He looked over to see who Edith had gotten andfound her staring open-mouthed at her portfolio. “Who’d you get?” he asked.
She blinked and tilted the folder toward him. “How could an old lady be the murderer? There’s no way I could’ve done it.”
The picture fake-clipped to the top of the folder showed a woman of at least sixty-five, her white bob, glasses, and straight-faced mug shot so unlike Edith. And a murderer.
“You never know,” he said, showing her his photo. “This guy’s not even thirty and he’s lost almost all his hair.”
She glanced at his, her giggle cutting off after only a second or two in favor of a gasp. Finn looked at her and found her dropping her folder so she could put both hands on her belly this time.
And not the top of it. The bottom, as it she needed to hold their baby up and inside her. “Ohhh,” she groaned.
Around them, Nicki kept reading directions and handing out different items to people. The board would come together in pieces, but Finn’s heartbeat drowned out everything. And he instinctively knew he would not be playing his first murder mystery tonight.
“Finn,” Edith moaned next, and he found her looking down at the ground. “My water just broke.”
His vision fuzzed. The whole world came to a complete stop, despite the activity around them.
Edith looked at him, her eyes wide, and that broughtFinn back to reality. He jumped to his feet and said, “We have to get to the hospital.”
That got everyone to stop talking as effectively as Nicki had earlier by saying she was going to open the box. His thoughts raced around his neural pathways, and he couldn’t find the right thing to say into the resulting silence.
It took forty minutes to get to the hospital. Edith’s water had broken already. Did they have time to get there? Could she get outside to the truck? What about their game night?
Edith groaned, and that seemed to open a dam of activity. Chairs scraped against the floor as Nicki and Rory both jumped to their feet and swarmed toward Edith. Alex said something, and before Finn knew it, someone had shoved his car keys into one hand and their packed-and-ready baby bag into his other.
“You know the way to the hospital,” Oliver said. “Edith’s a few steps ahead of you. We’ll get everything cleaned up here.”
Finn walked out his front door, still so unsure of anything that had happened in the past sixty seconds. Alex and Nicki flanked Edith as she took laborious step after laborious step, and Finn tossed the bag in the back seat and got behind the wheel while they helped Edith into the passenger seat.
When the door slammed, sealing just the two of them in the cab, he looked at her. Everything becameclear in that moment, though his beautiful wife had gone pale and sweaty.
“We’re having a baby,” he said.
“If it happens in this truck, I’ll never forgive you,” she quipped right back.
Glad he’d found his wits again, Finn laughed as he started the truck and got them on their way. Edith groaned over the bumps in the dirt road on the way to the highway, where her next contraction hit.
Finn drove like he’d never driven before, his level of anxiety worse than it had been when he’d worked in Army Intelligence. Finally, he pulled up to the labor and delivery emergency entrance and hurried around the truck to help Edith down.
He helped her inside, where a nurse met them with a wheelchair. She took all the information she needed, and Finn once again felt his world start to spiral.
He needed to call his parents. Then Edith’s. Had he even brought his phone? Or his wallet?
Everything seemed to be moving so fast—until they got into the hospital room. Edith changed into a gown with the help of two nurses while Finn, feeling helpless and insignificant, stayed out of the way.
He got a text from Dawson that said,Good luck, brother. We all want pictures when he’s born, with all the stats.
He got a similar message from Alex, and Lincoln, and Oliver. His heart swelled with love for his friends,and he quickly tapped out messages to all of them, as well as his parents and Edith’s family text string.
Then everyone left, and only the two of them remained. He took a seat next to her and took her hand in his. “We’re having a baby,” he whispered, lifting her wrist to his lips. “And we have the best friends and family in the world.”
Edith smiled softly at him, her face only relaxed for a moment. Then another contraction came over her, and she cried out as she leaned forward over her belly. Finn wanted nothing more than to take this pain from her, ease this burden. It seemed to go on and on, and without any doctors or nurses in the room, Finn started to panic a little.
Then, just as the contraction started to fade, a man entered the room. Relief punched through Finn’s whole body, making it easier to breathe. “Doctor Rougeman,” he said, jumping to his feet. “She’s contracting a lot.”
“That’s great news,” the doctor boomed as he plucked a pair of rubber gloves from a box. “Because that’s how babies are born, and it’s time for this little guy to meet his momma and daddy.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine