“She was scared you’d react the same way you did two years ago. She asked me to let her decide when she was ready.”
I looked at Emily.
She was staring at the baby.
“How old is she?”
“Three days.”
“A girl?”
Emily nodded.
“Her name is Rosalind.”
I repeated it quietly.
“Rosalind.”
“Mom suggested it.”
Patricia.
My sister.
My entire family had known this baby was coming.
Except me.
I looked at Rosalind.
“Can I see her?”
Emily looked up.
She studied me for several seconds.
I understood that she was deciding whether she trusted me enough to come closer.
Finally, she nodded.
“Yes.”
I moved toward the bed.
Rosalind was tiny.
Dark hair.
Olive-toned skin like Emily and Patricia.
Still carrying that almost indescribable look newborn babies have, as though their faces haven’t completely decided who they’re going to become yet.
“She’s beautiful.”
Emily said nothing.
I sat carefully on the edge of the bed.
“Emily.”
She looked at me.
“Aunt Catherine.”
Hearing her call me that almost broke me.
“I need to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“What I said two years ago was wrong.”
She lowered her eyes.
I continued.
“Not badly worded. Not misunderstood. Not something I said because I was surprised. It was wrong. I acted as if my expectations about your life mattered more than your understanding of yourself.”
Emily remained silent.
“I knew afterward that I’d hurt you. I called twice, and when you didn’t respond, I told myself I should stop pushing.”
I swallowed.
“But I should have kept trying. Maybe not aggressively. Maybe not constantly. But I should have found some way to keep telling you that the door was open.”
Emily stared at Rosalind.
“I wasn’t ready.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t know if I would ever be ready.”
“I understand.”
She looked down at her daughter.
Then she said something I will remember for the rest of my life.
“I have to raise her to understand that who she is matters more than what other people expect her to be.”
She paused.
“And I couldn’t teach her that while I was still carrying what happened between us.”
My throat tightened.
“You’re right.”
She looked at me.
“I am sorry, Emily. I know saying that isn’t enough. But I’ve spent two years understanding why I was wrong. I’m not the same person who answered that phone call.”
Emily glanced across the room.
At David.
“I know.”
I followed her eyes.
She continued.
“Uncle David told me.”
I stared at him.
“He told me you were sorry. He told me you’d tried to contact me.”
“How long has he been telling you that?”
“Eight months.”
I looked at David.
Then back at Emily.
“That’s why you let him be involved?”
“I asked him.”
She gave a tiny smile.
“When I told him I was pregnant, he came over that same night.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much.”
That sounded exactly like David.
“He brought dinner,” Emily continued. “Then he sat with me.”
She looked toward him.
“He came to every ultrasound.”
I slowly turned my head toward my husband.
“Every ultrasound?”
He nodded.
“You went to every appointment?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t know what to feel.
Anger was there.
Of course it was.
He had kept an enormous secret from me.
But underneath the anger was something else.
I looked at the man I had been married to for thirty-one years and realized that while my niece had been estranged from me and facing an unexpected pregnancy, he had quietly made sure she wasn’t alone.
“You should have told me,” I said.
“I know.”
“But you stayed with her.”
“Yes.”
“Through all of it.”
“Yes.”
Emily spoke softly.
“He just showed up.”
Those three words seemed to explain David better than anything I could have said.
He just showed up.
That was who he had always been.
David rubbed his hands together.
“I was scared too, Catherine.”
“Of what?”
“That the two of you would never find your way back.”
He looked at me.
“And I was afraid that if I told you before Emily was ready, I’d lose her trust. But I also knew that keeping it from you could damage ours.”
“You were trying to protect both.”
“Yes.”
“And you couldn’t.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
I looked at Emily.
Then Rosalind.
