When I noticed something wrong and said so, I was making a scene out of nothing.

It is a small, ordinary word, and it does an enormous amount of quiet work, because after enough years of it you begin to pre-check your own reactions against it — is this worth mentioning, or will he think I’m being dramatic — until you have trained yourself down to a smaller, quieter person who asks for almost nothing.

I had gone into that hospital doorway already half-trained not to trouble him.

It took a contraction that nearly put me on the floor and the sound of him hanging up to finish teaching me what two years of that word had really been for.

He hadn’t been managing my drama.

He’d been managing me, down to a size that was convenient for him, one stop being dramatic at a time.

Chapter 2 — Enjoy the Cake

I called him back.

He answered with music and laughter spilling out behind him.

“Rowan.

My water broke.

The contractions are four minutes apart.”

There was a pause, and then, unmistakably, Priscilla’s voice floating over the noise.

“Tell her women have been having babies for thousands of years.”