Cora

Cora pressed the photograph to her chest and swiped her tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Andrew was a dimple-cheeked cutie. According to his mother’s latest letter he was happy, reasonably healthy, had an elephant’s appetite for peanut butter sandwiches, and loved peddling his tryke up and down the sidewalk in front of his house.

Time to put Andrew where Andrew belongs. Cora gripped the doorknob. It’s only a room. She took a deep breath, opened the door, and flipped on the light switch.

The nursery remained unfinished.

A changing table was still ready to assemble in its unopened box. Pieces of a mahogany crib rested against a far wall.

Michael’s first and last blankets, one patterned in red sailboats, the other marked with teddy bears embroidered in blue, lay folded on top of the dresser beside the rocking chair. The chair’s mauve-colored cushions were still sealed in their original protective plastic.

She’d prayed for a miracle, an obstetrician who could give the little bump that shared her waistline a pair of kidneys, make her son whole when he was new.

What she’d received were packages of diapers and tissue-stuffed gift bags, given by co-workers and friends who’d never known the anxiety that came with her impending motherhood ran deeper than whether or not the life inside her had ten fingers and ten toes.

Michael’s Baby Book of Moments was the only gift she’d used. In it she'd taped a photo of Michael, pink and almond-eyed, his tiny forehead pressed against her breast. It was taken moments before a neo natal surgical team whisked him away to claim the pieces fit to dole. Where he was going he didn’t need toy sailboats or teddy bears in blue. The blankets were left behind, draped over the plastic bassinet beside her hospital bed.

Cora lifted the Baby Book of Moments off the dresser and settled herself cross-legged on the carpet. There, on page one, was her short lived, shining star. She ran her thumb along the edge of Michael’s picture. Proof he had been real, and alive, and for an hour belonged to her.

She peeled back the corner of the cover sheet on the third page and placed Andrew’s photo in the birthday slot.

He wasn’t the miracle she’d dreamed about when the red x’s on the calendar counted down her scheduled delivery day, but he was the something out of nothing. A dimple-cheeked cutie who carried the beat of Michael’s perfectly formed heart.