Devi leaned down to press a kiss to my head. “And I love you! I wonder if Lamaze coach is an excused absence for the day?”

“Probably not, but maybe your dad can call in another favor.”

“Truth.” She waggled her fingers at me. She kissed Cass’s forehead, and hugged my mom and Mormor, and then she ducked out of the room. I smiled and held my kid close. When Vikki the nurse picked up Cass to put some antibacterial ointment in her tiny eyes, I flinched. The baby cried, and I had to suppress a completely irrational desire to rend flesh from Vikki’s bones for upsetting my child.

...it was cool.

Everything was cool.

Because after Vikki put a bracelet on the baby, then one on me, she returned Cass back to me. Any longer and she might not have had a face. I was feeling protective.

My mother asked to hold her, and I was considerably less homicidal about my family members touching my kid than I was strangers, even nice strangers like Vikki. Mormor took her turn afterward, singing quietly in Swedish to her. I was enjoying the comradery of the whole thing, the feeling that the Larssen women could conquer the world, when there was a soft tap on the door. I looked up. There stood Jack, his mother right behind him, her hands clasped on his shoulders.

“Hey. Hi,” he said, swallowing hard. He looked from me to the baby and his fingers twitched. “Oh, wow. Wow.”

I appreciated that Jack had never asked or demanded to come into the delivery room with me. He kept in touch with Devi after she texted him, and she advised that my room was full capacity at three people with my mom and grandmother and her. He’d been cool about it and asked her to message him when we were closer to the birth. An hour before Cass made her for-real entrance, Devi had texted him to come to the hospital, that it’d be done soon. I was fully dilated and ready to rock and roll.

He’d been patiently waiting in the hospital waiting room for news ever since.

With his mother and father.

Devi advised not coming in with his father right away so as not to upset me. I appreciated her concern, but I was less worried about me and more worried about Mormor whipping more shoes at him and getting kicked out. Nimrod Father could wait awhile, maybe after Mormor had gone home to get some sleep herself.