Chapter 26

Time passes. Seconds become minutes, minutes hours, hours days, and days weeks. Time passes. Relentlessly. Always in the same rhythm. It doesn’t give a damn about how you’re doing. Sometimes seconds feel like hours and sometimes entire days pass as if they were minutes. Time doesn’t care. The clock ticks equally fast for all of us. Or slow. Depending on how we experience the moment.

The waiter put down a beer in front of me. I thought it was a joke and put on a forced smile. He probably belonged to the category of particularly funny waiter. When he didn’t seem to understand, I pointed at my round belly.

“That’s not a problem,” he said as if I had to excuse myself with an awkward smile for ordering a beer while being far into my pregnancy.

“I ordered a glass of water,” I answered drily.

“Really?” He seemed astonished. He nervously looked at his notepad. “A glass of water?”

“A glass of water,” I repeated, wondering if I should just leave. As if it wasn’t unpleasant enough to eat alone as a visibly pregnant woman. This felt like a circus act.

Step right up, folks, step right up! For only one dollar this very pregnant woman will tell you why she’s sitting here alone! For only two dollars she’ll tell you where her man is! And for a mere three dollars you can touch her belly!

It was a tragedy, but I couldn’t bear it at home. I had been on bed rest the past four weeks because all the stress increased the risk of a premature birth. Even though I’d only returned to work a few months ago—division management seemed to be made for me—I followed my doctor’s instructions and only got up for short periods to go to the bathroom, shower, and eat. I wouldn’t have survived a repetition of my first pregnancy. But now the walls were closing in on me. I had to get out. It was only three weeks to the due date and, as far as I was concerned, Come on out, baby!

I wolfed down the noodles, paid, and left. I think I was only trying to prove to myself that I needed no one. In truth, I thought it was absurd to sit alone in a restaurant with a big belly only to be pitied.

In recent weeks, Grace had dropped by almost daily with Gabriel. She’d looked after my household while I read to Gabe or watched a Disney movie with him. She was there for me—though I was embarrassed to be standing outside her door, there I was. I rang the bell.

“Yes?” she asked over the intercom.

“Hi, Gracie,” an awkward throat-clearing followed, “it’s me.”

Grace buzzed me in, and I went up to her apartment.

“Annie!” Grace said, seemingly surprised it was me. She came toward me and helped me up the last steps. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes. I just had to get out. I hope I’m not bothering you.”

“No, of course not,” she assured me.

I couldn’t help feeling it wasn’t the whole truth. And I wondered where Gabriel was.

“Is Gabe already in bed?”

“He’s with my mom over the weekend,” she said, looking at the floor.

I looked at her suspiciously. Then I noticed how nice she looked. Red lips, perfect eyeliner, little black dress. I hadn’t seen her done up like this forever.

“Do you have a date?”

“A date?” she repeated as if she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

“Grace.” I looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“Not a real date,” she finally conceded. “A . . . friend is dropping by.” She swallowed. “You know him.”

“Oh yeah?” I couldn’t help but grin.

Grace scratched the back of her head.

“Who is it?”

“Colin . . . Colin Mason,” she answered without looking at me.

My eyes widened. “Colin? Colin from Lakewood? Corinne’s brother?”

“Um, yeah, him. Would you like something to drink?” She turned and was about to go to the kitchen.

“Wait a minute.” I held her arm. “How do you know each other?”

Grace snorted. “From the funeral,” she answered.

Suddenly it made sense. Colin had been there. He held me when I collapsed. I think I even saw him standing in the hallway at the hospital.

“You and Colin,” I said, more to myself than her. “How long has this been going on?” Not that Grace had to justify herself to me.

“How long?” Grace’s voice sounded too shrill.

“Spill. You don’t have to feel embarrassed or whatever it is that is making you behave so strangely.”

Grace breathed out, then spoke in her normal tone.

“We’ve been phoning regularly since you were in the hospital. This is the third time he’s visiting.”

“Wow. How long have you been together? Like, really?”

Grace swallowed. “I don’t know. We were going to talk about that this weekend. How we’re going to go on, if we are—that sort of thing. I wanted to wait to tell you about it until I knew whether we are going to try to be a real couple,” she added and blushed.

I was speechless. My college friend and the brother of my best friend in high school. I didn’t see that one coming.

When the bell rang, Grace smiled nervously. “That’s him.”

“Should I leave?”

Grace appeared torn for a moment. “No. Stay.”

She cast a hurried glance at herself in the mirror and then ran downstairs to welcome Colin. I sat down on the couch.

When she returned a few minutes later, her cheeks were red. I can’t say whether because of a passionate greeting or the excitement of standing opposite me with Colin.

“Annie,” Colin greeted me, quickly stepping toward me. “It’s so good to see you.”

I stood up much too abruptly. I wasn’t even firmly on my feet when I felt a strange tearing inside me. There was a sudden burst of water on Grace’s freshly mopped wood floor.

“My water broke!” I looked at the two of them with horror. We just stood there for a second. Rigid with shock. Then everything turned frantic. Colin ran to me and supported me while Grace charged to the phone to call an ambulance. She was becoming a real pro at that.

When you are giving birth, there is that moment. The moment you think you’re not going to make it. You're going to die in the fucking birthing room . . . but then . . . you hear your baby’s first cry, and the world stops in its tracks. It stops turning and nothing around you matters. There’s only this little person who becomes the center of your universe from that moment on.

I used to think the description of opening someone’s heart was somewhat empty—something said mainly by old people when they’re petting a puppy or being visited by their grandchildren. But the longer I think about it, the more it seems to me that there is no better way to describe the feeling of first seeing my baby. It was as if my heart had been a prisoner. As if it had been in chains. Heavy iron chains. But at the very moment when I first saw that tiny being who grew for months inside my body, all the deep and powerful love I’ve always had inside me was released with one mighty burst—so mighty that I could almost hear the chains break. I didn’t know how much love I was capable of until I looked into my child’s eyes for the first time. When they put my daughter in my arms, she looked at me, and I saw the love in her big blue eyes. In that moment I understood that love is unconditional. She would have loved me even if I had been ugly, dumb, or broke. She would have loved me simply because I’m her mother and she’s my little girl.