Page 78 of Blueline Baby

We went out in the second round, by the way. Jude cried about it. I got home in time for the two a.m. feed and couldn’t tell you the final score.

Right now it’s just past midnight, and I’m pacing the length of the living room with our daughter cradled in the crook of my arm, staring up at me with dark, unblinking eyes.

“Look at her,” I whisper. I stop pacing at the edge of the sofa, where Chloe is curled up under a heavy blanket. “She’s tracking me. She knows exactly who I am.”

Chloe opens one exhausted eye. “Jack. She’s four weeks old. She’s about as aware as a potato right now.”

“That’s false.” I shift the baby higher on my chest, supporting her tiny head in the palm of my hand. “This is the smartest baby in the universe. She already understands the neutral zone trap. Don’t you, Mackie?”

Chloe lifts her head off the pillow. “Mackie?”

“Yeah. Mackie.” I tap the baby’s tiny nose. “MacKinnon is a big name. That’s a lot of syllables for a potato. Mackie fits her.”

Chloe watches us for a long, quiet moment, and a tired smile spreads across her face. “Mackie,” she says, testing the sound of it. “Okay. Hi, Mackie.”

The baby lets out a sharp cry.

“See?” I tell Chloe, already resuming my pacing. “She understands her nickname. Genius.”

It takes me another forty-five minutes of steady pacing and back-patting, but I tire her out. I carry her into the nursery, lay her down in the crib, and ease the door shut, holding my breath until I hear the tiny click of the latch.

I walk down the dark hallway and push open the door to our bedroom.

Chloe is sitting up in the middle of our bed, wearing one of my practice t-shirts with spit-up dried on the shoulder, her hair twisted up in a knot that gave up hours ago. She looks exhausted. She also looks so beautiful that it stops me in the doorway for a second, which after everything is still a thing she can do to me.

“Is she asleep?” Chloe whispers.

“She’s asleep.” I walk over and drop onto the edge of the mattress, scrubbing a hand over my face. “She put up a solid fight in the third period, but I tired her out.”

Chloe smiles. She reaches out and runs her fingers through my hair. “You’re a very good dad, Jack Russell.”

“I’m a very tired dad.” I lean into her touch. “But she likes me. She stopped crying the second I picked her up.”

“She did,” Chloe agrees. “She knows exactly who you are.”

I strip off my shirt and crawl under the blankets, and I pull Chloe against my chest. She settles into the curve of my arm, exactly where she belongs, and I rest my chin on top of her head and breathe her in.

We lie there in the quiet dark for a few minutes. I’m right on the edge of sleep when she speaks again.

“Jack?”

“Yeah, baby.”

“So.” She shifts against my chest and looks up at me. There’s a familiar spark in her eyes, teasing and serious at the same time. “Do you want to do it again?”

I look down at her.

I think about the hospital room. I think about the blinding terror of watching her in pain, and the moment I got one glove on because I thought I was about to deliver a baby myself. I think about the last four weeks of mind-numbing exhaustion.

Then I look at my wife. The woman who hated me for two straight months, calculated every reason we shouldn’t work, and jumped anyway.

I reach up and cup the side of her face, brushing my thumb across her cheekbone.

I open my mouth to say yes. Because obviously yes. I’m the guy who’d want a full forward line and somebody in net. I’d have bet real money on myself saying yes before she finished the question.

“No.”

She blinks, surprised by how fast it came out. “No?”