When they led her into the NICU, Dorothy moved like a woman in borrowed skin. Everything in the room glowed—monitors, isolettes, screens, the green pulse of machines measuring the fragile persistence of life. Three tiny infants lay in three separate stations under warmed air and hospital light.
Margot first. Dark hair already visible in the thin down on her head. Tiny nose. Delicate chin.
Then Bridget, cheeks a little fuller, eyelids fluttering in sleep.
Then Theodore, the smallest, his mouth opening and closing as if the world had surprised him.
Dorothy reached into Margot’s isolette with shaking fingers. The baby’s hand closed around one of hers on instinct, the smallest grip Dorothy had ever felt and somehow the strongest.
“I’m here,” Dorothy whispered.
She did not know whether she was talking to the baby or to the daughter who would never hold her.
When she came back out into the hall, Grant Ashford was standing near the window with his phone in his hand.
He looked up when he saw her. His eyes were red. His tie was loosened. His hair was disordered in a way that suggested he had run his fingers through it several times with purpose.
“Dot,” he said, and moved toward her with open arms.