My mother smiled. “I would never forget that. I also never told anyone the story because I didn’t want to jinx it! There were so many times when things could have gone wrong, but they didn’t. When I forgot to fetch her from school once and another parent kindly took her home. Or when the school bus had an accident on the way to a class outing and Lauren happened not to go that day. I always felt something, or someone was protecting her. Then later, when she came back from college and struggled to find work, I knew she would find something eventually, and she did. And I also realized, Lauren makes her own luck. She doesn’t wait around for good things to happen, she makes them happen. Stick around with this one, Matthew and good things will happen to you too.”
She raised her glass, and everyone drank a toast to us.
Tears were running down my cheeks and I went up to hug her.
“Where did all that come from?” I asked her, laughing through my tears.
I knew my mother didn’t like public speaking, yet she had managed that story perfectly.
“I’ve been practicing,” she said, crying too.
“I can vouch for that,” Vic said, his eyes twinkling.
It was a magical day that I knew I would never forget.
There wasn’t much time for a honeymoon, but Mathew insisted we go back to the resort in Colorado where we had spent those magical few days and realized we were in love. Shortly after that, I went into the last part of the pregnancy, becoming heavy and super uncomfortable. I had trouble sleeping at night and Matthew made finding our own place a priority. Cynthia wanted us to move in with her, but Matthew was firm. We hired a rental property on a week-by-week basis while looking at properties.
I understood that he wanted a fresh start for us as a family, but I felt sorry for his mother. She had aged visibly since her heart scare. Matthew’s relationship with her was cordial but strained. She was trying her best to repair the rift between them, but she had never been an emotional woman and Matthew could be very stubborn.
In the end, it was the baby that brought them together.
Jonathan Egbert Waterstone was born a week early, in the middle of a cold winter’s night. Matthew and I had gone to dinner even though I’d barely been able to eat anything, feeling so bloated and big. But Matthew thought going out would take my mind off the baby and halfway through the main course, my water broke. I couldn’t believe it, it was so embarrassing, but Matthew calmly went to get my coat and quietly helped me out of the restaurant without anyone noticing.
We went straight to the hospital, only to be told that the baby was not yet due. I was in labor, but it could take hours. After months of waiting, the baby was finally coming and both of us were petrified. What if something went wrong? Matthew went a deathly pale and paced up and down the hospital corridors while I screamed for pain killers.
In the end, our baby came quickly.
He weighed a healthy seven pounds and after ten hours of labor, I was exhausted. Matthew was with me for the whole ordeal, holding my hand and staying by my side.
When they put my son, bundled up in fuzzy blankets in my arms afterwards, I couldn’t believe that the pain and discomfort had produced this tiny little human, with perfect hands and feet. When Cynthia Waterstone came to see her grandson the following day, she immediately exclaimed,
“You looked just like that after you were born! With a full head of hair! Just like him!”
Matthew handed her the baby and she at first shook her head.
“No, no, I don’t want to drop him.”
But Matthew was firm. “Just hold him, like this,” he said, pushing the baby gently into her arms. She stood stiffly, holding the baby and I watched her face change as she held him, properly looking at him.
“I wish your father could have been here to see this,” she whispered. “He would have been so proud of the man you’ve become.”
Later, when Matthew went with the nurse and our son for a doctor’s visit, Cynthia awkwardly came to my bedside.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “About everything.”
She’d apologized before but this time, I knew she meant it.
“Any fool can see that boy is a Waterstone. That nose and the chin… I mean, obviously.”
The previous day, my mother had said the baby reminded her of me as a baby. It was hilarious, but in a way, also touching to see how a baby brought the family together.
No-one could be prouder than Matthew.
He refused to go home, staying with me and Jonny, as I was beginning to think of him. He sat in the easy chair they had brought into the room for him, rocking the baby back and forth, singing old rock ballads to him.
“Don’t you know any lullabies?” I teased him.
“Nothing wrong with the classics,” he said, as he sang another verse of Hotel California to the sleeping baby.