in Queens, an area that seems, in my limited estimation, in need of such a service. I make a list of potential available locations based on a quick real estate search, send it to You, and You in turn send it to one of the assistants You hired for the foundation, who then immediately heads to Queens with an itinerary and a list of needs from a potential location.

The day is consumed with this work, and the hours fly by quickly. Karen, the assistant, reports three likely locations for me to choose from. Merely from a few e-mails You send to former clients, we secure several donors for the project, and I come up with a long list of resource providers that are interested in partnering with the center.