Nathan buffed his son’s hair and watched him eat. Danny’s eyes radiated innocence. Blood of my blood. Miracle baby. How he loved him. But his promotion to department head meant longer hours and rationing time with Danny to weekends, leaving him to survive the week with glimpses of his son asleep, glimpses stolen after tiptoeing into his room at the end of another pressure-cooker day.

Jordan Park was a sedate neighborhood sheltered with stands of feather-duster palms, a community of Victorian houses with billiard-table-green lawns. An oasis for young professionals that was not quite as pretentious as Pacific Heights. Today Nathan got to prove how unpretentious he was. Danny wanted to take BART to Oakland.

“Let’s take the Beemer, Dan. We’ll put the top down?”

“I want to ride the train like you do, Dad. BART goes right under the bay.”

“I know it goes right under the bay.” Nathan sighed. “Okay.”

Before they went, Nathan left a note on the fridge and, reluctantly, his BMW in the garage. He and Danny walked to California, hopped a bus, then a cable car to Embarcadero Station, where an escalator delivered them at a funeral’s pace into the subway system winding through the Bay Area.

After she heard them leave, Maggie Becker rose from bed, showered, put on her robe, then made a pot of Earl Grey Tea. She curled up on the sofa in the living room with the Arts section of the newspaper, savoring an empty house. Later, she dressed in faded jeans and a Forty-Niners sweater, then climbed upstairs to her studio. It was a large, bright room with hardwood floors, and a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking their backyard rose garden and the treetops, framing her view of a small park where trumpeter swans glided in a manmade pond.

This was Maggie’s sanctuary.

It was here she had mourned the miscarriage of her first child, lost after she fell from a step ladder while wallpapering the nursery. Her uterus was damaged, the doctors said. The chances of her carrying a baby to term were now three in ten. They suggested adoption. A few months later, Nathan started leaving her brochures from agencies. Maggie threw them into the trash. She refused to let a cruel, freak accident rob her of motherhood.

Nathan understood.

So it was here, while watching the swans, Maggie’s prayers were answered. It was here, when she became pregnant with Danny, she sat with her hands pressed to her stomach, begging God to let her keep this baby.

God had heard her.