GORHAM MASTER RACED around the apartment. He knew he shouldn’t panic like this. In the bedroom, Maggie’s bag was neatly packed, and had been for weeks. So why didn’t he just grab it and run? Maggie was already on her way to the hospital, racing in a taxi through the November streets. She’d need him to be there with the bag, when she arrived.

Their first child. They’d waited a long time, and they’d both agreed that they should. Maggie had wanted to get more established in her career, and he’d wanted that for her too. And now at last the great day had come, and he was filled with panic.

Was Maggie ready for this? Was she going to be all right?

He’d thought she should stop work last week. But she’d assured him it was okay.

“Quite honestly, sweetie,” she told him, “I’d rather have the work to distract me.” He saw her point, of course. But had she gone too far? Now that the great moment had arrived, he was seized with fear. Should he have begged her not to go into work today? If, God forbid, something went wrong now, it would all be his fault.

She’d left the apartment at eight this morning. At eleven, in the middle of a meeting in one of the big, wood-paneled conference rooms in the ten floors of Branch & Cabell’s Midtown offices, she had started to go into labor. She’d been very calm; he could just imagine it. She’d excused herself, called him to bring her bag, and gone down in the elevator to find a taxi to the hospital. It was uptown, but at this time of day, it shouldn’t take her long. He needed to hurry.

“Bella,” he called.

“Yes, Mr. Master.” Bella was standing behind him already. Thank God for Bella. She always knew where everything was.

“Did I forget anything?”

Bella was a treasure. She came from Guatemala, and like so many of the domestics in New York, she had begun her career as an illegal immigrant, but her previous employers had managed to get her a green card. He and Maggie had employed her three years ago—after all, with two people working full-time, it was a lot easier if one had a housekeeper. When they had first engaged her, Gorham had been a little uncertain about the forms of address to be used nowadays, but Bella had solved that for them. She’d been working in a big Fifth Avenue apartment before and she sensed, quite correctly, that the people in the Park Avenue building expected everything to be formal. “Mr. and Mrs. Master,” she called them, and they didn’t argue.