Devi seemed to understand, though. She nodded gravely and continued on. We were deep in the middle of the cement building, so we had no cell service. We took to hitting each other with our empty yellow bags for fun. Every once in a while, Mormor would look back over her shoulder at us, her expression suggesting she did not want to turn this car around, and Devi and I would smarten up for forty seconds before going right back to being brats.

We giggled a lot in spite of our shared misery.

At least our skin looked good.

It took us seventy-three days and nights to get to the baby section, but once there, my reservations about being trapped in Ikea faded. There were ten nursery vignettes scattered around, with cribs and dressers and plushies and soft blankets. I picked up a blanket, and then remembered the navy-blue-and-gold blanket Mormor had been knitting over the past few months. She’d known she was going to decorate the nursery. She’d been planning all along.

“Thank you again, Mormor,” I said.

“I like that one,” was her reply, ignoring me to point at a white crib with two pullout storage drawers underneath. I approached and ran my hand over the rails, my eyes skimming the ticket that told me all the ways this was an adjustable bed, to grow with my kid as they went from baby to toddler and beyond.

“The white drawers or the natural finish wood would look nice with the blue and gold,” Devi offered. “I think I like the white.”

I nodded. I couldn’t speak. Not then, not when we picked out a bureau and a changing table and an upholstered corner chair so I could nurse. Not when we filled up those tacky yellow bags with baby linens, a mobile and soft stuffed animals.

I had a nursery. A real live nursery for a real live baby that was coming far sooner than she was not coming, and oh, my God, everything feels so real.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Two

The next three weeks were spent with an Allen wrench assembling furniture. I wasn’t stuck doing it, more surveying the process and bearing witness to oodles of my mom’s go-to swear words and delivering her gallons of much-needed coffee. Mormor had checked out, saying she’d bought the furniture and painted the nursery, so Mom got the pleasure of putting it all together.