“Can I help?”
“I should say no since you’re the birthday girl, but I won’t turn down the company.”
She inclines her head toward a drawer where I find clean dish towels. I grab one and sidle up next to her.
“Cheyenne has always been the social one of the two of us. It’s probably why she fits so well with Miguel’s family. I love being with family, but I crave the quiet, too.”
I nod, my towel moving in slow circles against the porcelain of the serving dish. “Same.”
“Yeah?” She turns to look at me.
“Yeah.”
Her hands pause in the soapy water, gaze locked on mine. “God, it is so good to see you again.”
She turns her attention back to the sink, but her words stick in my thoughts like sap on a tree.
Winona was there. She saw me. She had a camera. She took a picture of Cheyenne cradling me in her arms. Maybe it’s not the only picture she took that day.
I clear the hesitation from my throat. “Arthur said you had a patient go into labor last night.”
She hands me a baking dish. “Yeah. Labor went long or else we would have been here hours ago.”
“He said you own your own birthing center.” Her hands slow their pace under the surface of the water. “In Phoenix.”
“I do,” she says, quieter now.
Setting the dry baking dish aside, I take the mixing bowl she passes over. “Cheyenne said the birthing center where I was born isn’t in business anymore.”
“Yeah, it was a hospital run birthing center. The midwife who ran it retired about ten years ago and the hospital didn’t care to keep it open. Building sat empty for almost a year.”
I worry my lower lip between my teeth, laser-focused on the glass mixing bowl in my hands.
It’s Winona who clears her throat this time. “Wouldn’t you know, someone else came along and bought it. Turned it right back into a birthing center under a different name.”
I set the bowl down gently on the granite countertop. Winona’s hands now braced on the counter’s edge, soapy suds drip into the water beneath them.
“And, um…” She releases the drain, a deep gurgle echoing into the pipes below as the water recedes. Her eyes won’t meet mine as she reaches for another towel and dries her hands. “When did you open your practice?” I finish.
She swipes the streaks of tears from her cheeks that I couldn’t see before and throws the towel to the side before yanking me against her chest. The quiet cry and the fraught clutch of her embrace says everything words can’t.
“It was you.”
“It was me.”
When she steps back, we’re both wiping at our faces. I have a million questions, but I don’t want to force Winona into any sort of confession that could get her in trouble.
Not surprisingly, she senses my hesitancy and speaks up first. “I can imagine you have a lot of questions.”
I laugh as I reach for the box of tissues on the counter behind me. “I do, but I know it’s complex and I don’t need to know anything you’re not able to share with me. The detective said there was a lot at stake for the person who gave him the information that helped me find Cheyenne. So…just…thank you for what you did. None of this”—I look to the windows overlooking the army of family through the glass—“would have been possible without you.”
My lungs take in the air they’ve craved for far too long. “Does Cheyenne know?”
“As of about thirty minutes ago, she does,” she says, chuckling, as she finds her sister through the window wiping icing off Kai’s face. Her gaze swells with affection.
“You know, there are decisions I make as a doctor and there are decisions I make as every other title I carry. Mom, wife, friend…sister.”
She turns to face me, hip leaning against the counter.
