“Winnie.”
“She’s a dental hygienist!”
I keep my eyes on the road and say nothing because there’s nothing to say. Carol Garrett looked me dead in the face over the dinner rolls and toldme my genes shouldn’t go to waste, and the worst part—the actual worst part—is that I didn’t disagree. I’ve been sitting with that for the last twenty minutes, and I still don’t disagree.
“She’s not wrong,” I say.
That stops the laughing.
“About which part?” Winnie asks carefully.
“The beautiful part.” I don’t look at her. “Our babies would be—yeah.”
The car gets quiet. Not uncomfortable, just—still. The kind of still that happens when a conversation becomes something neither of you planned for.
“Our babies?” she says.
I shrug.
There’s a beat of silence before Winnie turns to me fully. “Do you actually want that? Kids?”
I think about the version of me who kept that door closed. I don’t really recognize him anymore. “Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
“How many?”
“Four. Maybe five.”
“What?”
“You asked.”
“Banks, that’s alotof children.”
“It’s a family,” I say, and it comes out simpler than I meant it to, stripped down to exactly what it is. “I never had one. I’ve wanted one my whole life, I just—” I shrug. “Didn’t think it was actually going to happen for me.”
She’s quiet for long enough that I glance over. She’s watching me with that expression she gets, the open one, the one she doesn’t try to hideanymore.
Her eyes are glassy. “I want kids too,” she says. “Not four or five, because dear God—”
“We can negotiate. That was my starting position. I’m prepared to come down.”
“To what, three?”
“Three might be reasonable.” I put my hand over hers on the console. “We’ve got time.”
She turns her hand over and laces her fingers through mine. “My mom is going to be insufferable when she finds out you want a big family.”
“Your mom is already insufferable.”
“She really liked you.”
“I know. It was alarming.” I squeeze her hand. “I liked her too.”
Winnie laughs, quiet this time, and leans her head back against the seat. “Four or five,” she says, like she’s still processing it. “You want a whole house full of kids.”
“I want a whole house full ofourkids.” I say it and mean it and don’t take it back. “There’s a difference.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then she lifts our joined hands and presses her mouth to my knuckles. I feel it in my chest, that warm, solid thing that didn’t exist in my life a year ago, and now I can’t imagine being without.
