Estela is born in January, on a long night that pain stretches into forever. Santi yells at the doctors—she’s hurting, can’t you see, aren’t you supposed to stop it? Thora screams every swear word she can remember in Czech and Icelandic and English. Finally, all words are gone and she’s nothing but a stretched arc of agony. She loses sight of him then, even as he’s gripping her hand. He comes back to her in waves, after they’ve taken the baby away to clean her up: his hands first, then his eyes, warm and so afraid.

“Not fair,” she murmurs.

He leans close. “What’s not fair?”

“For you to see me like that. I’m never going to see you in that much pain.”

He smiles, worry still in his eyes. “Not like you to give up before you’ve tried.”

She crushes his hand weakly. Then they bring Estela back to her, and everything is different forever.

Thora never thought of herself as motherly. She worried she wouldn’t be able to love a child the way she’s supposed to. She’s surprised to find the love part comes easily. What’s difficult is everything else: keeping Estela alive and happy; snatching moments of sleep between feeding her and changing her and worrying over every sound she makes.

Things don’t get easier. Hard just becomes normal. Santi’s sister Aurelia comes to visit, and Estela becomes obsessed with her, following her around the flat with earnest cooing sounds. Then, with no time in between, Estela is five, full of tumbled sentences of half-English, half-Spanish, and Thora has never loved anything so much in her life, and then they get a call from the hospital.

It was a routine blood test. They have been thinking about having another child, and so they both went in for a checkup. Now they sit in the hospital waiting room. Santi holds Thora’s hand, as if it’s her results that were the problem. His thumb strokes her knuckle until she can’t bear the repetition. She pulls her hand away.

“Thora,” he starts.

“Don’t,” she says. “I don’t need one of your speeches about accepting God’s plan. I can’t—”

“Santiago López?” calls the nurse.

Thora follows him into the small clinic room. The nurse closes the door behind them.