Maya appeared in the doorway wearing gray lounge pants and one of Taylor’s shirts, still damp-haired from the shower. She looked healthier than she had ever looked in her life, though he had learned not to use the word healthy carelessly. Healthy was not a cosmetic. It was bloodwork, energy, laughter that came more easily, a body no longer at war with itself.
“How long have you been standing there making sentimental faces at her?” she asked.
Taylor glanced up. “Long enough for her to develop opinions.”
Grace made a fierce little sound and tightened both hands on his tie.
“See?” he said. “Hostile takeover.”
Maya came close and touched the baby’s foot through the sleeper. “You taught her that phrase.”
“She needs vocabulary.”
“She needs breakfast.”
He followed his wife into the kitchen, the apartment warm with coffee and oatmeal and winter light. Their life had become the kind of life he once would have considered too small to admire: breakfasts, calendars, pediatric appointments, foundation meetings, arguments about whether the stroller really needed all-terrain wheels. It had also become the only life he could imagine wanting.
