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“Seriously? How did you do that?” I ask, realizing he’s holding Kassandra.
He shrugs. “I have no idea. I just started talking to her.”
“Ditch the romance novel narrator. You can be an audio book narrator for fussy babies. Oh my goddess, you’ll make millions.”
He laughs. “Maybe you can help me figure out where to fit that into my schedule. Come.” He nods toward the living room.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I see the row of colorful calendars lined up along the bay of windows.
Stirling stands back, chatting quietly to a baby who is silently enthralled by him while I jump from white board to white board, soaking in all the events.
“I think I love this, but I’m not sure if you’re making fun of me,” I say.
He wraps his free arm around my shoulder. “I’m making fun with you, not of you,” he says.
After several more minutes of soaking in this beautiful, ridiculous future that Stirling has planned for me, for us, I ask if he has his markers with him.
“Have an addition to make?”
“A correction,” I say.
“Don’t go messing with my plan, woman,” he jokes.
“I think you’ll like this change.” Before I erase and revise the one thing that he has wrong, I go to my office and grab the print outs of two government documents that I’ve yet to submit.
I hand them to Stirling with Kassandra’s on top, then take the green marker from the pile he’s put on the coffee table.
“Kassandra Diane,” he says. “Very nice. Powerful. Strong name.”
I use my finger to wipe off the name Jason and the green marker to replace it with Joseph. When I turn back to Stirling, he’s staring at the second legal document, blinking quickly.
Stirling places Kassandra in her bassinet, saying, “I just have to give your mother a kiss. But I’ll be back in a minute.”
And that is exactly what he does. He kisses me like a man who’s been underwater and I’m his life saving breath of air. I kiss him back with the hunger of a thousand hummingbirds tasting nectar for the first time.
“I take it you’re okay with the name change,” I say.
Joseph coos from his bassinet beside his sister. She replies with a squawk.
“I love it. I love you. I’m already in love with these two,” he says, breaking free from me and lifting Joseph into his arms.
“I left the middle name for you to decide,” I say. “The best I could come up with was DiMaggio.”
Stirling gives me a side-eye then casts his gaze down to his namesake. “We can do better than that, can’t we, Clam-Man?”
CHAPTER20
Stirling
Three months later
“Inever would have believed I’d look back on those weeks of bedrest with longing,” Mags moans, pulling herself out of bed to start what will be a full hour of nursing, first Joey, then Kassandra, then a top-up for the boy who has a stomach after my own heart.
Mags’ shelved her plan to start back at work ten hours a week once the kids hit three months old, which was last week. Since I’m covering half the mortgage she doesn’t need the income and we’re loving the flexibility of unscheduled days. Well, unscheduled by anything other than empty tummies and full diapers.
We sleep when we can—morning, afternoon, evening, sometimes even at night—whenever there’s a quiet moment that looks like it might last at least an hour.
My sisters all think Mags and I are crazy since we don’t sleep in shifts the way they did with their partners. When she’s up nursing in the middle of the night, I read to her and the baby. We have our roles for this stage—she puts fresh food in them and I clean processed food off them.
