---

“Look at you. You are glowing.” Amanda walks into Grind It Fresh! I don’t bother to stand, because pregnancy has its own laws of physics. Newton’s First Law of Motion may say that a body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion, but pregnancy inertia says I get to do whatever I want and other people have to be the ones who move.

“Thanks.”

“I’m so glad you can drink coffee again.”

“Me, too.” She’s nervous, a little fidgety, and I stare her down.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“You’re not just here for coffee.”

“What? Of course I am.”

“You want to ask a favor.”

“How do you do that? How do you know?”

That was easy. She caved fast. “It must be the pregnancy hormones. Mothers have a gift for seeing right through their kids. Intuition must come along with the progesterone.”

“Liar.”

“You’re about to ask me to do something you haven’t even told Andrew about.”

One shaking finger gets pointed at me. “Witch!”

“Nope. Just,” I pat my belly two-handed, “pregnant. And right. Tell me what you want.”

“I need to borrow your belly.”

“It’s not exactly detachable.”

“You need to come along for the ride.”

“For what?” The words are out of my mouth a split second before I know her answer.

“A–”

I cut her off. “A mystery shop.”

“QUIT DOING THAT! You are freaking me out.”

“I can’t control it! It’s my superpower.”

“That’s your superpower? Pretty disappointing.”

“Disappointing?”

Amanda looks at me intently. “You once told me if you could have any superpower you wanted, you would want your clit positioned inside your vagina.”

“Well, we can’t pick our superpowers, can we? I’m sure Superman would trade flying for something more useful,” I ponder.

“What could possibly be more useful than flying?”

“Maybe he’d like to be able to get pregnant and give birth.”

“Maybe.” She doesn’t sound convinced. Neither am I.

“Do you know a single guy who would trade the ability to fly for this?” I point to my belly.

“No. What do you think Superman would trade flying for?”

“Lois Lane.”

“Didn’t he do that in ‘Superman II’?”

“He kind of did, didn’t he? And look how that turned out. He nearly died.”

“What the hell is your point? How did we get from clit placement to Superman II?”

“We’re us, Shannon. We move from stupid topic to stupid topic seamlessly and end up in Obscureland.”

“Maybe that’s our superpower,” I muse.

“Maybe.”

“But I’m pretty sure it’s just yours.” I take a sip of coffee. “And quit stalling. What’s the mystery shopping deal?”

“I need you to pretend to be pregnant.”

“Sorry. Nope. No can do.” I point to my belly. “That ship sailed a while ago. Now it’s an aircraft carrier.”

“I said that wrong. I need you to be really pregnant. I’ll pretend.”

“For a mystery shop? You have plenty of people who can wear the belly pillow and fake it.”

“But none of them are as good as you.”

“Why are you in charge of a pregnancy shopping account? Isn’t that beneath your new pay grade?”

“It’s a special deal. We want to combine the new assisted living communities Anterdec is managing with retail opportunities, and one of the ideas is to put maternity shops in the retirement villages.”

“Um, you realize the women who live in those places are postmenopausal. Sounds like really alarmingly bad consumer research.”

“Ha ha. They can’t get pregnant, but their daughters and granddaughters can. It’s like child-care centers in nursing homes. Intergenerational placement is the new trend. Put the pregnancy-related store in Grandma and Grandpa’s retirement village and there’s convergence. Visit your relatives and pick up a new nursing tank, you know?”

“That’s kind of genius.”

“Thank you. It’s my idea.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I’m impressed.”

“So you’re in?”

“Might as well make some use of this belly.” The baby kicks, a sharp feeling against my ribs, then does a slow roll, like he’s doing a yoga pose with a nice, long stretch.

“Did he just move?”

“Yes.”

“Can I feel?” She’s so shy about it, something tugs at my heart.

No. Wait. That’s just a bad pocket of acid reflux.

“Of course! My belly is your belly.”

“You were ranting the other day about people who assume your body is a public service, like park benches and trash cans, and how you hate being taken for granted by people who rub your belly like they rub the shoe of John Harvard’s statue in Harvard Yard.”

“You’re not people. You’re my people. My person.”

“I thought Declan was your person.”

“You’re my person without a penis.”

That makes her grin as she puts both hands on my belly, fingers splayed nice and wide.

The baby kicks and rolls, enough to make my cervix feel like an overstretched scrunchie.

“Whoa! It’s more muscular than I imagined!”

“Thank you. I am rather buff, if I do say so myself, for a thirty-week pregnant woman with an ice cream fetish.” I flex my arm and show off my biceps.

“I meant the baby. The womb.”

“Oh.”

“I thought it would be this moving thing under a bunch of your squishy curves.”

“You really know how to flatter me.”

“But your womb is like a band of stretchy steel, housing a baby!”

“That’s pretty much the biological definition of exactly what’s happening in me.”

“And someday I’ll be like this, too. What’s it feel like?”

“You ask me this every time we’re together. About a week longer into it than last week, when you asked.”

“But it feels different than you describe it.”

“Sorry. Go ahead and feel.”

“Thanks. I’ll wear the belly pillow, but it’s nothing like that.”

“No. It’s not. I wore that stupid belly lots of times, and it’s about as close to real pregnancy as going to Epcot and eating in the Moroccan restaurant is to real Moroccan food.”

“Good comparison. So you’ll do it?”

“The mystery shop?”

“Shops. Plural. We have about five of them.”

I sigh. “Only because I love you.”

“I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”

“You’re only asking because I’m the one pregnant woman you know.”

“And also because you’re a total softy.”

“There’s that, too.”

Bzzzz. We check our phones.

“It’s mine,” we say at the same time, our noses in our phones.

I frown. Mine has a reminder for a meeting. “Rita, 4 p.m.” It’s on our personal calendar. I didn’t put it there, so it must have been Declan.

Which means Dave did it.

Who is Rita?

I text Declan that question.

No immediate answer.

I look at the clock. It’s 2:15. The trip home takes twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five, if I walk.

“Weird,” I tell Amanda, who is double-thumbing her text stream. “Declan scheduled a meeting for some woman named Rita to meet us at home.”

“Mmm, maybe after that Unicoga mess, he’s trying out threesomes?”

“Ew! Don’t even joke!”

I text Dave: Who is Rita?

He replies instantly. Rita Hayworth? Rita Moreno? Please be more specific.

You sound like Siri, I text back.

Siri is less organized than I am, he counters.

Declan added an appointment to our personal calendar for today at 4 p.m. Rita?

I get three dots, and then:

I’m stunned. My boss added his own meeting to a calendar. Excuse me while I go cry tears of joy at his independence.

You suck, Dave.

I get a thumbs-up.

“Dave doesn’t know who she is.”

“See? Threesome.”

“Shut up. Besides, if I’m having a threesome, it’s with two men.”

“Conversations I never expected to have with my bestie.”

“You started it with the threesome joke.” I frown. “Why would Declan schedule an appointment like this?”

“Maybe it’s an interior designer for your nursery.”

“Maybe. But I told Dec I wanted to do that myself.”

“Have you?”

“No,” I confess.

“Then he’s taking charge.” Amanda’s phone buzzes again. She rolls her eyes. “I have to go. There’s some problem with the nursing home account, and the O Spa had a fire in one of the massage rooms.”

“A fire?”

“A client let a sex toy run for too long and it overheated. All that massage oil and the flames took off.”

“Oh my God!”

“I’m sure that’s what she was saying when the sex toy overheated.” I get a fast hug and a view of my best friend’s blurred body as she flags down a cab and heads back to the office.

I text Dave again: Where’s Declan?

At your home, he replies.

There’s my answer.

Twenty-five minutes and two pee stops later, I walk in the front door to find my husband standing in the kitchen, finishing a salad, with a look of surprise that I’m home.

“Who is Rita? She’s on your calendar–wait, our calendar–for four p.m. That’s our home-life calendar, Dec. Who is she?” I ask before grabbing a piece of Jarlsberg cheese he has sitting on a small plate on the granite counter in front of him.

“A night nurse we’ll be interviewing,” he says, gulping from a green bottle of sparkling water.

“A night nurse?” Of all the people Rita could be, that’s unexpected.

“You know. For the baby. To train the baby.”

“To train it to what? Do dog tricks?”

“No. To sleep.”

“You want to hire someone to come to our house in the middle of the night and teach a newborn infant how to sleep?”

“Yes. I know you’ve never been a mother before, so this is all new–”

“Night nurses aren’t part of mothering!”

“Of course they are. How else will the baby learn to sleep?”

“The baby is human. That’s like asking how it will learn how to breathe! I’m not letting some stranger into my house to force my baby to learn how to sleep on a schedule!”

“Why not?”

“Because that isn’t parenting.”

His hands clench. “My parents used night nurses to train all three of us. It’s a tried and true method for making sure the new mother and father experience the least disruption.”

“The whole point of a newborn is disruption!”

“How would you know?”

“I have two nephews! Carol’s told me all kinds of stories. I was at home when she and Todd visited. They dragged around like zombies for the first six months of their babies’ infancies.”

“See? That’s exactly what a night nurse will help us to avoid.”

“Avoid my child? Never!”

“Avoid the zombie existence.”

“You really mean it, don’t you? You expect some nurse to come here every night and step in and handle the baby for eight hours?”

“Until the baby’s sleeping through the night, yes.”

“Tyler didn’t sleep through the night until he was four!”

“They assured me three months is the norm.” Whoever they is, Declan sure does have an increasing level of confidence in them.

“Not four months, Dec. Four years!”

“These stories just prove the need for a night nurse, Shannon. We absolutely cannot run a growing corporation while raising a child who doesn’t sleep through the night for years.” A prickly heat creeps up from my shoulders across the back of my neck. Anger doesn’t manifest like this. This is something very new.

Or very old. Instincts I didn’t know I possessed come roaring up to the surface.

“No, Declan, they prove that a night nurse is outside the norm.”

“Sounds like Tyler is outside the norm.”

“Well, duh. He has apraxia. Of course he’s outside the norm.”

“What is your point?”

“My point is that we’re not hiring a stranger to come and live with us at night so I can be away from my child!” The tears explode in my eyes. There is no other way to describe it. “Our child, Declan! We’re supposed to spend this time together. It’s why we’re having a baby. I’m not going through all of this–” I gesture at my belly “–so I can be a spectator at my own life!”

“Hiring someone to help so we can continue to run a nationwide chain and be CEO and COO is hardly being a spectator.”

“You weren’t raised by nannies, were you?”

“Raised by them? No. But my parents had them. We always did. Someone had to make our meals and coordinate uniforms and get us to lessons and sports practices.” He’s bewildered.

I give it right back. “My parents did all of that for me, Dec.”

“Your parents weren’t running Grind It Fresh!”

“Is that what this is about? I have to choose between our company and our baby?”

“I never said that.”

“You implied it.”

“No. I most certainly did not.”

“But–”

“I never said you have to choose between the company and our child. Never. And I never, ever will put you in that position.” Fierce love rushes out of him, almost making me stagger. If you can feel someone’s emotions–take them in, let them crawl on your skin, burrow deep into your pores, and integrate them into your bloodstream–then that is what is happening to me right this very minute.

Warring impulses churn inside me, making it so hard to filter through them all and answer the one most pressing.

“Cancel the meeting.”

“I will not!”

“Then meet with Rita on your own.” I grab the doorknob and start to turn it.

“Shannon. Be reasonable.”

“I am being reasonable. You spring this on me without saying a word?”

“I didn’t spring it on you. I decided to take care of it for you. We’ll interview them one at a time until we find the right person and then it’ll be done. Settled. And we can do this long before the baby’s born so we experience the least disruption.”

“What’s next? Are you buying a robot that can pat the baby’s back when he wakes up in the middle of the night? Feed him, too? Make it so we never have to touch our child?”

“Of course not.” He’s really disturbed by my words.

Good.

Bzzz.

Our doorbell.

“Who is that? It’s not even three. Rita wouldn’t come that early, would she?” Declan asks as I walk to the door and look at the video monitor for the lobby.

Mom’s face appears, big and fishbowl distorted.

“Hi! We were in the city and thought we’d pop by!” Dad waves from behind her, holding a box of donuts.

Declan groans. Normally I’d join him, but right now, I’m relieved.

Plus, you know... donuts.

“This is a really bad time,” Dec says before I turn off the sound button.

Bzzzz.

I let them in.

A kind of anger I rarely see in my husband floats over his face like a phantom. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“Because they’re my parents and I love them and I would never turn them away after coming all the way into the city for a visit.”

“You want the donuts, don’t you?”

“And that.”

“Shannon, we have an appointment with someone who could be a critical part of our team. You can’t just–”

“Team? Team? Is that what this is about? You think if you assemble the right team for our child we can get some optimal outcome? I don’t want a stranger in my house after I’ve given birth. I want it to be you, me, and the baby. Maybe our parents and siblings after a few days. But I sure as hell don’t want my life being managed by someone else. I’m perfectly capable of mothering my own child.”

“That is not what this is about.”

“You know what? I’m done.” I grab my coat and don’t even put it on, opening the front door.

“Where are you going?”

“To spend some time with my team.” Slam!

I waddle to the elevator just as the doors open and Mom and Dad are standing there, surprised. I slip through the open doors and press the Close Door button, hard, before Dec can find me. The last inch of space as the doors slide shut makes it clear I’ve won as his face pinches out of sight, hands on his hips, a frustrated sigh echoing in my ears as the elevator takes us down.

“What’s going on?” Mom asks, giving Dad a look.

“We’re having a fight.”

“I can see that. But is it because of us?” Dad’s earnest question makes my ears go hot with rage.

“No. It’s because Declan thinks I’m not capable of raising my own baby.”

Another look passes between them.

“He said that?” Dad asks, eyes narrowing.

“He wants to hire a night nurse!”

“A what?” We reach the ground floor and I storm out of the elevator, Dad hot on my heels, Mom right behind him.

“Where are we going?” Mom asks.

“Anywhere but here. Rita is coming at four o’clock, and I want nothing to do with her.”

“Who is Rita?” Mom whispers to Dad.

He shrugs.

“Rita is a woman Declan wants to bring into my home, to sleep in my house every night, because he thinks I’m not up to the task of taking care of our needs!”

Coming to a dead halt, Dad hands Mom the donut box and turns around.

“Jason! Where are you going?”

“To kill Declan.”

I freeze. “Dad, what?”

“You just said my son-in-law wants my very pregnant daughter to accept a threesome, and if you think I’m going to just let that one go, you’re–”

“DAD! No! Rita isn’t another woman in some sexual thing. She’s a night nurse.”

“What is a ‘night nurse’?”

“A person you hire to watch the baby and train it to go on a sleep schedule. A night nanny. A nurse. Whatever you want to call it.”

Mom reaches for Dad’s arm. “Jason, you’re so puffed up and angry.” Oh, God. Is she purring?

“Of course I am! I thought Declan had lost his everloving mind!”

“He has! He thinks I can’t take care of my own child.”

Dad starts walking again, turning right down the street that takes us to the Grind It Fresh! shop. I follow, too miserable to protest. Mom opens the box and hands me a Boston cream pie-flavored donut. I chomp down, enjoying the pleasure of doing something with my body that doesn’t involve gestating.

“Let me get this straight,” Dad says as we walk across a bridge, the wind gusting here and there, enough for him to shout. “You’re having a fight because Declan wants to hire a night nanny and you don’t.”

“It’s not that simple,” I mumble through my donut.

“Sounds like it.” Mom starts eating a blueberry donut. Pregnancy math means I mentally subtract her donut and mine from the six that were in the box when we started, because I want to make sure I know how to calibrate my needs.

“He didn’t ask. Just scheduled the appointment as if it were a given.”

“And did you tell him you were upset by that?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he wanted to take care of the details so I wouldn’t feel overwhelmed.”

“The bastard,” Mom says in sympathy.

But she winks at Dad.

As the wind picks up, we walk as fast as possible, my hands and feet starting to get cold. Fortunately, Grind It Fresh! is quiet, so we grab a table and sit, the box of donuts out of place but I don’t care.

If the owner doesn’t like it, he can go to hell.

“Hey, Shannon,” Andres calls out in the empty shop. “Hi Jason. Marie.” Understated and soft-spoken, Andres already knows our orders, grinding the espresso and getting Mom’s chai going.

Mom and Dad wave, as Dad leans in and says, “He remembers our orders?”

“All the baristas do.”

“Is that because they’re sucking up to the owner?” Mom asks.

“No. Just a barista thing.”

“Love it,” Dad says, eyes filled with pride, as if I have something to do with the barista code.

I get up and fill three small cups with the lemon water we keep by the milk and sugar station, and return, settling in and drinking half of mine. A cruller in the donut box calls my name.

I give it some love.

“Feeling better?” Mom asks, her hand on my spare one.

“Yes.”

“You should let Declan know where you are.”

I cut my eyes to Andres. “I’m sure he knows.”

“Your own employees spy on you?”

“No. Dave does.”

“Declan’s new assistant?”

“Yeah.”

A cluster of three dudebros comes in, all of them ordering bulletproof coffees. I drink more water and turn to my parents.

“How did you two do it?”

“Do what?”

“Figure out all this kid-raising stuff. You’re pros.”

Dad fistbumps Mom. “We pulled it off!”

“Fake it ’til you make it,” Mom says with a laugh.

“Jesus, Marie, our kids think we’re pros.” He laughs at me, gentle and loving. “Honey, we all make it up as we go along. Parenting is one big improv act.”

“What?”

“You and Declan have to find your way. You go from disbelief that basic biology works, to incredulity that the hospital staff trust you to go home with a living human being, to a weird grief that your children are independent. If you do your job right, that’s the best possible outcome. And yet we mourn.”

“Mourn what?”

“That we couldn’t enjoy it more in the moment.”

“Not you too, Dad? Everyone keeps telling us to be sure we revel in every little detail, because time passes so fast. I’m wearing a bowling ball in a sling between my legs these days. Doesn’t make me want to enjoy every second, you know? And even when the baby’s born, I still have a life. We’re building a business. I want to work and keep my identity.”

“You have to make choices, though. You have to. No one can do it all. We were so broke when we had Carol, but Marie demanded she be able to stay at home. Turned herself into a frugal whiz.”

“Declan and I don’t have that problem. We can pay for help.”

“Of course you can. Declan wants to do that with the night nurse, and the nannies.”

“But I don’t want that much help. And it’s not about the money.”

“No, honey. It isn’t. Money helps, but ultimately, it’s about choices. Who are you? Who do you want to be? Who do you and Declan want to be, together?”

“We want to be Shannon and Declan... and a baby.”

“That’s not how it works, honey. I mean, sure–you are you and he is Declan. And the baby is the baby. Over time, though, you’ll see that who you are together–you and your husband as a couple, and you and your husband and your children as a family–take on separate identities, too. Remember that drumming circle we used to watch once a month on the town common when you were in middle school?”

“Yeah?”

“Remember how the leader of it talked about listening for the ‘third voice’ when the djembes and djun djuns would play?”

“Third voice?”

“One set of drummers would play one rhythm. The other set would play a second rhythm. And after a while–and it took a good, long stretch–if you listened, closed your eyes, and let the beat take over your blood, you could feel a third voice. It wasn’t so much that you could listen to it with your ears. It was more a feeling. A third voice that was wholly unique and different from the other two rhythms, but that wouldn’t exist without those two distinct sounds.”

“Gotcha.”

“You and Declan will build a third voice, whether you do it intentionally or accidentally. Most of us do it by accident. I get the sense you two have it in you to make some conscious choices about it, and act on those.”

“What makes people do it with intention or by accident?”

“Dunno.”

“Which one are you and Mom?”

“Dunno.”

“Dad! That’s not helpful.”

“Parenting isn’t like being a CPA. You don’t have a list of rules to follow, spreadsheets to fill in, checklists to tell you that you’ve accomplished your goal. It’s more like improv.”

“Improv?”

“You get shoved out on stage without a script, you don’t know what your audience is going to throw your way, and the only form of evaluation is highly subjective.”

“That sounds like a nightmare.”

“You ever see bad improv?”

“Sure.”

“What about great improv?”

I pause. Dad’s eyes aren’t on me, though. He’s looking over my shoulder. I turn and follow his gaze.

Declan’s just come into the shop.

Talk about improv.

“You weren’t kidding. Dave must have told Declan.”

“Dave is my husband’s very own deep state operative,” I say in a hushed tone. “But he’s also a miracle worker, so I can’t hate him.”

“Talking about me?” Declan sits next to Dad and eyes the donuts. There are two left, because Dad started eating a chocolate coconut one, and my pregnancy math says four people and six donuts means I don’t get my proper allocation of three.

Or four.

“You heard the word ‘hate’ and assumed that? Guilty conscience?” I say, but my resolve is already fading. Sitting across the table from him, looking at my husband and the father of this child I’m growing and not being embroiled in an argument makes me view him as a full person.

And not an adversary.

In fact, it kind of hurts now as I try not to look him in the eye. My donut gets more love than usual, but as seconds tick by, even that starts to taste like sand in my mouth.

And regret.

“Shannon saved you from a beating from Jason,” Mom says, surprising everyone, making poor Dad choke on his donut until Declan has to whack him on the back to help.

“Looks like I’m the one beating him,” Dec sighs. “Why would you need to resort to fists with me?”

“Because Shannon made it sound like you wanted a threesome,” Mom clarifies.

Declan starts choking. Dad claps him on the back.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Declan asks me. I finally meet his eyes. Pained amusement pins me in my seat. I swallow the lump of sugar and carbs in my mouth, throat suddenly dry.

“It was a misunderstanding.”

“I’ll say. I assure you, I have no interest in bringing another woman into our relationship.”

“Aside from Rita,” Mom says.

“I canceled Rita.”

“You did?” I ask him, truly surprised.

Guilt seeps into my skin. Or maybe I’ve peed myself. It’s hard to tell these days.

“I explained the situation to her. She completely understood. Said it’s a common issue, and if we’d like to reschedule, to contact her.”

“How... nice.”

“She sounds reasonable,” Dad says.

“Isn’t it nice when you find someone who is reasonable?” Dec says, his tone sharp enough to make Dad give him major side eye.

“Easy, buddy.”

“Shannon! Let’s go get the drinks from Andres,” Mom says, not even trying to hide the fact that she wants us to leave Declan and Dad alone.

I stand.

I waddle.

I can be reasonable.

But my Dad?

Hmmmm.

---

---

“She’s upset,” I tell Jason, turning to him for that male camaraderie that comes from dealing with a woman who is overly emotional.

Instead, I meet eyes that tell me where Shannon gets it.

And it’s not all from her mother.

“She’s upset. You’re upset. I take it you want to hire people to make the parenting load lighter on you two?” Jason finishes the donut in his hand with teeth that tear.

“Yes.”

“And Shannon doesn’t?”

“So far, no. But she’ll come around.” I hope.

“What does that mean, Declan? ‘Come around?’”

“She’ll see reason. We can’t do it all alone.”

“Marie and I did.” His eyebrows go up as he swallows, the point clear: Suck it up.

“You weren’t acquiring and growing a national brand, Jason. And just because you parented a certain way doesn’t mean Shannon and I will follow in your footsteps.”

“No. We weren’t growing a business. Parenting is parenting, though. You can have all the support in the world but you still have to do it yourself.”

“That’s it. Exactly. Shannon doesn’t see the difference.”

“Shannon doesn’t know any different. We never had support. Neither set of grandparents helped us. She sees this through her experience, just as you’re seeing it through yours.”

“I respect that. I’m sorry you and Marie had no help when your kids were little. I don’t want that for Shannon and me. We can be great parents without having to white-knuckle it.”

“Of course you can. I’m not objecting to what you’re trying to do, son. I’m just giving you as much of Shannon’s perspective as I can. You need to understand her position. You’re a team now. It’s a consensus model. Not top down.”

I start to reply. I shut my mouth. He’s got a point.

Jason always does. Usually it’s a good one.

This time is no exception.

“I’m going to guess,” he says as Marie and Shannon come back with the drinks, “you’re accustomed to making decisions and acting on them when it comes to your operational life.”

“Yes.”

“But not your emotional life with Shannon,” he says softly, before they can hear. “My daughter wouldn’t be with you if you weren’t a true partner.”

“I am. We are.”

“Then apply that to parenting with her.” His final words ring in my ears as Marie scoots into her side of the booth with Shannon coming slowly after, still avoiding eye contact with me.

I have to fix this.

How do you fix something when you’ve done nothing wrong?

In business, I know exactly how to act. The road to making a decision is clear to me, even if the eventual choice isn’t. My wife isn’t a vendor, a competitor, a financier, or an employee.

She is my wife. The mother of my child. The rules I’ve cultivated, the set of actionable blueprints I’ve established and honed over years of work, don’t apply to my innermost emotional world.

Not anymore.

Not since I met Shannon four years ago.

“Declan–”

“Shannon–”

We both speak at the same time, the bridge to peace crossed in unison, if not hand in hand. Her head tips up, eyes meeting mine.

“No night nurse,” I say over her words, repeating myself because it’s clear she didn’t hear it the first time.

She jolts. “Really?”

“Really. I still think we need help and need to sleep at night in order to run the business, and we do need a team of people to help us, but you have to be comfortable with whatever solution we come up with. This is a joint decision. Your veto counts.”

“I didn’t–it’s not a hard no. I’m not saying we absolutely can’t have a night nurse. It’s just a lot to absorb.”

“So is having a baby. I don’t want you to struggle. I want us to have it all,” I explain. “And a no is a no. We can find common ground later.” I’m assuming there is some sort of middle ground in this emotional mess.

She softens, reaching for my hand. The touch is grounding. Immediate.

Marie and Jason watch us attentively. I could do without the audience, but if I ask them to leave, it’ll be even more disruptive.

“Thank you,” Shannon says. “I want that. We always find our way to a third path that is better than the original ones we each thought were best.”

I smile. “We do.”

Jason opens his mouth to say something, but Marie stops him with an understated shake of the head. “Jason, I want another chai. Let’s go order more.” They move to the other side of the shop, giving me enough space to breathe as Shannon and I talk more.

And I make it all up, one halting word at a time, Jason’s words echoing in my head.

We’re true partners.

Time to prove it.