Chapter 6 - The Birthday We Had Later
Nora woke slowly.
Not like in movies. Not all at once, not with a sweet little smile and a line that made everyone cry. She woke in pieces. A small sound. A twitching hand. Her eyes opening and closing as if light had weight. She cried when nurses touched her. She clung to me until my shoulders ached. She asked for her yellow blanket in a voice so hoarse I nearly broke.
Daniel drove back to the store with police permission and retrieved it from the chair beside her crib.
The first night she slept with it again, I sat upright in the hospital chair and watched every breath.
Daniel sat beside me.
“You need to sleep,” he whispered.
“So do you.”
“I’m not her mother.”
“No,” I said. “But you came.”
He looked down.
Daniel had never tried to replace anyone in Nora’s life. That was one of the reasons I loved him. He let love grow at Nora’s speed. He brought stickers instead of speeches. He learned the duck song badly and sang it worse. He tied her shoes with too many loops. He called her “kiddo” and waited for her to decide what name belonged to him.
That week, she reached for him when a nurse came in.
His face changed so quickly he turned toward the window.
I pretended not to see.
We held Nora’s second birthday three weeks late.
No store. No relatives. No pageant dress. No gold streamers that could be stolen overnight. Just Daniel’s parents, two neighbors, Dr. Ferris stopping by for ten minutes after her shift, and a duck cake from the same bakery that made the first one. Nora wore a yellow sweater and sat on my lap for most of it.
When we sang, she covered her ears.
Not because she was scared.
Because she hated loud singing.
That ordinary annoyance felt like a miracle.
Later, after she fell asleep on the couch with frosting on her chin, Daniel stepped onto the porch with me.
“I need to ask you something,” he said.
My stomach tightened.
He noticed and shook his head quickly.
“Not the wedding. Not yet. I don’t want to turn survival into a deadline.”
I exhaled.
He looked through the window at Nora sleeping.
“I want to adopt her someday if she wants that. Not because of what happened. Not because I feel sorry for her. Because I love her, and I want the law to match what my life already knows.”
I cried then.
Quietly.
Not because he asked.
Because for the first time since that morning, the future did not feel like another place where someone could take from us.
It felt like a door.
May you like
Still closed.
But ours.
