Chapter 23
I called my doctor and followed her instructions.
By early morning, I was at the hospital.
The hours that followed were exhausting and frightening and unlike anything I had ever experienced.
There were moments when I wanted my father so desperately that I couldn’t stop crying.
I wanted him in the waiting room.
I wanted to hear his familiar voice telling me I was stronger than I thought.
I wanted him to meet the little girl he had already loved before she was born.
But when my daughter finally arrived, crying fiercely and moving her tiny fists, the world changed.
The nurse placed her against my chest.
I looked down at her face.
Her eyes were closed.
Her cheeks were pink.
Her fingers curled around one of mine.
And suddenly, none of the names people had called me mattered.
Weak.
Emotional.
Incapable.
Worthless.
I was holding an entire life in my arms.
“Hello, sweetheart,” I whispered.
My daughter opened her mouth in another indignant cry.
I laughed through my tears.
“I’m your mother.”
I touched her cheek.
“And I promise you something.”
My voice broke.
“You will never have to earn my love.”
I named her Rose.
After my father’s garden.
After the place where I had once believed my marriage began.
And after the flowers that surrounded his coffin on the day everything fell apart.
I had spent weeks wondering whether that garden would always remind me of Caleb’s lies.
But holding my daughter, I understood something.
The garden had existed before Caleb.
My father had planted those roses long before my husband entered our lives.
They did not belong to him.
Neither did my memories of my father.
Neither did my future.
Rose Whitmore.
I chose Whitmore as her surname.
I knew Caleb’s parental rights and responsibilities would have to be addressed through the appropriate legal process.
Whatever happened between us, I would not pretend he wasn’t her father.
But I would no longer let him use that fact as permission to control me.
When I brought Rose home, I took her into my father’s study.
Sunlight streamed across the oak desk.
The leather folder still sat in the drawer where I had placed it.
I held my daughter close and looked at the photograph of my father standing beside me in the garden.
“This is your grandfather,” I whispered.
“He was stubborn.”
Rose slept peacefully.
“And very bossy.”