In May, Chloe had the baby.
A girl. Seven pounds, two ounces. She came three days early, in the middle of the night, and Vance called me from the hospital at four in the morning.
“She wants you to come,” he said. “If you want to. No pressure.”
I was there in twenty minutes.
Chloe was sitting up in the bed, pale and exhausted and glowing. She was holding a tiny bundle in a pink-and-blue striped blanket.
“Come here,” she said.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. She turned the bundle toward me.
A small, red, wrinkled face. A little tuft of dark hair. Two tiny fists curled up by her chin.
“Her name’s Walter,” Chloe said.
I looked up.
“Well,” Chloe said. “Wren. Her name’s Wren. But her middle name is Walter. Wren Walter. Vance thinks it’s weird.”
“It’s weird,” said Vance from the corner.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
Chloe looked at me. Her eyes were wet.
“Mom wanted to name her Evelyn,” she said quietly. “I said no.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just reached out and touched one of those tiny fists with my finger. It opened and closed around it. Stronger than you’d think.
“Will you hold her?” Chloe asked.
“I don’t know how.”
“Nobody knows how,” Chloe said. “You just do it.”
So I did.
I held my niece in the gray light of a hospital room at five in the morning, and she opened her eyes and looked up at me, dark and serious and brand new.
And I thought: I’m going to be the person for her that Grandpa was for me.
I’m going to be the one who asks her what she thinks, and waits for the answer.
