Max slowed to match Hannah’s amble, then realized it was designed to allow Zachary to pass them, to be the first one into Sarina’s room, the first to see his baby. Marvelous Hannah, Max thought, strong and often tough, yet capable of such kindness, such thoughtfulness.

Bella had seen that in Hannah and spoken of it, but back then he had been miserable about his wife’s illness and then her death. Bella had been right in her appraisal of this woman. Hannah had seemed to him at first merely strong and tough-minded. Later, as they worked together, he began to see how trustworthy and capable she was and he had fallen in love with her. Hannah was his love, and what a woman, warm and sensual, wise and kind.

Zachary quickened his pace and entered his wife’s room. Hannah slowed even more, and Max stopped. “Yes, my love, we’ll let them have time together.”

A small pink bundle nestled in Sarina’s arms. The young woman’s face glowed with happiness as she looked up at her husband. “Come, see your daughter.”

Zachary approached the bed. The anxiety and fear that had inhabited his wife’s eyes for many weeks were gone. She reached toward him and placed the baby in his arms.

Zachary cushioned the infant in his arms. She whimpered. He looked down at her and his heart softened. He felt something he had never anticipated, a deep and tender love. His child was the most beautiful little person he had ever seen.

“She’s wonderful, beautiful, and she looks like you,” he said as he returned her to Sarina, who smiled up at him.

In the doorway, his father and Hannah looked at each other and beamed approval. Then, to their astonishment, Zachary beckoned them. “Come see my daughter.” He smiled. “My wife has given me a beautiful daughter.”

“She’s beautiful,” Hannah said. “She has such lovely silky hair. My babies were born bald. I never found that very attractive.”

“Would you like to hold her?” Sarina asked.

Hannah hesitated, preferring not to provoke Zachary’s ire. But he nodded. Hannah’s eyes filled with tears when she took the infant from her mother. “Look, Max, isn’t she beautiful? So sweet, so precious.” With a stab of pain, Hannah remembered that she had felt nothing like this tender love for her own daughters when they were born. Bill Parrish had made it very clear that he would welcome boys and only boys, and she had given him not one, but two girls. His disappointment had manifested itself in stamping feet, swearing, ignoring her and the babies when she came home from the hospital. And fool that she had been, she had felt guilty, even knowing that it was his sperm, his male chromo-some, that determined the sex of a child.

Max was saying, “She certainly is a beautiful baby.”