"I know you," Lina said. "I already know exactly who you are. And I am going to spend every day of your life making sure you know that you were always the reason."
Maggie, in the chair by the wall, looked out the window at the pre-dawn city and said nothing and pressed her lips together.
The nurse came to do the first checks. The hospital sounds resumed around them — the PA system, the distant movement of trolleys, the particular institutional hum of a large building managing its business.
Lina held Ivy and let the world do what it needed to do around her.
Her daughter weighed three point four kilograms. Her fingers were the exact length of Lina's thumbnail. She smelled of something that had no adequate description and that Lina knew, with absolute certainty, she would be able to identify in a dark room for the rest of her life.
"Ivy Hart," Lina said.
Hart. Not Cole.
Her daughter.
✦ ✦ ✦
Maggie left at seven a.m. to go home, change, and come back.
