He reads her face. His own expression shifts to worry in under a second. “Are you okay, mommy?”
She drops down onto the floor beside him. I lower myself onto the couch, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees.
“I’m okay, bud. These are happy tears.” She wipes her cheeks. “Me and your daddy have something to tell you.”
He sits up cross-legged. Gary headbutts his shoulder, and he absently pushes the goat’s face away without looking. “What is it?”
Lola looks at me. I nod. This one is for her to tell him.
She takes Wyatt’s hands in hers. “You know how you said you wanted a brother or a sister one day?”
His eyes go wide, and the smile already breaks out on his face.
And that completes me. After everything that’s happened in my life. All the bad and the ugly, it all disappears. Because this moment, this is everything.
“Well…” She places his little hand on her stomach. “There’s a baby growing right here. You’re going to be a big brother, Wyatt.”
He stares at her stomach. “For real? In there?”
“For real, son,” I tell him, resting my hand on his shoulder.
His mouth falls open. His eyes fill with tears that he’d deny if anyone pointed them out. And then he throws his arms around Lola so hard she nearly topples backward.
“Yes!” he shouts into her shoulder.
Lola laughs through her tears and holds him tight. Gary, sensing the commotion and not wanting to be excluded, shoves his head between them and bleats directly into Wyatt’s ear.
“Gary, get off!” Wyatt laughs, pushing him away. Then he pulls back from Lola, his face deadly serious. “Can we name it Gary?”
“Absolutely not,” I say.
“Gary Junior?”
“No.”
“What about Tornado?”
“Wyatt, we are not naming the baby after any of the animals.”
He crosses his arms and pouts. “What if it’s a girl?” he asks.
Lola ruffles his hair. “What would you name a girl?”
He chews on his lip with a seriousness that makes him look exactly like me. “Penny,” he says. “Because Penny is the nicest horse and she never bites.”
Lola presses her hand over her mouth. Her eyes find mine over Wyatt’s head.
Penny.
The horse I put her on the first time she rode. The one she fell in love with. The one that carried her to the lake, where I told her why I call her firefly.
“I think Penny is beautiful, but she still is a horse,” Lola whispers.
I fight back my laughter.
Wyatt grins. “And if it’s a boy, we’re calling him Gary. Final answer.”
I shake my head, but I’m laughing. Gary bleats in what I can only interpret as enthusiastic support.