My daughter is a sweet, sleepy weight in my arms. She’s snoozing, her eyes squeezed shut, her tiny fists tightly clenched, her itty-bitty heart-shaped mouth red and perfect.
She is perfect.
“You were brilliant,” I tell Mari.
And I mean it. Hell yes, I do.
Any thoughts I had that Mari was a pixie or a waif or any of those things?
Crushed to a pulp, along with my hand, which she held and squeezed and punished through fifteen hours of labor, as she doggedly and mostly without complaint pushed an almost-eight-pound-baby into the world.
The only complaining was when she yelled at me, midway through the brutal period of time that the nurse insisted on calling “transition,” that she was never having sex with me or anyone else ever again because no sex was good enough to justify this bullshit.
She claims not to remember saying that.
“Let me see her again,” Mari says, and for the thousandth time I bend down and show her.
Mari puts out her hand and strokes our baby’s soft, silky cheek. Tears drip down her face. Her face is pale and pixelated with red dots—broken blood vessels from pushing—and she has never looked more beautiful to me.
“We can’t keep calling her ‘Bun,’” Mari says.
“Probably not,” I agree.
“What was your dad’s name?”
Something clenches in my chest, a fierce, unsettling mix of joy and grief. “Zach,” I say, smiling despite myself. “I don’t think she’ll appreciate that.”
“What about… Zara?”
I close my eyes against my own tears. “I like that.”
Just then, a commotion in the hallway materializes into a seething clump of Wilder family and friends. They spill into the room—Amanda, Lucy, Jessa, Hanna, Gabe, Clark, and my mother, all talking at once. I look down at Mari, who is so exhausted that she’s been nodding off in the middle of our conversations for the last hour or so. I expect her to look overwhelmed, and I prepare myself to give a speech kicking everyone out so we can rest, but the expression on Mari’s face is soft and warm, cracked open with gratitude and appreciation. She holds out her hands, and Lucy and Amanda each take one. They bend over the bed, whispering to her, and I can’t hear much, but I know they’re words of support and love and congratulations.
Gabe hands me a chocolate cigar and Clark claps me on the back, and then they just flank me, silent, as if they’re saying, We’re here, which is shockingly comforting. But at the same time, I’m not surprised by the show of support, because my brothers are the best of men.
I love my family so fucking much.
I realize something in that moment. Forever more, my family will mean something different than it has ever meant before. Zara has made the three of us into a family.
She has made Mari part of the Wilder family.
She has changed everything, in the best possible way.
I swipe a hand across my eyes, and when Gabe catches me doing it, he smiles and nods, a softness on his face that’s so unlike him that it almost makes me cry for real.
“May I?” my mother asks. There are tears on her face, too, as she takes Zara.
“We’re calling her Zara. After dad,” I tell her.
Now she’s openly weeping; I wipe a tear off Zara’s face and then hers.
“Hello, baby,” my mother says, kissing Zara all over her little face. Kissing each clenched fist and the top of her head.
Hanna leans over the bundle that is my daughter. “She’s really red.”
Amanda snorts. “They all look like that,” she says. “Well, except Kieran, who had bright blue hands and feet, and Noah, who turned orange on day three. Red is much better, take my word for it.”
“I think she’s absolutely perfect,” Lucy says loyally, giving Mari a high five.
Our visitors pass Zara around, taking turns oohing and ahhing and cooing over her, and fussing over Mari. Lucy and Amanda make her tell the whole story, don’t leave anything out!
She leaves out the part where she swears off sex forever. Fingers crossed that’s a good sign for me.
I don’t even have to shoo everyone out, because after about fifteen minutes, Amanda claps her hands. “All right, peeps, let’s leave these guys alone. Speaking from experience, Mari needs every minute of sleep she can get.” She herds them out of the room, leaving us in the sudden quiet.
Zara is back in my arms. I look over at Mari.
Amanda’s words couldn’t have been truer: She’s already sound asleep.