I sat down on the hard vinyl bench because my legs had stopped trusting me. Nathaniel crouched in front of me so our eyes were level, and he held both my hands in his. “Three days ago,” he said, “a woman came into the shelter kitchen where I volunteer on Saturdays. She was seven months along and she was alone. No family, no money, nowhere safe to sleep.” His voice cracked. “I gave her my number. I told her to call if anything happened. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to give you hope over something that wasn’t ours.”

He drew a breath. “She called me last night. She went into labor early. The baby is fine. A girl.” I could hear my own heartbeat. “The mother signed the papers this morning, Rebecca. She’s choosing adoption, and she asked me, she asked us, if we would take her.” Behind the glass, that plastic bassinet held the one thing I had stopped letting myself want. “I couldn’t say yes without you,” he whispered. “But I couldn’t say no before you saw her face.”