Stephen
I walked into our penthouse carrying my daughter’s hospital blanket in a plastic bag.
That was all we brought home.
No car seat with a sleeping baby inside. No tiny pink hat. No nurses smiling while I complained that Laura was walking too fast after giving birth.
Just a plastic bag with the blanket Emily had been wrapped in and paperwork I couldn’t bring myself to look at.
My mother stood the second the elevator doors opened.
She’d been sitting with the boys in the living room, still wearing the clothes she’d arrived in the night before. Evan was beside her watching television while Austin played on the floor with two trucks.
Both boys looked toward us.
Mother looked behind us.
Then she looked at my face.
“Oh, Stephen.”
That was all she said.
Laura’s fingers tightened a
