The moment we came, he wrapped his arms around me, and I could feel his heart beating against my back. He didn’t say anything; he just held me like that until our hearts stopped racing. When he released me, I was suddenly self-conscious and scurried away to collect my clothes.
“Wait, come here,” he said as he moved to sit at the edge of the bed. “I want to look at you.” He pulled me toward him. Even in the dimly lit room, I was nervous. He used his index finger to trace circles in the soft skin of my belly. There were some faded stretch marks on my hips that he leaned in and kissed. “What was it like?”
“What?”
“When Ash was born?”
I laughed. “You don’t want to know about childbirth right now.”
“I mean, were you both healthy?” He ran his hand up the inside of my thigh and looked up at me. I nodded. “You’re a good mom, Grace.”
“Thank you.” Isn’t that all we need to hear sometimes—that you’re a good mom or friend or daughter or wife?
“Were you happy?” His voice was shaky. “The day you had Ash, were you happy?”
“It was the happiest day of my life,” I choked out.
He started to cry quietly. “I wish I was there,” he said, and then his body was wracked with full, powerful sobs as he buried his face against my belly.
I held him, running my hands over his shoulders, through his hair. “I know, everything’s okay,” I said over and over, but I feared there would be no healing us. The scars were too deep.
“I feel like I’m living in a nightmare, like I’ve just woken up from a coma to discover that fifteen years of my life have gone by. Everything went on without me. I missed everything.”
I continued to hold him all through the night and told him about the day Ash was born.
“We were in Venice when my water broke. They took me by water taxi to the hospital. I remember looking out onto the canals and thinking about you, hoping you were safe. It was uncharacteristically warm for that time of year, so warm that you could feel the heat radiating off the surface of the water. When I think about that day, it was like the sun was kissing the earth, like God was making his presence known.
“I was lucky. My labor was easy—everyone said so. At first, all I could do was stare in disbelief at her trembling little body, covered in blood and white stuff as she flailed around on my chest. I couldn’t believe that you and I had made her. When she quieted down and began nursing, Dan said it was beautiful, that she and I were beautiful.”
“I know you were,” Matt said and then sighed as he gazed out the window. Maybe he was imagining it and finally feeling a part of it.
“We didn’t have a name for her when we arrived at the hospital. Dan was just a friend then, so I was making all of the decisions, even though I felt totally clueless. But somehow, in the hospital, I knew what to do. When I saw her, I could think of nothing but us—you and me—and how she was the evidence of what we’d had together. After that day, I never looked back at our time in college without joy because I had Ash to represent it for me, and she was perfect . . . poetry in motion—the evidence of a life burning well and bright. Everyone knew why I named her Ash. Tati was furious for a while—she hated you for not getting back to me—but she got over it. Dan understood.
“Ash was a fussy baby for the first few months, and we were traveling a lot. It wasn’t easy. I was a new, young mom, trying to figure everything out. Eventually, we came back to New York and settled down. Dan insisted that we live with him in his brownstone, so we did. It was a godsend because it gave Ash some consistency and structure, and she had two adults to look out for her.”
Matt made a sound in his chest like that last sentence pained him, but I went on.
“Ash’s personality always shined. She was a rambunctious toddler with wild blonde hair and those sweet, cozy brown eyes, like yours. She talked, walked, and fed herself early.”
“Of course she did.”
I laughed. “Yes, she’s your child, so things came easily to her. But soon she was her own person, and I thought less about what her name meant and more about her individuality. She’s a beautiful soul, different from me and you.”
“I know that. I knew it the moment I met her,” he whispered. “Was Dan’s death hard on her?”
“She was strong, but I knew it was hard on her. He was a good, patient dad, and he loved her more than anything. I was grateful that we had a little time to prepare for it. We took a trip and stayed in a beach house in Cape Cod for a month. That’s where he died, listening to the ocean, with me and Ash by his side. He spent his last days sitting in a chair, watching us play on the beach. At night, we would make a bonfire and Ash would read us stories in the firelight. Dan seemed happy, even though he knew he didn’t have much time left.” I started to cry.