“I am so happy to see you again.” He pulls the hat from his head and the static electricity turns his hair into a halo.

I laugh.

“I’m not used to all this bundling up,” he says, smiling back.

“I can’t believe you live here now.”

“You were right. Ithaca is freezing! But it is where I belong. I bought a big old house near Fall Creek.”

“You did?” I smooth his hair, wipe a tear from his cheek. He has stubble on his face. He never used to let it grow.

“With plenty of room for you and Max,” he says.

I hold Ethan’s face with both hands. He’s real and he’s here and he knows everything about me. “You want us to live with you?”

“It’s empty without you,” Ethan says. “I need you there. We’ll paint wild things on the walls in Max’s room.”

Margo comes back with a nurse and Max, and Ethan gets to hold him. “I’ve been waiting so long to meet you, kiddo,” he says, and Max opens his eyes and gurgles and I think that maybe he remembers Ethan. All that time Ethan spent talking to my belly counted for something. Ethan being here, holding him now, counts for everything.

Carly returns with eggplant pizza from The Nines and her girlfriend, Erin, who has a mass of crazy yellow curls and round wind-burned cheeks. Carly blushes when she introduces her. And Erin gives me a hug that makes me feel like we’re already good old friends.

We all camp out on my hospital bed and everyone takes turns holding Max so someone else can eat. I’m sleepy, but I can’t let my eyes close. I can’t stop watching. They already love him. It’s the most beautiful thing I can think of. Even if I had all the things I could ever need, I would still love these people. I would have chosen them anyway.

Carly dances around the room with Max, singing Cat Skin songs to him, using fudge and shush and mothertruckers instead of the real words. Erin sits next to me and tells me about how it took her five espressos to get up the nerve to ask Carly out. The way she looks at Carly when she says it is the way Carly deserves to be adored.

Margo tells Ethan how I started working for her at the diner when I was a kid.

“Oh, she was so cute,” Margo says. “Marching up to people and writing orders in her school notebook. ‘Hi, I’m April, may I take your delicious order today?’ I don’t know where she got that from.” Margo smiles at me. “You’re something else, you.”

Ethan laughs and gives my foot a squeeze.