I fed Josephine at two in the morning and three in the morning and sometimes four-thirty, and in those quiet hours I talked to her in the dark — not about anything important, just whatever was in my head.
The way Mark used to hum when he was washing dishes.
The particular smell of the porch in summer.
The fact that he had once driven forty minutes in the wrong direction because he refused to admit the GPS was right, and they had laughed about it for years afterward.
I told her about Daniel.
“You have a brother,” I said one night, while she was eating and the rest of the world was asleep.
“He’s five, and he builds rockets, and he has your dad’s eyes.
You’ll meet him when you’re older.
I’ll make sure of it.”
She didn’t respond, because she was six days old and had other priorities.
