He kissed my palm.
“I am,” he said.
We had our son, Ethan, two years after the wedding. Then our daughter, Rose, three years after that.
I learned their faces through touch. Every day, as they grew, I’d trace them. The soft, round baby cheeks that slowly sharpened. Ethan’s nose, which turned out like his father’s, a little crooked. Rose’s dimple on her left side only.
“What color are her eyes?” I asked Nigel, the day Rose was born.
“Brown,” he said. “Like mine. But lighter. Like coffee with too much milk.”
“So exactly how I like it.”
He laughed. “Exactly how you like it.”
They were good kids. They were never embarrassed by me, not even as teenagers. Ethan used to read me the comics on Sunday mornings when he was seven, doing all the voices. Rose, when she was five, would take my hand at the grocery store and narrate everything in a loud, bossy voice. “Cereal, Mom. Now we’re passing cereal. Don’t touch the cereal, it’s not on the list.”
