Chương 12
Grace stared at it.
Something inside her unclenched by one degree.
When they got home, Diane was folding burp cloths.
"You don't have to do laundry," Grace said.
"I know."
"Then why are you?"
"I was bored."
"Two infants and you were bored?"
"They're less entertaining when unconscious."
Grace took off her coat.
Diane looked at her carefully.
"How was dinner?"
"Good."
"Good."
Grace went to the bassinets.
She checked Noah.
Then Liam.
Both breathing.
Both exactly where they were supposed to be.
Diane watched.
She did not take offense.
That mattered too.
Months passed.
The hospital event did not disappear.
It became something they carried differently.
Grace stopped checking ears in the middle of the night.
Then started again during a week when both babies had colds.
Then stopped.
Daniel removed the blue and green tape from beneath the bassinets when the boys outgrew them.
Grace saw the tape in the trash.
She stood there longer than necessary.
Then she left it.
No ceremony.
At seven months, Liam's ear fold was barely visible.
At eight, Noah began crawling first.
Richard announced that this confirmed he had been Baby A "in spirit."
Grace threatened to ban him from using birth-order theories.
Richard said he respected scientific debate.
Chloe told him he did not know what scientific debate meant.
Diane laughed.
Grace noticed.
The sound did not make her angry.
That surprised her.
On the twins' first birthday, the family gathered in Grace and Daniel's backyard.
Nothing matched.
The balloons were two different shades of blue because the store had run out.
One cake leaned.
Richard brought a folding table nobody asked for.
Chloe arrived late with a gift bag that said HAPPY RETIREMENT because she had forgotten wrapping paper.
Diane brought no camera.
Grace noticed that too.
"You didn't bring your phone?" she asked.
Diane pulled it from her purse.
"I have it."
"No pictures?"
"I thought I'd wait until you wanted them."
Grace looked at her.
A year earlier, Diane had moved a hospital bassinet because the light was bad.
Now she stood in the yard beneath perfectly ordinary afternoon sun and waited.
Grace handed her Liam.
"Take one with both of them."
Diane blinked.
"Okay."
Richard lifted Noah.
Grace pointed at him.
"Ask first."
Richard froze.
Then, with exaggerated patience, he looked at Grace.
"May I hold Noah?"
"You already are."
"You told me to ask."
"Next time ask before."
Chloe laughed so hard she nearly dropped the retirement gift bag.
Richard muttered something about impossible standards.
Grace smiled.
Diane took the picture.
Then she looked at the screen.
Her eyes became wet.
Grace saw it.
"What?"
Diane handed her the phone.
The photograph was terrible.
Richard was looking away.
Noah had one hand in his mouth.
Liam was reaching for Richard's collar.
Chloe appeared in the background making a face.
Daniel's eyes were closed.
Grace herself was half turned toward someone outside the frame.
Diane said, "I can take another."
Grace looked at the photograph.
"No."
Diane waited.
Grace smiled.
"That one's real."
Later, after cake had been smeared into hair and Richard had argued with a folding chair and Chloe had discovered that the retirement bag contained tissue paper printed with little gold watches, Grace carried Noah inside.
He was tired.
Heavy now.
Nothing like the bundled six-pound weight she had clutched against her chest in the hospital.
Liam followed in Daniel's arms.
They changed both boys into pajamas.
Daniel took them upstairs.
Grace stayed in the kitchen.
Through the open window she could hear her family outside.
Richard complaining.
Chloe mocking him.
Diane telling both of them to stop.
Ordinary noise.
Grace opened the drawer beside the refrigerator.
At the back was a small plastic bag.
Inside were the hospital bracelets.
Four of them.
Hers.
Daniel's matching parent band.
Noah's.
Liam's.
The hospital had returned the original infant bands after the investigation closed, sealed as part of the corrected discharge documentation. Grace had kept them without deciding why.
She took out the two tiny bracelets.
One had once carried the wrong identity.
The plastic looked harmless.
Cheap.
A barcode.
A number.
A name that people had trusted because machines and nurses and parents had all agreed to trust it.
For months, Grace had imagined throwing them away.
She had imagined keeping them forever.
Neither choice had felt right.
Daniel came into the kitchen.
"The boys are down."
Grace held up the bracelets.
He stopped.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
He leaned against the counter.
"What are you doing?"
"I don't know."
"Want help not knowing?"
She smiled.
He came beside her.
For a while they stood without speaking.
Outside, Richard said something loud enough to make Chloe groan.
Daniel looked at the bracelets.
"Do you ever think about switching their names?"
Grace considered it.
"No."
"Me neither."
"Noah is Noah."
"Liam is Liam."
"Very profound."
"I'm a father now."
"That happened a year ago."
"It takes time."
Grace rolled one bracelet between her fingers.
"Do you think your mom is different?"
Daniel looked through the window.
Diane was gathering paper plates from the picnic table.
"No."
Grace glanced at him.
He smiled slightly.
"I think she's trying to do different things."
Grace looked outside too.
That sounded true.
Richard took the stack of plates from Diane without being asked.
She let him.
Chloe was showing someone the terrible birthday photograph.
Grace could hear her laughing.
"I think that's all people get," Daniel said.
"What?"
"A chance to do the next thing differently."
Grace looked at the bracelets.
For once, she did not need the sentence to mean more than it did.
She put them back in the plastic bag.
Then she stopped.
"No."
Daniel waited.
Grace took out a kitchen marker.
On the back of one bracelet she wrote NOAH.
On the other she wrote LIAM.
Not the names from the hospital record.
Not Baby A.
Not Baby B.
The names the boys had carried home.
Daniel watched.
"That feels illegal."
"It's permanent marker."
"Very serious."
Grace put the bracelets back in the drawer.
This time she left the plastic bag open.
Outside, Diane called, "Grace, do you want us to save the cake?"
Grace looked at Daniel.
He shrugged.
"There's enough sugar in that cake to preserve itself."
Grace walked to the back door.
"Save it."
Diane looked up.
"Both halves?"
"Yes."
Richard said, "I told you."
Nobody knew what he had told anyone.
Chloe threw a napkin at him.
Grace stepped outside.
The evening had cooled enough that Noah's abandoned birthday hat was rolling slowly across the patio.
She picked it up.
May you like
For a second she thought about putting it somewhere safe.
Then she set it back on the table and went to help her family clean the yard.
