The steering wheel creaks and protests against how hard I’m squeezing it as I make the final turn onto the exit. The entire time I race around the tight curve, I hold my breath. My lungs burn by the time I pull into the parking lot of the gas station.
The tires of my truck squeal as I whip my truck into the parking spot next to Wren’s car. She’s hunched over the steering wheel, trying to manage her breathing. I open the door and squat down next to her.
Slowly, she lifts her head and looks over at me. I’m really fucking mad at her for thinking whatever she needed to do out here was worth the risk. But that doesn’t matter right now. She’s scared and in pain. I can’t help the latter, but it’s my job to prevent the former.
I rub her back. “Are you in labor, Baby Bird?”
“Sure as hell feels like it,” she grunts.
“How far apart are the contractions?”
This is her first time having a baby, not mine. I’m a bit rusty, but I remember the basics and the rest, the birthing classes helped with, or at least tried to.
“Uh, I’m not—hoo,” she exhales, “sure exactly. Uhm, every five or six minutes.”
I know what the books and the doctors say. We’re supposed to wait and watch them, but that’s a lot easier said than done. “Do you think we should go to the hospital?”
Her hands squeeze the steering wheel so hard her knuckles go white. “Breathe,” I remind her.
Wren’s eyes narrow, and I can see that I’ve activated her sassy mode, but I know how to get her to focus.
“Wren, I need you to give all your attention to me and do as you’re told.” I usethattone when I talk to her, the one that gets her to call me Daddy, and probably helped me become a daddy again. Right now, it’s helping her center and focus on me instead of her pain.
When the contraction passes, she slumps against me. I time how long it takes before she tenses up again in pain. I let the cycle repeat a couple of times so I can get a better idea of how fast the contractions are coming. “Every six minutes,” I mumble to myself.
It’s still a bit early to head to the hospital, but I won’t take risks with my family. “How about we go to the hospital and see how our little girl is doing?”
Wren doesn’t fight me; she’s in too much pain to do anything other than what she’s told. I lift her out of her seat and help her over to my truck. Once she’s seated inside, I go back and get her stuff and lock up her car. That’s when I find a man’s wallet lying in the passenger seat. I know immediately it isn’t mine.
No one hates cheaters as much as Wren and I do, and I trust my wife. That doesn’t mean I’m not suspicious that she is up to something, so I quickly flip it open. I slide the driver’s license out of the slot and see my son’s face staring back at me.
I’m not sure why my wife is parked at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, but I can guess whose fault it is. I drop the wallet into Wren’s purse and get us to the hospital.
A few hours later,we’re sent home and advised to make sure our bags are packed. Her labor slowed down for a while, and now we go home to wait for things to progress more. Now is not the time to be demanding answers, but I failed to inform my face of that.
I stomp around the house trying to make sure we are going to be ready when the moment finally comes for us to go to the hospital for real. There’s no order to the things I’m trying to getdone, because I’m trying to do all of them. Or rather, I’m trying to redo everything I’ve already done.
The house has been baby-proofed since the moment we moved in a few months ago. Doesn’t stop me from racing around the house to make sure all the outlets have covers, the fridge, drawers, cabinets, and the toilet lid all have child locks.
Wren waddles into the kitchen while I’m reading the ingredients on the new cleaning products we’ve switched to, because these are less toxic. She puts her hand on my forearm, guiding me to lower the bottle. “I’m pretty sure the baby isn’t going to be climbing up onto the counter and getting into the cleaning supplies right after being brought home from the hospital.”
“But we are going to be cleaning the house, and I don’t want the fumes to hurt the baby,” I argue. Honestly, I have thought about all of this already, researched it, and made sure we had only the safest products for my little princess.
“You already did all of that. And you repacked my bag for the hospital. We’re as ready as we can be to bring our little girl home. When are you going to tell me what name you picked out?”
“As soon as I see if it fits her. But we can talk about all of this later. Let’s get you back to bed,” I say to her.
I start to slip my arm around her shoulders, but she shakes it off. “I don’t want to go to bed. What I want is for you to tell me what is actually bothering you. Let’s not start our family with something hanging over our heads.”
I was planning to blow her off and tell her that nothing was going on, just me being nervous about becoming a father again, but then her last statement sinks in. She’s right. We shouldn’t start our lives with anything between us.
I dig around inside of her purse and retrieve Liam’s wallet and throw it down on the counter in front of her.
She glances down at it, but there’s no shock, fear, or guilt on her face. Not that I expected there to be any, but it’s still great to have my faith confirmed.
“Liam called me when he couldn’t get hold of you. He was outside a bar here in Centralia. He was hoping to talk to you to keep himself from going in. He eventually called me out of desperation. He asked me to take him to rehab, and I did. He checked himself in,” she tells me.
I walk over to the table and drop into a chair. She slowly makes her way across the kitchen and joins me. “Talk to me, Griff.”
