Twenty years. What would their lives be like in twenty years? What would they be like in twenty hours? She couldn’t imagine. All she could imagine was holding their son for the first time.

They stopped for gas and Jimmy suggested they get something to eat but Susan shook her head. “I just want to get there.”

“Don’t worry,” Jimmy said. “She signed the papers.”

“I know, but . . .” Susan glanced at the restaurant a couple hundred yards from the gas station. “If you’re hungry, go ahead. I’m not the one driving.”

“Coffee’s all I need,” Jimmy said. “And another cookie.”

When he pulled onto Interstate 65 and headed north, she opened the baby name book she had bought. In the back was a blank section where she had written all the possible names her parents had suggested as well as friends at church. On the last page she had written the names of her other sons.

Michael John Colton.

John David Colton.

“Are you sure we should stay with the pattern?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” Jimmy said.

She didn’t want to say. She didn’t believe in luck, good or bad. Things happened in life that couldn’t be explained. And deep inside she felt that even the bad things were not just happenstance or retribution but somehow were for a purpose.

She took her pen and wrote David Colton. It looked good. It felt right. “His name will be David. You okay with that?”

“Sure. David Buck Colton.”

“No.”

“Okay, what’s your idea? John?”

She thought a moment, studying the page. Without looking up she said, “I was thinking James. After his father.”

When she turned to her husband, there was water in his eyes and he was smiling even wider than normal, that silly grin of his with his dimples showing.

“It’s not as good as Buck, but I like it.”

Melissa held her son and couldn’t let go, couldn’t put him on the bed or in his bassinet or do anything but hold him close. He slept peacefully in her arms no matter whether she stood or sat. What she loved most in the little time she had was lying back on the bed and letting him sleep on her chest, his stomach rising and falling with the soft sounds of his breathing. Once, he yawned and stretched, pulling his head back, his mouth in an O.

At that moment a flood of guilt washed over her as she thought of what might have been. If she hadn’t gotten up from that exam table, if the doctor hadn’t taken off the gloves and walked out of the room, she wouldn’t have experienced this. She held the child tighter to her chest and willed the thoughts away.