He was right.

After twelve hours of labor, the doctor told me our healthy boy had arrived.

Nicolas looked happier than I had ever seen him — happier than at our wedding, happier than at any of the girls’ births, and I noticed that, too, and filed it away with the rest.

The nurse settled our son into his arms.

I lay back against the pillows, wrung out and aching and full of a tired joy, and I waited for the tears, the laughter, the relieved finally I was sure was coming.

I want to hold onto that moment for a second, before I tell what came next, because it was real and it was the last of its kind.