Page 49 of Bluebell Promises

They asked about Angelos’s parents, who would visit at the end of March. Celia suggested that they stay at the Eco-Lodge, and Wren agreed that it sounded like a perfect plan.

“We can give them the suite,” Celia said.

“Is it their first time in the United States?” Ivy asked.

Wren wasn’t sure. “But probably,” she said. “Gosh, their English is insanely good now. They make me feel pathetic.”

All the sisters laughed. Language learning felt like something Europeans were wonderful at, and Americans were subpar at. Wren told herself that she’d pick up the slack later on, maybe with Nelly’s help.

When Wren went into labor, it was three in the morning. She allowed herself to feel it, recognize it, and reckon with this fact before she woke Ben up and explained what was going on. Ben’s eyes widened, but he remained calm. He was used to emergencies. He was used to dealing with health, even if it was the health of animals.

Ben and Wren waited in the living room, watching yet another snowfall and counting the minutes between contractions. The doctor had told them that when they were three to five minutes apart, they could come to the hospital, but that it would be a waste of time to come before.

It was true, Wren thought, that it was better to be in such discomfort from the comfort of your home, at least for a while.

When it was time, Ben drove them through the darkness toward the hospital. Wren squeezed her eyes shut with each contraction, then opened them again to watch the snow melt against the heat of the windshield. Once at the hospital, Ben cut the engine at the drop-off point, then helped her to the door and into a chair before hurrying back to park. The hospital was empty save for a young boy who’d broken his arm and his mother, whose cheeks were red with panic.

A nurse wheeled Wren to the L&D ward. Ben followed, showing a bit of franticness that wasn’t customary. But soon, Wren and Ben were all settled in and ready for the hours that stretched before them. As nurses and doctors came and went to check on Wren, it occurred to her that this very thing had happened to her mother not once but four times. She wondered what her mother had been feeling while in the hospital bed, waiting for her babies to be born. She wondered if she’d felt endless dread, or if she’d felt hope and excitement.

Wren asked herself what she felt. She decided on those very words: Hope. Excitement.

A baby meant a fresh chapter. And Wren had needed a fresh chapter. She hadn’t fully known it before.

After a fifteen-hour labor, Wren held baby Nelly in her arms. She weighed seven pounds and eight ounces, with chubby cheeks, pink eyelids, and a full head of black hair. This hair, Wren knew, had been the source of her heartburn, but it was so adorable that she couldn’t care.

Ben and Wren were in awe of her. All they could do was look at her and lightly squeeze her hands and her feet. All they could do was look at each other and say, “This is it? This is it?”

It wasn’t it, Wren knew. There was so much more to come.

When they settled into their new home, Wren and Ben found that the love they’d initially built doubled or perhaps tripled in size, now that they had baby Nelly around. They took a thousand photographs a day. Ben took a leave of absence from the vet clinic, sending his patients to the other vet clinics in town, telling Wren that he was needed right here for now.

Wren couldn’t have imagined a better partner.

Of course, her thoughts often drifted to Angelos. She wondered what he would have been like with baby Nelly. She wondered what songs he would have sung for her.

But she knew her current reality was the best reality she could hope for, because it belonged to her. Ben was her partner, her best friend. Not long before Angelos’s parents came to visit, Ben got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. She said yes, of course. Before Maria and Andreas arrived, Wren made sure to tell them about her engagement, about the arrangement she had with Ben, who was and also was not Nelly’s father. Maria and Andreas wept, then told Wren they were so happy that she’d found new love in her life. “Everyone deserves love,” Andreas said.

Truer words had never been spoken, Wren thought.

The night before they had to pick Maria and Andreas up from the airport, she kissed her baby and her fiancé and thanked her lucky stars for having so much. There was no telling what would happen next in her story. But she’d be ready for it, face forward and heart open. She had to be, for Nelly’s sake.