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“How do you not?” he says.
She looks at him, confused, this guy who came out of nowhere, just like Georgia was hoping he would, just like Georgia would be thrilled to see he has, if she wasn’t currently on a strange ride with her parents.
He steps down so he is eye to eye with Maggie. “I guess I missed the party, then?” he says.
“You co
uld say that.”
“So where’s my girl, then?”
“That’s a little complicated. I don’t want you to get upset, there’s no reason to get upset, but she’s on her way to the hospital with Thomas and Gwyn. Thomas says she is fine, that he’s sure she is just a bit rattled from everything. When Nate gets down from the top of the roof, we’ll take you there.”
His eyes light up. “Nate’s on the top of the roof? Right now?” he says.
This was his take-away?
“How about I go and get him? Let him know my opinion about the tree? Afterward he can take me to see Georgia. By then she should be calm enough to welcome me with open arms.”
He pats her on the arm, almost like she is his little sister, and starts to head back the way he came. To find Nate. To go on a little adventure with him, jumping around on the badly broken roof.
“You know, no one thought you were coming,” she says.
He stops walking. “What’s that?”
“No one thought you were coming tonight,” she says. “No one thought you were going to show up.”
He looks at her, not the least bit offended, giving her a big, slightly aggressive smile.
“Except for Georgia,” he says.
“Except for Georgia,” she says.
“So apparently she knows something that everyone else doesn’t,” he says.
“Apparently,” Maggie says, because maybe she does.
Maggie feels Denis looking down at her, as if waiting for the next thing she was going to say, the next thing she was going to throw at him. So she pretends she has a right, or permission to say it.
“You’re having a girl,” she says.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re having a little girl,” she says.
She can’t believe she has said it. She is glad it is out there, though, because she wants to hear an answer. She wants to hear an answer that will convince her—that will convince anyone listening—that people can come through, in their own time, that any love story can end well, even with endless evidence banking up that it is going to end another way.
His whole face breaks open, joyful and full of pride. Real, stand-up-taller pride. “We’re having a little girl? Excellent. It couldn’t be more excellent.”
Maggie nods. “It is. It is excellent.”
He pauses. “You think Georgia would consider naming her Omaha?”
And then there’s that.
Gwyn
They are driving Georgia to the hospital in Eve’s van. They are driving Georgia to the hospital in Eve’s van because it was the only vehicle they could get out easily, and quickly, all the other ones still blocked in by the people trickling out of the party, only slowly making their way off their property.
