So I went out to Daddy’s workshop one day and got a bunch of boards and nails and hammered those scrap pieces one by one, climbing as I went. I knew I’d be in trouble later. Mom would be mad that I might have hurt the tree, and Daddy would be mad I’d taken wood without his permission. But Parker wouldn’t have to cry over tree climbing anymore, so that would make it worth it. Sure enough, it worked. Parker climbed that tree for the very first time like it was nothing.

Light filled his eyes that day, like it did now, as he handed me a glass of water, sat down beside me, and said, “How are you feeling?”

I grinned up at him. “I feel great.” I was a little crampy and a little nervous, but much calmer than I had felt before the in vitro. The “before” is so often the hardest part—that was definitely true of this process. I was lucky because I had heard and read a million times that egg retrieval was by far the hardest part of IVF, and Greer had taken one for the team on that one. We’d done a test implantation the month before so that the doctor could see exactly where the embryo was likely to implant. I’d taken a few medications to increase the chances of implantation, and the usual estradiol and progesterone I took each month anyway had been adjusted a little. But, overall, it had been pretty easy.

I was worried I would turn into one of those hormonal women you see on TV who absolutely cannot get it together, but I mostly just felt like I had PMS. Mom and Mrs. Thaysden might have caught the side effects instead. They had lain on each others’ shoulders, clutching handkerchiefs and crying. Mr. Thaysden had muttered a bit about “real men,” and my dad opened the bourbon. But, all in all, it could have been worse.

I mean, I had obviously had at least one full-on freak-out. I was becoming pregnant with my neighbor’s baby. A freak-out was in order, right? It had started out quietly, as mine mostly do. I’m a serious internal processor, so I tend to keep things bottled up, which, as we all know, is very healthy.

I’d had some mounting concerns as implantation day got closer. And by “mounting concerns,” I mean an endless supply of worst-case scenarios coursing through my mind on an endless loop. Fun thoughts like that I could hemorrhage and die or that God had made me so I didn’t make eggs so I wouldn’t have babies, and now I was absolutely going to die because I was bucking the plan. Or that both embryos would take and one of the babies die in utero and I’d have to deliver both of them and one was stillborn and the other one was way too premature. Or that both eggs would split a bunch of times and I’d end up on the cover of Star as the new Octomom. Or that Parker would freak out, change his mind, and I’d end up having to keep this baby I never wanted because it’s not like I would just give it to a stranger.