When I first decided to have a baby, gender wasn’t important.
And I’d have been thrilled either way.
But I’ll never forget the way I felt when that pink confetti flew through the air after I popped the balloon. I was plucking it out of my hair for days after, smiling every time as I daydreamed about a little mini me. About mommy-daughter mani/pedis. Barbies and babies. Lazing by the pool together in matching swimsuits in the summer. The enormous collection of dresses and hair ribbons I was about to start for her. I’d have been just as excited to have a baby boy, but being able to visualize this next chapter of my life without effort quashed any tiny voices in my head telling me I was crazy for doing this.
“You realize the irony in all of this, don’t you?” Carina asks. “You’re a genealogist. You study family histories and make family trees for a living. Legacies are your jam. Now you’ve got the opportunity to fill in the other half of your daughter’s family tree and you’re content just to leave it … leafless?”
She has a point, but I’d accepted that half of her tree would be bare the second I agreed to go the sperm donor route. It was a trade-off I was willing to make in the grand scheme of things. Plus with DNA technology advancing every year, it’s not like she wouldn’t be able to figure out her heritage when the time came.
Lucia coos, clapping and reaching for me.
Typically we have a no-baby-in-the-office-during-work-hours policy, but I can’t not hold her when she gives me that look.
Carina slides her into my arms, and I kiss her warm, pink cheek before studying her deep brown eyes.
My sweet, perfect, beautiful, brown-eyed girl.
My whole world, really.
It’s funny, despite being thirty-five, I hardly remember life before her. All those memories feel like they belong to someone else. The rebellious college years. My brief marriage to Brett. Launching my genealogical services business. Starting over single, fabulous, but still aware that something was missing …
“Nonna always says everything happens for a reason,” Carina quotes our vivacious Italian grandmother. Though the cliché words don’t belong to her, it’s something she says all the time, about everything. If it rains, it means the grass needs watering. If a guy ghosts Carina, it’s because his presence in her life would’ve thrown off her entire path. After my husband left me for another woman, she swore it was because my soul mate is still out there.
I don’t know about all of that—but she’s never been wrong.
The things that don’t work out for us are because something better is waiting in the wings.
Lucia is worth every painful moment of my failed marriage, every tear, every headache, every embarrassed explanation I had to give friends and family.
“She kind of looks like him,” Carina studies my baby’s face.
“You did not just say my nine-month-old baby girl looks like a thirty-seven-year-old Greek god.” I snort.
“The hair and eye color,” she says. “It’s his.”
“A lot of people have that combination …”
Pulling out her phone, she taps something into the screen and flips it to show me. “Look at his eyebrows. The shape of them. Those are Lucia’s brows.”
“I don’t know why you’re trying to hard to sell me on this when it doesn’t matter.”
Carina blows a puff of hair between her lips and slides her phone away. “Fine. You’re right. It’s none of my business. I just think …”
“What? Everything happens for a reason?” I finish her thought.
“Exactly.” She gathers Lucia in her arms and kisses her temple before brushing her jet-black hair from her forehead. “But it’s your life. And Lucia’s. And it’s not my decision. I just would hate for you to spend the rest of your life wondering …”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I swat her away. “I really need to get back to work.”
“You called me in here.” She points, winking. “Just remember that.”
She’s not wrong—when I first opened the letter a few minutes ago, my heart fluttered at the thought of this secret information landing in my lap on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon. But the more I think about it … it’s not for me to know.
Then again, the more I think about it, what sense would it make that someone as famous and successful at Fabian Catalano would ever need to be a sperm donor?
There’s no way it’s him.
Rising, I refill my coffee in the kitchen before returning to pace my office—or at least the single window that looks out onto our little front porch. Sliding the sash, I inhale a burst of fresh spring air. A year ago, I was six months pregnant, happily and comfortably so.
I loved being pregnant. Relished every minute of it. I studied a million baby books, listened to her little heartbeat on the at-home doppler at least ten times a day, and snapped hundreds of belly photos.