“No one came back for her,” she whispered.
The noises of the diner seemed to swell around us.
Rose continued quietly.
“She was so small that she could only wrap two tiny fingers around the tip of mine. She hated the monitoring leads. She worked one foot out of the blanket no matter how tightly we tucked her in.”
A faint smile touched her mouth.
“The other nurses called her stubborn.”
“What did you call her?” I asked.
I looked again at the photograph.
Rose had not been looking toward the camera. Her entire attention had been fixed on Claire with the same absorbed expression I wore during midnight feedings, when the house was silent and my daughter’s whole life seemed to rest against my shoulder.
Rose lowered her cup onto its saucer.
“Because babies need to be held, even when nobody has arrived yet.”
The answer softened the shape of my anger, though it did not erase it.
