Caleb gave a broken laugh.
“You look beautiful.”
“Don’t lie in front of our daughter.”
That sounded like Anna.
The normality of it hurt more than anger would have.
Caleb lowered himself into the chair beside her bed.
“I’m sorry.”
Anna looked down at the baby.
“I know.”
“I should’ve been here.”
“You were in Wyoming.”
“I should’ve come home sooner.”
“We weren’t expecting her for three weeks.”
“Still.”
Anna finally looked at him.
There was no cruelty in her face, but she wasn’t going to rescue him from the truth either.
“I wanted you here,” she said.
Caleb nodded once.
That sentence landed harder than anything else had.
He had spent the whole ride afraid Anna would tell him he had failed.
Instead, she told him something simpler.
She had needed him.
And he had not been there.
“I know,” he said.
Anna shifted against the pillows.
“When my water broke, I kept thinking you would somehow walk through the door in twenty minutes.
I knew where you were.
I knew that was impossible.
But every time somebody came down the hallway, I looked anyway.”
Caleb stared at the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying it like you’re trying to make the last ten hours disappear.”
He looked up.
Anna’s voice remained calm.
“They happened.
You weren’t here.
I was scared.
You were scared.
She came early.
None of us got the version we planned.”
Caleb glanced at the baby holding his finger.
“Then what do I do with it?”
Anna studied him for a moment.
“Be here now.”
The answer was so plain that Caleb almost smiled.
Seven years earlier, he would have argued with a sentence like that.
He would have explained himself, listed every mile, every storm cell, every fuel stop, every reason the situation had not been his fault.
Marriage had taught him that explanations and presence were not the same thing.
So he didn’t defend himself.
He stayed in the chair.
After a while, Anna noticed the pink fabric in his hand.
“You brought them back.”
Caleb opened his palm.
The tiny socks looked ridiculous against his scarred skin.
“Told you I would.”
“I told you not to bring them back as decoration.”
