Mark, at one point, suggested Clementine, entirely seriously, and I laughed so hard I nearly cried.

He defended it for a full ten minutes, entirely straight-faced, escalating his arguments as I laughed, which only made me laugh harder, until we were both wiping our eyes.

We had a whole list of names we hated and enjoyed hating together, which is, I have come to think, one of the truest signs of a happy marriage — that you can waste an entire evening laughing at things that do not matter.

And then, one afternoon, it happened the way the right things happen, without our deciding it.

We were sitting together, talking about nothing in particular, and the baby kicked beneath my hand at exactly the right moment, as though she were weighing in.

Mark and I looked at each other.

And somehow, without a word, we both knew.

Cecelia.

That would be her name.

There was no debate, no list, no defending it for ten minutes.

It simply arrived, the two of us and the small insistent movement under my skin all agreeing at once, and it was hers from that moment on.

Cecelia.

I have thought about that afternoon countless times since, because it was the last purely happy naming a family ever gets — the choosing of a name before anything has gone wrong, when the name is nothing but hope.

For a while after that, our happiness seemed complete.