Page 75 of Omega’s Fold

“Yes,” I say, to the screen because if I look at Julian I am going to start crying. “Yes. Tell us.”

“It’s a little girl.”

Julian makes the sound again.

His hand comes off the rail. It comes onto mine. His fingers slide between mine and they hold.

I do not pull my hand away.

The sonographer is talking in the background, gentle and professional, about measurements and percentiles and the next appointment. I am not listening. Julian is not listening. Julian is looking at the screen and the screen is showing our daughter and his hand is on my hand, and I find that I am crying, quietly, without sound.

The small curled shape of her on the wall does not know any of us yet.

She moves.

It is the same flutter I felt on the trough by the barn, only this time I see her do it. Her small foot kicks once against the inside of me, and on the screen, in the black-and-white shape of her, I watch her do it, and I feel her do it, at the same time.

Julian’s hand tightens on mine.

He is the one who speaks first.

He says, very low, “Hi.”

He is talking to her.

.

20. Julian

And that decides it. Whatever reservations I may still have held about holding my soon-to-be-former employers to account completely dissipate the moment that I see my daughter.

I don’t care about my job. I don’t care about being partner. I don’t care about anything except her.

The sonographer prints the picture in black and white on a strip of glossy thermal paper, the kind a receipt prints on. She hands it to Wyatt, not me. He looks at it for a long second and then he holds it out.

“Take it,” he says.

“You sure?”

“They email me everything. I’ll get a copy. Take it.”

I take it.

It is warm from the printer. I do not put it in a pocket. I carry it in my hand through the front lobby, past the receptionist who smiles at us both, past the leaflet about folic acid, out into the cold of the parking lot.

Wyatt walks beside me. He has his hands in his jacket pockets and his shoulders up and he is doing the thing he does when he is trying not to be seen, which is making himself smaller in his own coat.

The wind catches the fall of his hair across his forehead, and the smell of him moves with him, that green clean note I have been chasing in dreams for months. I have to put my hand on the roof of the car when I get to it. Just for a second. Just to hold something that is solid.

We get in the car.

I turn the engine on. The heater starts up. I do not put the car in gear. I lay the picture flat on the dashboard between us, on the small shelf above the radio where you would put change for a meter, and I look at her.

I have known about her for two hours.

I keep looking at the picture. I look at the small curve of her skull and the tiny clear line of her hand against her face, four fingers and a thumb, and my throat does something it does not usually do.

I’m aware of Wyatt watching me. “I need a minute.”