After ten years of miscarriages, we finally had our miracle baby girl — but when the nurse handed her to my husband, he went completely pale, stared at the birthmark on her shoulder, and whispered, “No… that’s impossible.”

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“Do you think it means something?” I asked. “Or is it just genetics, working the way genetics sometimes work?”

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“I know, logically, it’s genetics,” Desmond said. “Birthmarks like this run in families all the time. I understand that completely with my rational brain. But for a second, holding her, all I could think about was that exact memory at the lake, and some part of me panicked completely, like she was somehow going to inherit more than just a mark on her shoulder.”

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“Desmond,” I said, “you are not your father. You’ve spent twelve years proving that to me, every single day, especially through everything we’ve survived trying to have her in the first place.”

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“I know that too,” he said. “Logically. It’s harder to fully believe it in the ten seconds right after seeing his exact birthmark on my own newborn daughter, apparently.”

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I asked him, gently, whether he wanted to hand her to me for a moment, worried the whole conversation might be pulling him further from the actual joy of the night instead of toward it.