Page 61 of Crimson Curse
I feel something ease in me. “Then we will listen.”
Lex slips in and out with updates that never rise above a murmur. Charlotte arrives at the threshold wrapped in an oversized cardigan. Her hair is pulled into a loose knot, and her eyes are bright with happy tears. She tries to blink them away before she steps fully into the room.
“May I?” she asks, her voice low, and when Naomi holds out a hand, Charlotte moves to her side and kisses her forehead like a sister. She looks at me with an uncharacteristically gentle smile. “You look terrified and elated at the same time.”
“That seems accurate,” I say.
“Good,” she replies. “You should.”
She spends a few minutes quietly reverent, which is a miracle of its own, then wipes her eyes, tells Naomi she is glorious, squeezes my shoulder, and steps out to give us back our cocoon. I’m not sure I have ever been more grateful for someone who is not blood or sworn family. She stood by Naomi through it all, through every tear and every wound, and every scar.
Dr. Levin returns around three in the morning and gives us another rundown. He mentions a slight concern that he will watch and the numbers he expects to see. He places a hand on the bassinet like a captain testing the rail of a ship and then leaves us with a soft directive to rest. I try to obey and lie on the narrow couch by the window for a handful of minutes, but the moment our daughter sighs in her sleep, I am up again with a need to be close that is stronger than any call I have answered in years.
I move to the window and pull back the curtain. The city lights look muted through the rain, not dim, only softened. The sky breaks open just enough to allow a hint of pale above the skyline. Dawn is still a rumor in the east, but the storm has done its work and is content to drift.
There is a quiet lullaby my mother sang to me once. Only once. I was five and feverish, my father just a photograph in a drawer. Galina Zorin did not often sing, but that night she did. Perhaps because the housekeeper who usually took morning duty had done something to earn dismissal, and my mother was stuck with me. Or maybe because she remembered she was human beneath the enamel she wore as a shield. I remember the melody more than the words, a small stepwise line that rises and fallslike breathing. I hum it now, and the sound fills the corner by the window and returns to me changed, warmer.
Naomi sleeps. Our daughter makes a small noise, and I stop humming so I can hear it, as if her sound is a compass pointing to something I need to know. She settles again.
Lex returns with coffee that he must have charmed or threatened from a nurse who owes him a favor. He sets it on the table by my elbow. “You’re not sleeping,” he observes.
“I’m not sure it’s possible,” I reply.
“Not tonight,” he agrees. He looks toward the bed where Naomi is resting under a blanket. “She did well.”
“She did extraordinary.” The word feels insufficient. Nothing in my vocabulary is large enough.
He leaves me with the coffee and a silence that doesn’t feel empty. I drink it slowly and think about what it means to change the algorithm of a life that has been set to speed and strategy for so long. When the cup is empty, I set it down and go to the bed.
Naomi is awake, watching our daughter with the kind of focus that would dismantle a man if she turned it on him. She looks up at me, and I see uncertainty there, which is rare for her. “She is so small,” she murmurs.
“She is,” I agree, lowering myself to sit beside her. I touch our daughter’s tiny hand and feel five small fingers close around the tip of my pinky with strength that surprises me. “She doesn’t think so.”
Naomi laughs, soft and luminous. “No, she doesn’t.” Her eyes lift to mine. “What did you think when you first saw her?”
“That the room had never held anything real until that moment,” I say. “That my life has been about keeping breath in my lungs and blood in my veins and this is the first time either of those things has felt like a gift and not a task.”
Her eyes shine. “You will be a good father.”
“I will learn,” I answer, honestly. “I didn’t have the model you deserve.”
“You have a heart that knows the difference between fear and love,” she replies. “The rest will meet you where you are.”
Our daughter’s mouth curves, and she lets out a soft squawk that is more a complaint than a cry. Naomi shifts and winces. I move without thinking and help her sit higher with pillows, my hands finding the places on the bed that give her leverage without pressure. Naomi exhales and thanks me with her eyes.
We speak in low tones for a while. Names we considered. Names we discarded. Names that felt like someone else’s story and not ours. I tell her there is a part of me that wants to reach for the past, but I will not. She reaches up and touches my face, understanding without me needing to say the name I will never forget. She doesn’t make me speak it. She doesn’t need to remind me that grief is a room we visit, not a home we live in.
Naomi leans her head against my arm and closes her eyes. I watch our daughter doze and think about the day my mother wrote her will. I can see her at the long desk with the black lacquer surface, a fountain pen in her hand, and the attorney making notes on a pad with the restrained excitement of a man who knows he is being paid to witness history. She gave conditions because that is how she understood certainty. Tonight, I understand a different kind of condition. I am notmy mother’s heir in the way she imagined. I am this child’s. Everything I own will pass through me to her and change names in the process.
Timur slips inside with a bouquet that looks out of place in his hands. The flowers are white like a small constellation the florist forgot to sort. He sets them in a vase then backs away, embarrassed to be seen doing something so careful.
“They’re beautiful,” Naomi tells him.
He gives a small grunt that means gratitude and discomfort and leaves again, happy to be a wall in the hallway.
Morning approaches with the color of pale tea in glass. I sit beside the window with the baby and watch the sky lighten. Her eyes are still closed, but she is very awake beneath her eyelids. I tell her who I am in a voice that I would not use for any other introduction.
“I am your father,” I say quietly. “I have been many other things. Some were useful. Some were unworthy. Today I begin being yours.”
