Her husband was ready too, but not for the same thing.
Ethan rolled a black suitcase down the hallway with one hand and checked his phone with the other.
He wore khaki shorts, a navy polo, and the sunglasses his mother had bought him for Christmas.
Madison stood barefoot in one of his old sweatshirts, forty weeks pregnant, swollen from her ankles to her fingertips, watching him step around the bag that held their son’s first outfit.
“Are you really leaving today?” she asked.
Ethan sighed like she had asked him to cancel a meeting instead of witness the birth of his first child.
“Maddie, we already talked about this.”
They had not talked about it.
He had announced it three weeks earlier, over dinner, while she tried to eat chicken in pieces small enough not to give her heartburn.
His parents had booked a long weekend in Scottsdale.
His mother needed family time.
The flights were expensive.
