Page 34 of The Other Mother
Per your message, I uploaded sample forms for reference. Edit or ignore—use whatever helps.
There’s an attachment.A little Drive icon with a filename: birth_plan_resources.pdf. When the preview flickers open, a header flashes for a second before the screen errors out:
I,Claire Matthews, authorize…
Error: “Corrupt File. Unable to retrieve.”
I try again.For half a breath the Drive viewer loads and I catch a line in the banner I wish I hadn’t: Last modified: Sept 3, 12:14 A.M.
The night I delivered.
Error again. “File moved or deleted.”
My hands are shaking so hardI can barely work the trackpad. I refresh. I download. Nothing. It’s like it was there and then it wasn’t, a ghost file with my name on it and a timestamp that shouldn’t exist.
I heara noise coming from the monitor. I freeze, listening. Eva shifts, sighs, settles. She's sleeping peacefully, her tiny chest rising and falling evenly. She looks so innocent, so perfect, that for a moment I can almost convince myself this is all some kind of mistake.
I watch the green light slow again and reread the thread. None of it says what I’m afraid it says. There are no loaded phrases. No secret deals. Just a cautious woman on the internet sending templates to nervous mothers to tuck into their hospital bags.
So why does it feel like a missing piece?
I back out of Gmail and push away from the table. I need something that isn’t a screen, something normal to ground me in the present. I step into the backyard barefoot. When we first moved here, I'd been determined to grow something green, something that would remind me of the life we'd left behind in Orange County. I'd researched desert gardening obsessively, ordered special soil amendments, bought seeds for plants that were supposed to thrive in heat and drought.
Now, months later, my little raised bed behind the house looks like a graveyard. The tomatoes I'd planted with such hope had withered despite the drip irrigation system Adam installed. The herbs I'd been so excited about, basil and cilantro and mint, had turned brown and crispy within weeks.
The only things thriving are the succulents I'd planted as an afterthought. Jade plants and barrel cacti and something called ghost plant that spreads like a silver-green carpet across the gravel. They don't need me, don't require the constant attention and worry that everything else in my life seems to demand.
I sit on the edge of the raised bed in my pajamas,pulling weeds by moonlight. The desert air is finally cool, carrying the scent of creosote and that indefinable smell of emptiness that I'm still not used to. In the distance, coyotes yip and howl, a sound that used to terrify me but is now starting to feel like home.
Adam findsme there twenty minutes later.
"Claire?" His voice is soft, careful. "What are you doing out here?"
I don't look up from the weeds I'm methodically destroying. "I couldn't sleep."
He sits beside me on the wooden edge of the bed, close enough that I can smell his soap and the faint scent of the bourbon he sometimes drinks when he thinks I'm not paying attention. "You've been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately."
"So have you." It comes out sharper than I intended.
He's quiet for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice has that therapist-approved tone he's been using with me more and more. "I'm worried about you. This thing with the support group ... maybe it's time to talk to someone. A professional."
"You think I'm crazy."
"I think you're struggling. There's a difference."
I finally look at him. In the moonlight, his face is all sharp angles and shadows, but his eyes are kind. This is the man I fell in love with, the one who brought mecoffee in bed during my mother's chemo treatments, who held me when I told him about losing Marcus's baby all those years ago, who promised me that Eva would be the fresh start we both needed.
"Do you remember much about when Eva was born?" I ask.
He shifts beside me. "What do you mean?"
"I mean the details. The timeline. Who was there, what happened when."
"Claire ... "
"Because I don't. Not really. It's all so fuzzy, like I was watching it happen to someone else."
Adam reaches over and takes my dirt-covered hand in his. "You were in labor for forty hours and then you were under with the emergency c-section. You were exhausted. It's normal not to remember everything clearly."
