He walked into the maternity room with the keys to a brand new car. She told him the baby's name would be Jacob, like her ex. Then the nurse read out the name on the birth certificate form.
The room was full of blue balloons.
Mark Sullivan had tied them to the window rail himself at six that morning, a whole bunch of them, before he ran out to sign the papers on the car. Room 318, maternity floor. Big window, mountains in the distance, white blankets, and his wife in the bed with their son on her chest.
Megan. Red hair piled up in a messy bun. A cream cardigan over a pink hospital top. A plastic bracelet on her wrist with her name and the baby's birth time on it. 4:12 a.m. Seven pounds, six ounces.
Mark walked in with his hands behind his back and a grin he couldn't wipe off.
He'd been a dad for nine hours. He still couldn't believe it.
"Hey, beautiful," he said, and leaned down over the bed. "So what are we naming him?"
Megan looked down at the baby. She didn't look at Mark.
"Jacob."
Mark's grin stayed on his face for a second. Then it didn't.
"Jacob?" he said. "Like your ex, Jacob?"
"Don't make it weird." She was still looking at the baby. "He meant a lot to me."
Mark straightened up slowly.
They'd talked about names for seven months. Henry, after his grandfather. Owen. Luke. She'd never said Jacob. Not once. He'd have remembered, because Jacob Miller was the guy she dated for four years before Mark. The guy whose name still made her go quiet when it came up at parties.
"You named my son," Mark said, "after the man you used to love."
Megan finally looked up at him. Her face was calm. Annoyed, almost.
"You're being dramatic."
Mark stood there in his gray quarter-zip, holding the thing behind his back. He'd been holding it so carefully the whole drive.
He brought it around. A car key with a big red bow stuck on it.
A brand new SUV. Silver. Third row, extra airbags, the safest thing on the lot. He'd sold his motorcycle to make the down payment. He'd already put the car seat in the back. He'd checked the straps three times.
He held the key up between them. His voice was flat.
"I bought you a brand new car," he said. "Let Jacob drive you home."
Megan opened her mouth. Before she could say anything, there was a knock on the open door.
A nurse came in. Blue scrubs, reading glasses on a chain, a clipboard in her hand. Her name tag said GLORIA. She'd been on this floor for twenty-six years, and she could feel a room, and she could feel this one. But she had a job to do.
"Sorry to interrupt, folks. I just need to go over the birth certificate form before I send it down."
She walked around to the side of the bed and held the clipboard so both of them could see it. She ran her finger down the page.
"Mother, Megan Anne Sullivan. Baby, first name Jacob. And the father listed here..." Her finger stopped. She read it again. "Is Jacob Miller."
Nobody said anything.
Gloria looked at the form. Then at Mark. Then at Megan. Then she very slowly lowered the clipboard.
Mark didn't move. He just stared at the paper. At the handwriting. Megan's handwriting. The loopy J she'd used on every birthday card she ever gave him.
Father's Name: Jacob Miller.
"Is that a mistake?" he said. He wasn't talking to the nurse. "Megan. Tell me that's a mistake."
Megan looked down at the baby.
"I'm gonna give you two a minute," Gloria said quietly. She laid the clipboard on the foot of the bed and walked out, and she shut the door behind her, which nurses on that floor almost never did.
"Megan."
"I didn't want you to find out like this," she said.
"Find out what?"
She was quiet for so long he thought she wasn't going to answer.
"I don't know if he's yours."
Mark felt it in his knees first. He sat down hard in the visitor chair, the car key still in his hand, the red bow crushed in his fist.
"How long?"
"It was one time. Last spring. My high school reunion. You were in Denver for work." She was crying now, but quietly, carefully, like she didn't want to wake the baby. "Jacob was there, and we talked, and I..."
"And you wrote his name on our son's birth certificate."
"Because I think he's Jacob's," she said. "I did the math, Mark. I've been doing the math for nine months."
Mark looked at the baby. Tiny face. Dark fuzz of hair. He'd held him at 4:15 that morning, for the very first time, and cried so hard the doctor laughed.
He stood up. He put the car key down on the tray table, next to her water cup.
"I need some air."
He sat in the new car in the parking garage for forty minutes.
New car smell. The car seat in the back, still with the tags on. The red bow on the passenger seat where he'd thrown it.
He called his brother Danny. He couldn't get the words out. Danny just stayed on the line and didn't hang up, and after a while that was enough.
When he went back up to Room 318, Megan was asleep. The baby was in the little plastic bassinet next to the bed, sleeping too, fists up by his ears.
Megan's phone was lying face up on the tray table, next to the car key.
It lit up while he was standing there.
He didn't mean to read it. He read it.
J: I'm downstairs in the lobby. Did you tell him yet? Can I come up and meet my son?
This is a fictional story. Names, characters and events are invented. Any resemblance to real people or events is coincidental.
