And underneath all of it, the one thought I could not stop, the terrible arithmetic finally resolved: that the man I had planned to spend the rest of my life with, the man whose hand was going still in mine, would never meet the daughter we had spent years dreaming about, whose name we had chosen together on an ordinary afternoon, who was, even in that cold room, moving under my heart.

He was leaving as she was arriving.

They would pass each other, my husband and my daughter, in the narrow doorway of those weeks, close enough that she could kick against the wall of my belly while I held her father’s stilling hand, and they would never, in this life, meet.

One arriving, one leaving, brushing past each other in me, in the dark, unaware.

I have made a kind of peace with a great deal since then.

I am not sure I have ever fully made peace with that.