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“Oh, she’s gorgeous.” Luna cooed softly and Maya forced her tired eyes open.
Had she blacked out for a minute there? She couldn’t be sure. She was so exhausted. All she knew was that one second she was pushing and the next there had been a crying baby in the room. And now her older sister was walking towards her with a tiny little bundle wrapped up in a soft cream colored blanket.
“She?” Zander’s voice broke on the word. “It’s a girl?”
“One happy healthy baby girl.” Luna confirmed. “Here, you go, Mama.”
Maya’s lips trembled and tears dripped from the corner of her eyes, “I’m a mom.”
“You’re a mom and you’re going to be a great one.” Luna put the baby in her arms and then kissed her forehead. “I’ll let you two get acquainted with your daughter. I’ll be right outside if you need anything.”
Luna left the room but Maya hardly noticed. She couldn’t do anything but stare at the tiny wrapped bundle in her arms. She was perfect. Ten fingers and ten toes. Black as midnight short strands of hair sticking up wildly from her little head. And when she opened her little eyes, Maya’s heart melted.
“She has your eyes.”
Zander leaned over them, “She has your everything else so that seems fair.”
Maya nuzzled her nose against the sweet baby, “Our daughter. We have a daughter, Zan. We’re parents.”
“It’s a miracle. All of this. My whole life. It’s been one miracle after another ever since I found you.” He wiped at his cheek and she realized he was crying too.
“Our little miracle.” Maya hummed.
“We have to give her a name though.” Zander sniffed, “I know you didn’t want to talk about it before, thought it might jinx things but…”
“Carmen.”
Zander smiled, “Carmen?”
“After my mom.” She nodded. “If that’s okay with you.”
Zander smoothed a finger over her dark hair, “Carmen June Leery.”
“June?” It was Maya’s turn to smile.
“After my mom too. Her name was June.”
“I didn’t know that. You’ve never said.” She reached for his hand with her free one.
“She made her mistakes but I miss her a lot, especially on days like today when I think of how happy she’d be to have another granddaughter.”
“Carmen June Leery it is.” Maya agreed before looking back at the baby, “Do you hear that? You’re named after two very special women. That means you’re twice as special to us.”
“Our whole world.” Zander nodded, crawling up beside them to lay with them on the bed. “And we’re never going to let anything bad happen to you, not like it did to us, because you’re going to grow up with a huge, wild, crazy extended family and there will alwaysbe someone there to protect you.”
Maya smiled, “Always.”
Bonus Epilogue
2 Years Later
Nova hummed along to the latest Lizzo hit as she walked. The music in her earbuds was a nice distraction from all the noise of the real world and the one from the future that sometimes slid into place over it when she least expected it. She knew her visions were a gift and she treated them as such but a girl could only go stumbling into the river because a vision had distracted her so many times before she found a way to block the noise.
She couldn’t do anything about the big ones. The ones that stopped her in her tracks. The ones that warned of danger or an impending change that would drastically alter her life or someone else’s around her. Those came no matter where she was or what she was doing but the smaller visions, the ones that threatened to drive her mad with the constantly changing world based on every decision the people around her made, or didn’t make, could be controlled.
Over the years, she’d learned that having something to focus on could ground her in reality. If she was with other people, she could use one of her family members or friends as a type of anchor to keep her in the present. It was more difficult when she was alone but she’d found that music worked almost as well as familiar voices. Now she always wore her earbuds on long walks and hummed or sang along to keep her mind in the present.
It was rare for a basic everyday vision telling her that the boy down the street would fall off his bike or that they were going to get rain could overtake her and she was thankful for the control that had come with age and understanding of her gift.
