Every time I walked into that room over the following months, growing rounder, I let myself imagine it: their baby asleep beneath those felt stars, safe, wanted, finally here.

I imagined Lauren in the rocking chair we’d set by the window.

I imagined my brother, who had wanted so badly to be a father, standing over that crib in the middle of the night just to watch his child breathe.

For the first time in years, after so much loss, everything seemed to be arranging itself, at last, the very way we had all hardly dared to hope.

I did not know, standing in that soft green room, that a secret was already growing in my brother alongside the baby growing in me — and that his secret and their child would arrive on the very same day, in the very same room, and collide.