“Relieved.” I thought for a moment.
“Sad, a little.
For what it could have been if she’d just told me the truth.”
“Do you think she would have?” he said.
“If she’d asked you honestly — the donor, all of it — do you think you would have said yes?”
I looked out the window.
A woman was pushing a stroller along the sidewalk, not looking down at it, just walking, the way you do when the baby is finally asleep and you’ve stopped holding your breath.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Maybe.
She’s my sister.” I paused.
“I would have wanted to be asked.”
Joel nodded.
He didn’t say anything else.
He didn’t need to.
The baby came on a Sunday.
Eleven hours of labor.
Joel on one side, a midwife named Carol on the other, and at some point in the early morning a nurse who kept calling me “sweetheart” in a way that should have been annoying and wasn’t.
