Coming Home(134)

Leah lifted her head, resting her chin on his chest. “You’ll be an amazing dad,” she said gently.

He glanced down at her and smiled sadly. “I hope so. It’s just…I’m twenty-nine years old. And I’m about to lose some time. Maybe a lot. And I know men can have children whenever, but…women can’t.”

Suddenly, Leah remembered the night he met her family—the way he had looked at Christopher as he rubbed Alexis’s belly.

Leah lowered her head, pressing her lips against his chest as she spoke. “Even if it were five years,” she whispered hoarsely, “you’d be thirty-four. I’d be thirty-three. Women can still have children safely at thirty-three.”

The second the words left her mouth, she froze. Leah felt his chest stop moving, and she closed her eyes, turning away from him as she rested her cheek on his chest.

She couldn’t believe she had just said that.

They had only just said “I love you” for the first time, and already she was deducing that she would be the mother of his children.

“I didn’t mean…I wasn’t assuming…I was just trying to show you…” She fumbled over her words, eventually letting them trail off.

They both lay there, saying nothing, and although his hand still rested on her head, his fingers had stopped playing with her hair.

After what seemed like an interminable silence, Danny spoke, the low timbre of his voice penetrating the stillness.

“Leah?”

“Hmm?”

He trailed his hand over the side of her face, taking her chin in his hand and lifting it as he turned her toward him.

“I want them to be just like you.”

She stared at him, a slow smile spreading over her lips, and he lifted his head, bringing their mouths together.

And she wrapped her arms around him as they kissed, figuratively and literally embracing her future.





Leah and Danny sat on the couch outside his lawyer’s office.

Danny was resting his elbows on his knees, looking down at his hands as he wrung them together, and Leah sat next to him with her hand on the small of his back, rubbing her thumb back and forth. They didn’t speak, and she knew he probably preferred it that way. Each time she looked at his profile, she could see that his brow was pulled together, or his jaw was clenched. He looked so vulnerable, and she wished there was something she could do to make what he was feeling go away.

As much as the three of them tried to keep the conversation light on the ride to Brooklyn, there was an obvious undertone of anxiety. The last time Leah had seen Catherine, her smiles had been warm, inviting, genuine. This time they were strained and contrived.

Throughout the ride Danny contributed to the conversation, his voice sounding easy and fluid, but his body betrayed him. He sat up straight, his shoulders rigid and his hands tight on the wheel. Leah knew he could sense Catherine’s apprehension and grief, and it was slowly eating away at him.

When they arrived at the office, Danny’s lawyer—a man named Eric Warden—took Catherine inside immediately. As soon as the door closed behind them, Danny’s carefully cultivated fa?ade melted away, and all of the stress and guilt Leah knew he’d been feeling all morning came rushing to the surface. And so they sat on the sofa in silence. She knew no words were capable of taking those feelings away, but she hoped her presence at least dulled them a little.

Catherine was in Eric’s office for a little under an hour. When she came out, she held several crumpled tissues in her hand. Her eyes were glassy and bloodshot, and she looked completely drained.