Epilogue
Samantha
Christine ran a hand over her wild hair. “Do I look okay?”
“Mom, stop worrying about your hair,” Nick said from his seat in the hospital waiting room. “And anyway, you look beautiful, like always.”
“And you call me a mama’s boy,” Ian muttered under his breath.
I giggled and gently elbowed him in the ribs. Underneath me, the stiff plastic upholstery on the waiting room couch squeaked as I shifted on the cushion.
It had been six months since my gallery show—six months since Ian came home with me and never left. He called a real estate agent the next day, and before two weeks had passed, his sterile bachelor warehouse—already sparsely furnished aside from the art he had painstakingly created and accumulated over the years—was empty. His brother Andy took some of the furniture off his hands, but the bulk of it went to charity. Only a few items made their way to my house.
“I like your stuff better,” he said with a shrug when I asked him if he wanted to keep more than just a few odds and ends. “My old stuff—it reminds me of where I used to be. Your furniture just makes me think about where I’m going.”
Slowly but surely, though, the house was becoming more than just mine as his artwork went up on the walls and he picked out new things that he liked. It was becoming ours. And when his plane touched down at SEA-TAC every month after his allotted days working in New York, I loved the text message he always sent me, without fail. I’ll be home soon.
Across from us, Stavros shifted in his chair and glanced at his watch. “How long is this going to take?” he groused.
Christine turned to him with an incredulous stare. “You held my hand through five deliveries, Stavros. It takes as long as it takes.” But she couldn’t hide her own roiling nerves as she glanced toward the door into the delivery unit, where Frankie labored to deliver her baby.
Life with Ian—it was creative and passionate, full of laughter and light. Sometimes he annoyed me so much that I had to go to my studio and close the door. But I loved every second of it. I loved him, for exactly who he was. And he loved me just the same, anxiety and all.
I looked down at hands, where he busily folded a tiny piece of paper. “What is it this time?”
“It’s supposed to be a lion,” he replied. He held up the mangled square of patterned paper and frowned. “But it looks like shit.”
I giggled and leaned my head against his shoulder. He’d come home with an origami book for kids and a stack of colorful paper two weeks before, after a client had him ink a series of origami animals on her arm. Dozens of folded paper animals decorated most of the surfaces in our home right now, and every time I found one in an unexpected place, like the coffee can or my underwear drawer, I smiled and thought of him. Even this morning, when a student pulled a tiny crane out of my hair during my advanced crochet class.
Even though Ian bowed out of knitting class, I was still teaching. My second show with Puget Sound Arts had gone as well as the first, and though I could survive without the money from teaching, I still liked the extra security, the rhythm it gave my weeks and months. Maybe it was anxiety, or maybe it was just what I was supposed to do—Ian didn’t pressure me either way.
Just like he hadn’t pressured me to get the tattoo that still sat in his files, waiting for me. I wasn’t ready—not yet. But I would be one day, and when I was, I knew he would do it perfectly.
The wide labor and delivery doors swung open, and all of us tensed as Clive charged through. His eyes were bright with tears, and his hair was a wreck, like he’d repeatedly run his fingers through it. But he looked alive with happiness, joy so bright that I could practically taste it in the air.
“It’s a girl,” he said, his voice catching on a wealth of emotion. “And she’s perfect.”
* * *
“I’ve never held a baby before,” I said, swallowing nervously as Ian and I walked back to the postpartum room to meet his new niece. “Only child, you know?”
Ian slanted a grin down at me as his fingers tightened around mine. “I’ve got, like, thirty-eight cousins and I’m one of the oldest. It’s not so hard, I promise.”
But even Ian, casual and cool as we walked back to see the new family, stopped dead in his tracks when we walked into the postpartum room, to the bassinet where the tiny baby lay. He extended his hand, but it just hovered over the baby, trembling slightly as he blinked against the wetness that suddenly lined his dark eyes.
“Ian, meet your niece,” Frankie said. She lounged on the bed, looking exhausted, but just as happy as Clive had when he walked into the waiting room. “This is Elizabeth Dimitra Davenport.”
Ian looked over at Frankie, the tears spilling out to roll down his cheeks. “After Nana?”
Frankie nodded. “After Nana.” She blinked against her own tears, and glanced over at Clive, who sat bleary-eyed in a chair. “It was Clive’s idea.” She looked back at Ian and gave him an encouraging smile. “You can pick her up, you know.”
Ian’s big, tattooed fingers were careful—so heartbreakingly careful—as he scooped the newborn into his arms, snuggling her blanketed body into his broad chest. Only her squashed face, relaxed in sleep, and those tiny, fine fingers were visible above the pink swaddle. I reached out and gently caressed a cheek as Ian stood still as a statue, eyes fixed on his new niece.
When I looked up into his handsome face, I saw more happy tears, and he didn’t bother to try and hide them as he gazed down at Elizabeth, who yawned widely and snuggled deeper toward the source of warmth.
“I’d love to have one of these someday,” he said softly, his eyes meeting mine. “With you.”
“You think so?”