My Wife Was Seven Months Pregnant When She Stopped Leaving Bed—Then I Lifted the Blue Blanket and Realized My Mother Already Knew What Was Underneath

Pulled tightly beneath her fingers.

I had bought it at a discount store during our first winter together because our apartment was so cold the windows developed ice inside.

Clara hated the color.

“Hospital blue.”

she called it.

Then used it every winter anyway.

By the seventh month of pregnancy, it covered something neither of us knew how to name.

At first I thought: