A year ago, I was a nurse who took a pregnancy test in a staff bathroom and sat on the closed toilet lid with her hands on her knees. A year ago, I drove to Astrid's house at six in the morning because I couldn't go home to an empty apartment with the news. A year ago, I was the woman who set a table for one, called it strength, and believed it completely, daily, without examining what she was locking out.
The woman at this counter had cream cheese on her thumb and a man in the next room singing something off-key to a one-year-old, and the distance between the two versions of herself was a year she would not trade for anything.
Duke had been weird for a few days. He went to his parents' house twice in one week, which was once more than normal. He took a phone call on Tuesday with the bedroom door closed, which was not how he took phone calls. He bought me flowers on Wednesday—no occasion, no reason, just flowers on the counter when I came home from shift. He'd been doing small things with a frequency that suggested he'd decided something and hadn't told me yet.
I figured he was planning something for Nova's birthday. A toy, a stuffed animal, a song. Something small and Duke-shaped that would make me cry in front of his mother.
He came out of the bedroom with Nova on his hip. She was in the pale green sweater dress my mother knit for her, the one with the fox on the front pocket, and her hair was just long enough to hold the small ribbon Duke put in it. The ribbon was crooked. He knew the ribbon was crooked. He didn't care.
I crossed the kitchen. Fixed the ribbon. Kissed Nova on the head. Kissed Duke on the mouth.
"Ready?"
"Yeah."
The Rhodes house was cleaner than I'd ever seen it. Streamers in the kitchen. The dining room table set out for cake. The TV was off for the first time in any scene I'd witnessed in this house—Ray Rhodes had muted his sport, which was either love or a hostage situation.
Ray greeted us at the door. My mother at the kitchen counter with Diane, cutting fruit, laughing at something Caroline said. I clocked it from the entryway and let it land. Colleen Callahan and Diane Rhodes at the same counter, laughing about anything—twelve months ago, I would have bet money against it.
Reese was already in the living room with a bag of presents and a glass of wine. Caroline had Henry the toddler on the rug, two and a half now, and when Duke set Nova down, she went straight for him. Henry opened his arms. Nova grabbed his shirt. The two of them on the rug together, the small alliance they'd been building for six months that nobody else was allowed into.
Easton and Astrid came through the door with Charlie in the carrier. Astrid in jeans and a sweater, looking like herself again. Easton's hand on her lower back. She crossed the room and hugged me—the long hug, the one she'd been giving me for a year, her arms tight around my shoulders, her chin against the side of my head.
She pulled back. Looked at me. "Happy birthday to your kid."
"I know. She's one. I can't believe she's one."
The firehouse came in waves. Hank pushing Mary's wheelchair up the small ramp Ray built for the porch. Mary with a wrapped gift in her lap. Lou. Halsey with a pan of something he insisted on putting in Diane's kitchen even though Diane had it covered. Micah. These people were strangers to me not so long ago. Now, they were family by proximity and by the man who connected all of us, and the fact that I could stand in a room full of them and feel like I belonged was something I was still getting used to.
The party. Cake on the table. Nova in the high chair Diane bought for her—the one with NOVA carved into the back, Ray's work, cut in his garage last month. My mother and Diane feeding her small handfuls of cake from opposite sides, the two-grandmothers choreography they'd worked out over the year without ever naming it. Nova covered in frosting. Henry the toddler eating cake off the floor. Duke laughing at all of it from across the room with a beer in his hand and his sleeves rolled and the dimple out.
I sat on the couch with cake on a plate and watched the room hold a birthday party for my daughter. I was allowed to belong here. I'd been allowed for a long time. I was finally letting myself.
Duke caught my eye from across the room. He gestured—small, just for me—toward the hallway that led to the back of the house.
I handed my plate to Astrid. "Excuse me a second."
I crossed the room. Duke ahead of me, leading. Down the hallway past the family photos, past the bathroom, to the small back office Ray used for grading game film.
The door closed behind us.
There was a desk with a notepad on it. A framed photo on the wall of Duke at fifteen in his Hartsdale Wildcats jersey, grinning, the dimple already doing its work. A football on the shelf. The afternoon light through the small window above the desk.
Duke in the middle of the room. Me at the door.
He didn't say anything right away. I read his face. The charm was off. The grin was off. The room-reading posture I'd catalogued since the night of the rehearsal dinner was gone.What was on his face was the man underneath all of it, the one I'd been falling in love with for a year.
"Duke."
"Aud." A beat. "I've been trying to figure out how to say this for six months, and I haven't figured it out, but I'm going to say it anyway."
My chest went tight. My hands went still. The thing I hadn't let myself believe was happening today was happening today, and my body knew it before my brain caught up.
"A year ago today, I pulled up to a highway and delivered a baby on the shoulder of Route 9. I looked through the window of a sedan and saw you. I didn't know in that moment that you were going to change my entire life. I didn't know the baby I caught was mine. I didn't know that the woman in the car was the woman I'd been waiting to be in love with."
His voice was steady. His eyes were wet.
"I know now. I've known for a long time. I've been waiting until I earned the right to ask you."
