Her Motherhood Wish (Parent Portal 3)

On her darkest nights, she cried some, wishing Wood could be with her. But she knew, even before the light of day came, that she didn’t have the right to upend his life when hers was in such flux.

She’d been told to dress comfortably for the birthing class and chose a pair of black yoga pants with a black tank and an oversize, lightweight white T-shirt on top. She’d debated about her hair the most, not wanting to lie back and have a ponytail knot to contend with, and ended up with a loose bun. Packed a bag with extra snacks and bottles of water, though the clinic was providing a lunch, and still she was ready to go fifteen minutes before Wood was due to arrive.

They didn’t talk much on the way there.

For the moment, it was enough. She was with him. And they were going to spend a whole day learning about the birth of their son.

A few seconds in the classroom, though, and Cassie wasn’t feeling anywhere near as calm about things.

“I’m by far the oldest one here,” she told Wood as they picked a spot to settle in.

“You look better than half of them,” Wood whispered, and she smiled, as she figured he’d meant her to. She didn’t really believe she looked better than anyone else in the class. But maybe...she looked as good as half of them. She’d never been a pretty girl. Interesting, people always said about her features. She’d never cared overly much. Until she sat in a classroom filled with pregnant women and their coaches with Wood beside her, wanting him to be glad she was the one of them he was with.

Don’t sweat over the things you can’t change, her father used to say to her. Save your energy for the things you can.

What those were at the moment, she wasn’t sure, but if the waves were giving her this day with Wood, then she was going to accept the gift. They’d bring bad along the way, but the way to deal with that was to enjoy the good.

So she would.

* * *

Halfway through the morning, Wood sat with Cassie on their floor mat, helping her practice different positions while in labor. The latest involved sitting on a rubber ball. Couples were laughing and talking. Cassie had chosen a mat on the end, so they only had someone on one side of them, two twentysomething women who’d been married a couple of years and were having their first child. They’d used some new technology at the Parent Portal that had enabled one of them to gestate the baby and then have it implanted in the other, allowing both of them to have grown it inside them.

As the women next to him laughed again, Cassie’s ball rolled, and she slipped. All the information he’d learned in class fled Wood’s brain as he grabbed for her before she took a fall to the floor. Lessons didn’t matter—keeping Cassie safe did.

Instead of falling, she settled back down to the ball with his hands planted firmly on her back and lower stomach, on the downward slope of the baby she carried, steadying her.

And just like that he was touching her in a way that made him hungry for things he didn’t want to want. An unforeseen rainfall.

He waited one last second to make sure she was good, and in that one second Alan said hello to him. Quite clearly, with a push right against his hand. Their first-ever high five.

“Did you feel that?” Cassie asked and then met his gaze. Apparently, the look on his face told her he had. Tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked them away, and the teacher gave the class further instructions.

Once again, without warning, he’d become someone different than he’d been. He’d become a father, biologically, legally, and now he’d officially bonded with his son.

* * *

By lunchtime, Cassie felt like she had a Christmas tree without lights, complete with presents wrapped in paper and topped with bows. Wood was there, but he wasn’t, too. He was perfectly attentive, considerate, aware of her, focused, even, yet there was part of him that seemed to be absent. She couldn’t explain it, so she couldn’t really ask him about it.

They’d all been given boxed lunches of veggie wraps, a fresh fruit bowl and a cookie. Some were eating on their mats. Others had moved to across the room. Cassie asked Wood if they could go outside to a bench that she’d seen when they’d pulled in that morning. Off to the side of the clinic, it sat alongside a six-foot-tall fountain with flowers and greenery around it. A gift, a plaque read, from the Randolph family in thanks f

or Jimmy, the child they’d conceived with help from the Parent Portal.

She was happy for the Randolphs. And eager to have some time alone with Wood. She wanted to talk about him feeling the baby move.

They talked about things they’d learned in the class. He asked if she was afraid of going into labor. She was a little nervous but not nearly as scared as she was of losing him. She didn’t articulate that part.

But when lunch was two-thirds of the way done, and she knew they’d have to get back, she couldn’t face the idea of wasting an afternoon with him as she felt they’d wasted the morning. He wanted to be there. She knew that. But something was wrong.

“Is it something you can talk about?” she asked, leaving her cookie wrapped and in the box.

“What?”

“Whatever it is that’s going on in your life.”

He didn’t deny that there was something. That fact hit her almost at once. If he couldn’t tell her, he couldn’t. She’d accept that.

“Elaina said something the other night—” He broke off. Glanced away, a frown on his face. “About moving out, mostly, but about life, too. It just got me thinking...”