I'm driving my family home.
"Ace, you can go faster than fifteen miles an hour."
"No, I can't."
"We're on our own land. The only traffic is Gary."
"Gary is exactly the traffic I'm worried about. That goat has no respect for road safety."
Harper laughs from the back seat, where she's been sitting next to the car seat the whole drive because neither of us could handle April being a whole row away from both of us at once. I've checked the rearview mirror four hundred times. April has slept through every single one of those checks like the unbothered little queen she is.
I ride bulls for a living. I've been shot at, stabbed, and run off a road. None of it compares to driving a newborn home at the speed of a sleepy snail with my heart in my throat.
We come around the bend, and the house rises up out of the ridge.
Our house. The wrap-around porch glowing in the morning light, the porch swing hanging right where I said it would. Facing east, so the sunrise wakes us up. Yellow flowers planted along the front because Violet snuck over last week and "had opinions."
Harper goes quiet behind me. When I look in the mirror, she's got her hand over her mouth.
"Welcome home, baby," I murmur. And I ain't sure if I'm talking to my wife or my daughter.
Both. I'm talking to both.
I park, get out, and open the back door the same way I'd defuse a bomb. The car seat handle clicks free, and I lift it with the arm that finally works right again, and April Sterling rides toward her front door for the very first time, sound asleep, one tiny fist up by her face like she's ready to fight anyone who wakes her.
That's my girl.
Harper slides her hand into my free one, and we walk up the porch steps together.
"Hold on. Wait." I stop at the door. "I gotta carry you over the threshold."
"Ace. You're holding the baby."
"I got two arms."
"You are not carrying both of us at once, you lunatic, you'll hurt your shoulder again?—"
"Woman, it's tradition?—"
"You carried me over the threshold of this porch frame when it was three planks and a dream. It counts."
I narrow my eyes. "...Fine. It counts."
"Thank you."
"But only because my hands are full of the prettiest cargo in Arizona."
We step inside.
I set the car seat down gentle as anything in the middle of the living room floor, and the two of us just stand there, staring down at her like a pair of idiots.
"We made that," Harper whispers.
"We sure did."
"She's so perfect it's actually rude."
"Gets it from her mama."
