The Secrets of Midwives

He wore a gray winter coat over a T-shirt and jeans. A leather bag crossed over one shoulder. His lips were curled into a preliminary smile. “Hi.”

A

“It’s okay, A

A

“Thank you for the party,” I said, before she could speak. “I won’t hang around. I see you’re busy.”

I held Mietta out for her to kiss, which she did, studying my face. I worked to keep it carefully neutral and avoided her stare. I felt like my feet might rise right up off the floor at any moment, and one pointed look from A

Patrick commandeered the stroller and snaked it one-handedly out the door. I followed him down the hallway and through the automatic doors into the cold, su

“I have a joke—” I started, but Patrick cut in.

“Sorry,” he said, “I just want to say this first. I’m sorry about how I reacted. When you told me about Sean.”

I opened my mouth.

“I was jealous,” he said louder, making it clear he was going to finish. “But I shouldn’t have left you on the stairs like that. I shouldn’t have let you believe that it would change things between us.” He blinked, frowned; then his face morphed into a soft smile. “Why are you crying?”

I reached up and touched my wet cheek. I was crying. “Because I love you. And I couldn’t have blamed you if you’d changed your mind—”

“I didn’t change my mind. Just so we’re clear on that. And”—he blushed—“I love you, too.”

A tear dripped off my chin. I laughed. I was crying. I was professing my love for a man on the street. All the things I’d known to be true about myself were fast proving to be lies.

Patrick gri

I wiped my cheek and took the gift. “Should I … open it now?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

As I slipped my hands out of my gloves, I saw they were shaking. I started to pick at the tape on one end and then decided to take a leaf out of my mother’s book and tear it off in one go. Patrick laughed. The sound of it unraveled something in me, something that had been wrapped too tight for too long.

A book with a pale green cover stared back at me. BABY’S FIRST YEAR.

I opened the cover. The brightly colored pastel pages reminded me of the paint swatches Patrick and I had picked out for the nursery a lifetime ago. “Thank you,” I said. “We don’t have one of these.”

“Well, now you do.”

I turned the page. At first it looked blank, but then I noticed the scrawly, doctorly pencil marks along the right-hand side. MOMMY’S NAME IS Neva. DADDY’S NAME IS Patrick.

I glanced up. Patrick blushed. “I filled it in before she was born, obviously, but you can change it to Mark’s name if you want.”

His face was carefully neutral, his hands dug into pockets, shoulders sloped down. A strange stillness came over him. I couldn’t even see the rise and fall of his breath.

“Well … there’s a bit of space here,” I said slowly, looking back at the book. Maybe we can leave it and … just add Mark’s name?”

Patrick’s chest began to move again. “Sure. We could do that … if you want.”

Now we both smiled shyly. My insides tickled—that feeling when you’ve won a race and you’re just waiting for it to be a

“So…,” I started. “Gran and Lil are coming over later. They’d love to watch Mietta for a few hours. We could … I don’t know … go for coffee or something—”

“Actually, I was hoping the three of us could go for coffee,” he said. “You, Mietta, and me?” His lips curled into a sexy half smile. How did he always know the exact thing to say?

“Nellie’s?” I said.

He nodded. “Nellie’s.” He started to push the stroller he had failed to assemble. “So what was the joke?”

“Ah yes,” I said. “Two babies were sitting in their cribs when one called over to the other: ‘Are you a little girl or a little boy?’ ‘I don’t know,’ replied the other baby. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ asked the first. ‘I mean I don’t know how to tell the difference.’ ‘Well, I do,’ said the first baby, chuckling. ‘I’ll climb into your crib and find out.’ So he carefully maneuvered himself into the other baby’s crib, then disappeared beneath the blanket. After a couple of minutes, he resurfaced with a big grin on his face. ‘You’re a little girl and I’m a little boy,’ he said proudly. ‘You’re so clever,’ cooed the baby girl. ‘But how can you tell?’ ‘It’s easy,’ replied the baby boy. ‘You’ve got pink booties and I’ve got blue ones.”

I gri

“No.” But he chuckled. “Terrible.”

He kept walking, and I fell into step beside him. “Come on. Like you can talk.”

With one hand on the stroller and the other slung low around my waist, Patrick maneuvered us through the snow toward Nellie’s. The sun was at our backs, and the light slid over our shoulders and onto Mietta’s face. Before I could reach for the hood, Patrick quickened his step, putting himself between her and the sun. It was an instinct, a reflex. Something a father would do.

Gran was right. When it came to family, biology was only part of it. Patrick and I, Mark and Imogen, Mom and Dad, Gran and Lil—we’d give Mietta a wonderful family.

Together, the three of us turned the corner, toward Nellie’s. Toward home.

About the Author

Sally Hepworth is a former event pla

Also by Sally Hepworth

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