As Tia's belly grew, so did my sense of purpose. I became more and more focused on overseeing the construction of the new house, on making sure everything was in place. Even as she sat out on the porch in the evenings, as serene and self-contained as one of those Renaissance paintings in a museum in Paris, I knuckled down. I was determined to, for once in my life, get it right. She tried to calm me down at first, reassuring me that the world wasn't going to end if the house wasn't ready in time or the baby decided to come a week early, but in the end she just let me get to it, probably sensing that it was what I had to do.

Early in the new year the results of the paternity test on Bentley came through – negative. Larissa called a few times in the week leading up the truth being known, trying to wheedle money and attention and all the other things she thought she needed in her life out of me, but after the test came back negative I didn't hear from her again. I instructed my lawyer to set fifty thousand dollars aside in an interest-accruing account for the kid, untouchable by anyone but him, and not until he was eighteen (if he used it for education) or twenty-five (if he didn't). When I told Tia about it over dinner one night, she raised her eyebrows.

"You what? Fifty thousand dollars, Dallas? And he can't access it –"

"I can afford it," I cut in defensively. "You know that by now – and it's not his fault his mother is crazy. You have to remember I thought he was mine for a little while. It –"

"Dallas!"

"What?"

"I'm not scolding you," she said gently. "I think that's a lovely gesture. More than lovely, actually. I'm glad you did it."

I lifted a forkful of Thai chicken stir-fry – one of the many dishes Tia taught me – to my mouth and shook my head. "Yeah, sorry, I thought you might be upset. But now that you aren't, I don't know why I ever thought you would be."

"He's an innocent baby," she replied. "That kind of money could make or break someone's life, especially when they're young."

"And it'll be a lot more than fifty thousand when he's eighteen, believe me."

That's how Tia's pregnancy mostly went. She was the calm one. I was the frantic one, constantly stressing about this or that little thing that didn't really matter. She was due in late May, and by April I was in a state of near-constant watchfulness, waking up every time she got up in the night to pee, jerking my head up to stare at her and enquire as to her wellbeing whenever she made the slightest sound. I think I drove her a little nuts. I also think I made her feel loved.

It was a Friday, halfway through May, when she looked up at me from the passenger seat on the way back from dinner at John and Jenny's and said a single word:

"Ow."

"Ow?" I asked, momentarily distracted by keeping an eye out for deer on the road.

"Ow."

The gears in my brain finally kicked in. "What? Tia?! Ow? Are you in pain? What's –"

"Dallas," she said sweetly, reaching up and putting one hand on my wrist. "Please don't drive off the road, OK? But yes, I feel something. I thought I felt something at dinner, but I wasn't sure."

"At dinner?!" I bellowed, dismayed. "Why didn't you say anything? Fuck. Really? You feel something? What? Like, pain? Do you think –"

She laughed. "I don't know what I think, babe. I've never had a baby before! But, yes, I feel something. Like period cramps. Not all the time, just every now and again. And I – ow!"

Adrenaline surged into my bloodstream and I felt suddenly, completely alert. Strange visions flooded my mind's eye – Tia in pain, Tia giving birth in my truck, far away from the hospital, me not knowing what to do.

"Fuck," I said. "Your bag is back at home. We – should we go get it?"

"Of course we should go get it," she replied matter-of-factly. "That's why we packed it, right? It's not like I'm going to pop the baby out right now. Don't you remember what they said in the birth classes? It takes hours, maybe even days."

Is that what they'd said in the birth classes? I suddenly couldn't remember a single goddamned thing. My heart raced and my mind focused in on a single task – getting Tia to the hospital. That's what I had to do. I white-knuckled it back to the cabin and raced inside for the bag, throwing a cup of food into Beau's bowl before leaving and dialing Amber's number.

"Hello?"

"Amber! Hospital! You – you need to come over, right now! We're –"

I managed to hear an alarmed sounding 'what' before Tia grabbed the phone out of my hands and took over.

"Don't listen to him, he appears to be losing his mind. We're going to the hospital, but I don't know if this is actually it or not. I'll call you in a couple of hours, OK?

She hung up and gave me a look. "Could you not scare the hell out of my friends, please?"

But her telling-off was affectionate and she stroked the back of my neck as we drove, breaking off every now and again to wince and let out a few muffled whimpers.

I don't remember my daughter's birth the way you remember, say, your graduation. I don't remember it in a linear way – I put on my cap and gown, went to the school, walked across the stage, got my diploma etc. The birth isn't like that in my memory. Instead, it's a blurred series of images of the single most emotionally overwhelming day of my life. Early on, there was a cozy, almost convivial atmosphere in the hospital room. Tia's friends and her great-uncle and great-aunt dropped in, playing card games on the bed and making bets as to the exact moment our child would arrive. But as time went on, the atmosphere in the room changed and the people faded away, leaving Tia alone at the center of a hurricane we both knew I could do nothing to save her from.

There was nothing wrong, no crises, no emergencies, but it's hard to keep that fact centered in your mind when your wife-to-be is screaming and panicking and begging you to make it stop. I've never felt so helpless in my life. When the time to push came I was almost relieved to be able to do something, even something as small as mopping Tia's brow or allowing her to squeeze my hand until it went numb.

A few minutes before our daughter arrived, something happened to me. A massive and sudden feeling of perspective, almost an out-of-body experience as it hit me, amidst all the chaos and screaming and nurses rushing around – our baby was almost here. Not just a baby – a life. A brand new life. It was surreal.

I watched in awe as the nurses handed a red, squirming, squalling bundle to Tia. I leaned in, knowing from the first second I saw her tiny little face that everything was different now. Forever. Everything that had come before Alice receded into the background as I looked down at the two of them, staring into each other's eyes like besotted lovers. Tia looked up at me, crying with joy, and the tectonic shift in my soul was complete. Nothing mattered now. Nothing except those two girls. My life was theirs, my purpose was to keep them happy and safe – and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

"Do you want to hold her?"

I looked up, only vaguely aware I was being spoken to. "What?"

"Your daughter," the nurse said quietly. "Do you want to hold her?"

I sat down, thinking that somehow it might be safer, that I might be less likely to drop that infinitely precious little bundle, if I did. And then the nurse placed her in my arms – so impossibly light – and I looked down at my baby's face.

"She looks like you," I whispered, choking up unselfconsciously as Tia watched us together. "Look, babe. Look at her. Oh my God, she's beautiful. She's beautiful!"

She was beautiful. I know, I know, that's what they all say. But she was. Her little mouth curled up at the corners, like her mom's, and her hair was jet-black, like her mom's. There was something of me there, I think. An echo of my nose, a certain expression as she gazed up at me.

We brought her – Alice Rose Corbett – home the next day, back to the cabin because the house wasn't quite finished, and spent the next few weeks in a hazy little cocoon of new parenthood. So taken were we with our child that none of the sleep deprivation or diaper changes or Alice's marked tendency to scream until she turned a striking shade of purple when she was hungry seemed to matter at all.

"I'm going to take her fishing," I announced one night as my milk-drunk baby slept in my arms and her mother sat next to me. "There's a stream up behind the building site, I've seen fish in it, and if you follow it up the hill there's a small lake. I'm going to take her fishing there."

"I've never been fishing," Tia whispered, stroking Alice's cheek.

"Then I'll take you as well," I told her. "Who knows, if I can get the two of you up to speed maybe you can keep us all fed?"

Alice squeaked in her sleep. "Look," Tia whispered. "She looks just like you when she does that – that's the exact face you make when you're mad."

"No, I don't think so. She's way cuter than me."

"Well I won't argue with that."

That was our life, then – the fleeting and achingly sweet few weeks between Alice's birth and the completion of the new house – and her parents' marriage, which was scheduled to take place in late July on the Corbett Ranch property.

"I don't think I'm ever going to forget this," I told Tia one night, as we lay in bed whispering to each other so we wouldn't wake Alice. "This time right now, when she's tiny and we're all here together in this little cabin. When I'm old and gray and sitting in a rocking chair in front of the fire, this is what I'm going to remember – these moments, just the three of us."

Tia smiled and kissed me. "Me too. No matter what happens – and we know better than most people about life happening – we have this, don't we? Each other. Her."

"Are you ready?" I asked, referring to the wedding and the upcoming move. "No second thoughts?"

"Well, you haven't really learned how to make a decent béchamel sauce. And you did put a diaper on backwards two days ago, but I think I can live with you."

We lay together in the quiet darkness of the night, listening to our daughter's little snuffles and sighs coming from the bassinet next to the bed. When I looked over to say something about my béchamel-making skills, though, Tia was asleep. I pulled the sheet up over her shoulders and closed my eyes, happier than any man deserves to be.