She looks at me for a long moment. “Big picture, I want you to be honest with me. Whatever else happens. Damn the consequences. I’ve had enough of people not being honest with me.”
It is not what I expected her to say. It is, I think, exactly the right answer. “That I can absolutely promise you.”
I go to the bassinet and lift the fussing baby before the grumble can become a full complaint. She is warm and indignant and smells of something impossibly clean, and she goes quiet almost immediately when I settle her against my chest, as though she has decided I am an acceptable solution to her current problem.
I look down at her. She looks up at me with the dark, unfocused gaze of someone who is still deciding what the world is.
“Hello,” I say quietly. “I’m your father. We have a great deal to sort out, you and I.”
From the bed, Sage makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be something else entirely. I don’t look up. I keep walking around the room, and the baby keeps her eyes on my face, and outside the window, Boston is getting on with itsmorning, entirely indifferent to the fact that my life has just comprehensively rearranged itself.
I find, to my considerable surprise, that I don’t mind.
I mind the complexity of the situation, certainly. The harm it will do to Connor when he learns the full shape of it. The time I spent not knowing, and the particular sadness of imagining Sage navigating the pregnancy alone while I was in the city, thinking about her every time I closed my eyes.
“Sage, I have some things outside this room I must handle. Do you?—”
“No, please. You’re important around here?—”
“As are you. But I still have other duties I must attend.”
“Take all the time you need.” She smiles, and sleep wears at her edges.
I set the baby down and exit, wondering what comes next.
17
SAGE
Bringingthree babies home from the hospital is, as it turns out, a logistical operation of moderate complexity, even with help. Leigh is helping, which means I am grateful and quietly furious rather than loudly furious. I haven’t yet figured out how to hold both feelings at the same time without one of them winning, so my voice goes from irritated and loud to quiet and simmering, with little control on my end.
Leigh carries two of the car seats up the front path of my cottage while I carry the third and my overnight bag, and she does it with the careful, slightly over-solicitous energy of someone who knows they have done a thing that requires repair and is not yet sure what form the repair should take.
I know this energy. It’s the same way she talks to clients she knows are pissed off. I don’t say anything until the babies are in their cribs inside my place.
My bedroom has been transformed in my absence—Leigh changed it into something that actually resembles a functional nursery. Three matching cribs along the far wall. A changing table with military precision organization. Stacked diapers,wipes, a white noise machine humming softly in the corner. It’s thoughtful and practical and exactly what I needed, and I stand in the doorway looking at it, feeling the particular exhausted overwhelm of someone whose body and brain have both reached their respective limits.
“Leigh,” I start.
“I know,” she says, from behind me.
“I’m not—” I stop. Start again. “I’m grateful. For all of this. The room, the website, the help… I need you to know that isn’t lost on me.”
“But,” she says.
“But you brought him to the hospital.” I turn around, and she’s wincing. At least she knows she fucked up. “You brought Connor to the hospital without asking me. Without telling me. You walked him into my room while I was postpartum, and he upset my babies.”
Leigh looks at me steadily, and to her credit, she doesn’t flinch. “I thought he was their father. I thought you’d want him there.”
“You assumed. You didn’t ask. You made that call on my behalf without consulting me, and it went badly, and now I’m dealing with—” I gesture vaguely at the general shape of everything. “All of this.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “He kept calling me. After he found out you’d had them. He was beside himself, Sage. I know you don’t want to hear that, but he was.”
“And how did he find out? Who the hell would tell…”
The look on her face tells me everything.
“You… you told him.”