Page 37 of Promised to the Cowboy
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
It’s a lie.
The truth is, I’ve never seen anything prettier than the woman carrying my little girl.
The clothes fit her.
The ranch fits her.
God help me, she fits here better every day.
The waiting room is quieter than the family clinic. More serious somehow. Evie reads the same page of a horse magazine three times without turning it. I spend twenty minutes pretending not to stare every time a nurse opens the door and calls another name.
The scan takes longer this time.
The doctor studies our daughter’s heart from every angle, measuring chambers and valves, watching blood flow across a screen that means nothing to either of us. He asks about my surgeries. About my most recent echocardiogram. About my mother. Every question knots my shoulders a little tighter.
Then he leans back in his chair, smiles, and says the words I’ve been needing to hear since Evie stood on my porch.
“Her heart looks exactly the way I’d expect it to at twenty-two weeks.”
My breath leaves me in a whoosh, and my shoulders unpin themselves from my ears.
“No signs of the defect you described. Everything looks normal.”
Evie reaches for my hand before I think to reach for hers.
I hold on. Hard.
She looks at me and smiles. Not at the screen. At me. Like the best part of hearing our daughter was healthy was knowing what it meant to me.
The warmth in her eyes hits me hard. I want to drag her onto my lap and kiss her until we’re both breathless, doctor be damned.
The doctor leaves us with another grainy photograph and a handshake. “She’s perfect. Congratulations.”
The words follow us all the way back to the truck.
Neither of us speaks for the first few miles.
Not because there’s nothing to say.
Because relief has a sound too. It’s quiet. Warm.
The highway unwinds ahead of us.
I glance across at Evie. She’s smiling to herself. “What?”
She shakes her head. “I was just thinking... I’ve spent twenty-two weeks waiting for someone to tell me something was wrong.”
My hand finds hers on the console. “They didn’t.”
“No.” She smiles again. “They really didn’t.”
Then something occurs to me. “Have you told your mom?”
She looks out of the window. “Not yet.”
“Are you going to?”
