Page 54 of Lady and the Butcher

“I got that,” she said, a little wry now.

I touched his wrist, a quick grounding. “Lobby,” I repeated.

“Lobby,” he echoed. His gaze tracked me until I rounded the corner. Only then did I hear the soft scrape of a chair as he finally sat—forward on the edge, palms on his knees like he meant to outwait the night.

“They’re in Suite D,” a nurse said as I stepped into the hallway. “Tub’s filling.”

“Thank you,” I said, already shrugging off my bag. “She’s nervous. I flagged it in the chart.”

“She’s sweet as pie,” she replied. “We like sweet.”

Maria met me at the door to Suite D, hair braided, eyes wide, hands clenched around her partner’s fingers. “You came,” she said, as if we hadn’t spent six months making a plan that meant I would always come.

“Of course,” I said. “You’re doing this.”

The midwife lifted a hand in greeting over the running tub. We traded a look and a few quick words that contained years of trust. The room breathed with dim lamps and salt lamps and the hum of water.

Time did its thing. It stretched and folded. Hours fell into the tub and came out clean. I did what I always did—counted and murmured and rubbed and pressed. I fed Maria ice chips and old jokes. I reminded her she had a body that knew what to do even when her mind did not. I told her partner the most useful thing new fathers hear in the middle of a contraction:you’re doing great because you’re here.

Between waves, I thought of Atticus on a lobby chair with bad magazines. I pictured him still and watchful, that weightless patience he carried like an art. I felt the filament between us hold. Not stretch. Hold.

At some point, the receptionist stopped me in the hall to hand me a paper cup. “For your man,” she said.

“My …?” I started, then let it be. “Thank you.”

He was exactly where I expected when I stepped into the waiting room—one ankle on a knee, fingers loose, attention turned down the hall toward the mothers. Not on his phone. Ears tuned for my footsteps. He stood when he saw me.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Strong,” I said. “Getting close.” I held out the coffee. “Here.”

“I can get my own,” he said, but he took it. His fingers brushed mine and a private circuit closed. “How are you?”

“Good.” I made a face. “Sweaty.”

He looked at my mouth with the same focus he had earlier and then lifted the corner of the paper cup toward me like a toast. “You’re luminous.”

“You’re biased,” I said.

“I’m accurate,” he said.

I wanted to sit on his lap in a birth center waiting room and make a memory I would both treasure and regret. I settled for the chair next to his and a lean that let our shoulders touch. The quiet between us felt like the first half of a song.

He spoke first. “You looked like a priest when you walked down that hall. In a good way.”

I huffed out a laugh. “I’ll add that to my business card.”

“You give pieces of yourself away,” he said. “And somehow you don’t come back smaller.”

“That’s the trick,” I said. “You learn not to give away the pieces you need to live.”

He looked at the coffee like it might contain an answer. “Who taught you that?”

“Women in rooms like this,” I said. “Old ladies at church. My mother, when she wasn’t making everything into a parable.”

“And today?” he asked.

“You,” I said, then shook my head, surprised by my own honesty. “You told me to eat. You told me to breathe. You told me to say yes out loud.”