Page 26 of The Mountain Man Lumberjack’s Claimed Bride

The lid lifts.

Inside, resting on a bed of soft cotton, a pair of tiny knitted booties. Yellow. Gender neutral. The size of my thumb.

And underneath the booties, a photograph. Black and white. Grainy. The unmistakable shape of a bean-sized human beingcurled in the dark space where my child is growing inside the woman who showed up at my door with two suitcases and made herself impossible to refuse.

Bette's hand presses to her mouth. The sound she makes is not a word. Not a sob. Something between. A sound that contains thirty-eight years of sisterhood and eight years of watching her brother disappear into solitude and eight thousand five hundred dollars of faith that love could find him if she just opened the right door.

"Seven weeks." Nora's voice is steady. Warm. Her hand finds mine under the table, fingers threading through, squeezing. "Due in July."

The chair scrapes back. Bette is around the table before Nora can stand, arms wrapped around her, face buried in Nora's shoulder, crying the way my sister cries when something matters too much for composure. Full. Unrestrained. The kind of crying that shakes the whole body.

"I knew it," Bette manages. "The morning you showed up at my door, I knew. I told Mom's headstone, I said 'this one is going to give me a niece,' and she?—"

"Or nephew," Nora says.

"Or nephew. Or both. Or seventeen. I don't care. You're— Hunter, you're going to be a dad."

My sister looks at me across my wife's shoulder. Tears streaming. Mascara destroyed. Grinning with a joy so fierce it reshapes her entire face.

A dad. The word settles into my chest. Heavy. Permanent. A timber beam set into the foundation of a structure that will hold weight for a lifetime.

"Yeah," I manage. "I am."

Bette stays for breakfast.Then lunch. Then leaves at two in the afternoon only because Nora physically walks her to the SUV, hands her the keys, and tells her that if she doesn't leave, she won't be allowed to tell Maggie until tomorrow.

Bette is in the SUV and down the access road in forty-five seconds. The dust hasn't settled before Nora's phone buzzes.

Bette:

I'm calling Maggie from the car. I can't wait. I physically cannot wait. She's going to scream. The whole diner is going to hear it. I love you both. Name the baby after me.

Me:

We're not naming the baby Bette.

Bette:

Bettina? Bethany? Bretton? I'm flexible.

The phone goes on the kitchen counter. The cabin is quiet again. Just us. The woodstove. The smell of bread that Nora put in the oven at seven this morning because she's been baking every day for fourteen months and the only difference now is that she's baking for three.

Three. The number keeps rearranging the architecture of my thoughts. Every room in this cabin suddenly has a secondary purpose. The guest room at the end of the hall, the one Noraslept in for six nights before I pulled her into mine. That room has a south-facing window. Good light. Warm in the morning. Big enough for a crib, a rocking chair, a small shelf for books.

"You're doing it again." Nora leans against the counter, watching me. Still barefoot. Still in my flannel. Brown eyes tracking my face the way they've tracked my face since day one. Reading. Understanding. Knowing.

"Doing what?"

"Building things in your head. Your eyes go distant and your hands twitch. You're designing the nursery right now, aren't you?"

"The guest room has the best light."

"It does."

"South-facing window. I can extend the sill for a reading nook. Build the crib from the same timber as the dining table so the grain matches."

"The grain doesn't need to match."

"It does."