Page 84 of Loving

His face did the thing it did at the bassinet the morning he held Nova for the first time. His eyes went wet. He didn't comment on them. He looked at the certificate for a long time.

"Aud."

"I wanted to give it to you tonight."

He set the frame on the counter. Pulled me against his chest. His arms around me, his face in my hair, my hands flat against his back. The kitchen was quiet. The certificate was on the counter. The ring was on my finger. Our daughter was asleep through the wall.

He pulled back and looked at me.

"I'm glad I made you let me get in that Uber."

I laughed. "I let you get in the Uber because you were annoying and wouldn't stop."

"Worked out, though."

We both had the small private smile that lived between two people who had stopped performing anything for each other.

"I love you," he said.

"I love you," I said.

The house held us. Small, warm, full. The certificate on the counter. The ring on my finger. Nova through the wall, breathing.

I spent twenty-eight years building a life on the principle that needing someone was where a woman got ruined. I was standing in my kitchen with my daughter's birth certificate on the counter, and my mother's voice still somewhere in my head, and the loudest thing in the room was my own laugh.