I clocked it. Easton knew I'd been on the waitlist for over a year. He knew the timeline. He could do the math on whether I'd heard back, and the math didn't add up to still waiting. He didn't push. He just looked, and the look said I see what you're doing.
Easton walked past on his way to the locker. His hand came down on my shoulder, one solid tap, and kept moving.
I nodded. Didn't look up.
The crew rhythm continued. Halsey at the stove. Lou through the kitchen with his clipboard and his coffee. Micah telling astory about a girl he met at the hardware store that nobody had asked to hear. I laughed at the right beat because laughing at the right beat was what I did. The email sat in my inbox. I'd get to it when I got to it. I had somewhere to be after shift.
CHAPTER 17
Audrey
The New York State Department of Health had the form on a page that took two clicks to find. I sat at my kitchen island with my laptop open and my coffee going cold, Nova in the bouncer on the floor beside me, and I typed "amend birth certificate add father" into the search bar like I was looking up a recipe.
The PDF downloaded in three seconds. I printed it on the printer in the corner of the living room, the one I used for insurance forms and Nova's pediatric records, and I picked the pages up still warm from the tray. Three pages, state seal in the upper left, boxes with labels I could have filled out in my sleep because I worked in a building where these forms were part of the plumbing.
I brought the pages back to the island. I uncapped a pen.
Baby's information first. I filled in Nova Callahan, her date and time of birth, her place of birth—Route 9, southbound shoulder, mile marker 14, vehicle delivery attended by Hartsdale Fire and EMS. I wrote it all in the handwriting I used for charts, neat and fast, and the form sat with my handwriting on top of it for a beat before I moved to the next section.
Father to be added.
I wrote Duke Anthony Rhodes, his date of birth, his address on Elm, his phone number. I wrote each line without checking my phone, because I knew all of it. I knew his birthday, his address, and the number I called at two in the morning when I was on the bathroom floor, and I knew the middle name because his mother said it once at Sunday dinner, and I filed it without meaning to.
The signature block was at the bottom of the last page—two lines, mother and father. The form required both signatures, his in front of a notary. I wasn't going to ask him to sign tonight. I was going to wait until the conversation felt real and then bring the form to his place, or have him bring it here. Whichever felt less like a ceremony.
I signed my line. The ink went down clean. I set the pen on the counter.
Ten weeks ago, I sat in a hospital bed and signed a different form with his name missing from it. I signed it with my mother's fear in my hands, and I told myself I was protecting Nova, and the protection was real, and underneath the protection was a woman who couldn't let a man she barely knew have a legal claim on her daughter's life because legal claims were what her mother had trusted and her mother's trust was the thing that broke.
Now, I was sitting at my own kitchen island, undoing that signature with a second one. The two forms existed in the same world now. I was the only person who knew both of them were there.
I looked at Nova. She looked back at me from the bouncer with the calm, unblinking focus of a baby who had opinions about everything and words for none of it. Her fist was in her mouth. The fox onesie was on, which meant it was a good day.
I was going to tell my mother on Sunday, tell Astrid and Easton when they came over for dinner. I was going to do thethings in the order that made sense, and the order was going to land somewhere good. I believed it. I wanted to believe it.
I slid the form into a manila envelope from the desk drawer, put the envelope in the kitchen drawer beside the takeout menus, and closed it.
The chicken was on the table. Nova was in the carrier on the chair beside me. My mother was at the counter putting the gravy in a boat she'd owned since before I was born, the white one with the small chip on the lip that she kept because her mother had kept it. The radio was on low. The kitchen on Birch Hill smelled like Sunday.
"Mrs. Finch came in Thursday with the most extraordinary alpaca blend," my mother said. She set the gravy boat on the table and sat across from me. "Hand-dyed. Teal and rust. She'd driven up from Cold Spring for it. Marcie nearly fainted."
"Marcie faints at every new yarn."
"Marcie has taste."
I laughed. She smiled. We sat down to eat, and for two minutes, the Sunday was the Sunday it always was—the good plates, the linen napkins, the conversation aboutThe Yarn Roomthat meant my mother's week had been full and her days had been warm. I ate the chicken. She refilled my water without asking.
Then I said it.
"Duke asked to be on Nova's birth certificate. I said yes. I'm filing the amendment this week."
I didn't soften it. I didn't offer a preamble, an apology, or the three-paragraph explanation I'd been rehearsing in my caron the way over. I said it like she would have—over the chicken, casual on the surface, the weight in the words.
My mother set her fork down.
The shift happened in front of me this time. Not underneath, not behind the Sunday composure she wore to this table every week. The polite Colleen, the one who had been atmospheric for eleven weeks, was gone. The woman sitting across from me now was the one who had been building to this moment since the morning she walked into my hospital room and saw Duke holding her granddaughter.
"Honey." Her voice was careful. "Are you sure?"
