Norman went upstairs to view his wife and daughter as soon as both were washed clean and swaddled, the child in lambskin with the fleece still on and Leah in a fresh nightgown and with the bed changed and the room cleared of the bloodied and soiled linens and toweling—Leah still sobbing and shaking, holding the child to her opened plump breast—and he went to the long narrow closet built-in and drew out an additional quilt and spread it over the bed, drawing it up close under the infant. Then Leah raised the child from her breast and the girl was silent as Norman held her, down before his chest as a small fragile piece of firewood, gazing into the puckered face with pinched closed eyes, holding her thus and feeling nothing, a small scrap of fear only and nothing more. The fear then nothing more than fear he might drop her or not hold her right. He’d expected something other than this but could not say what it was. So he only held her silent and read her features and looked to Leah and asked what they might call her. And Leah spoke her name, not as a question, not as a possibility but as an arrived-at thing and he shortened it and so it was done. Then he handed her back to her mother and Leah slid her gently sideways until the nipple brushed her mouth and the girl took it. And Leah, no longer sobbing but still racked with shaking, turned eyes up to him, eyes hooded with a bliss he’d seen before there and that seeing now ran a tremble through him, as if seeing something he ought not to. Leah smiling, her face etched with light over the long drain of fatigue, telling him to leave them then, telling him to send his mother up. And he looking down at her, his body and brain jangling, still had the moment of himself to bend and press his cold lips to her hot forehead before righting himself and agreeing he’d of course do that.