The Name

Morning came grey and soft through the curtains, and Isla was already awake, one hand resting on the curve of her stomach, listening to the city start up outside.Seven months now. The pregnancy had stopped being an event and become the texture of every day instead — the way she shifted her weight getting out of bed, the way she'd started sleeping propped on three pillows instead of two, the way the apartment's temperature had become a subject with exactly one acceptable answer."It's cold in here," she said, when Zachary came in from the kitchen with two mugs."It's seventy-one degrees.""It's cold."He adjusted the thermostat without argument, which had become his standard response weeks ago, and set her coffee — decaf, always decaf now — down beside her sketches.She was already bent over the table, pencil moving across a lighting plan, and she said, without looking up, "I keep thinking about Niamh."He turned around from the counter. "What?""For a girl. Niamh. It's Irish. It mean

February

She waited until dinner, plates between them, before she said it plainly, the way she'd learned to say difficult things now — no cushioning, no managing his reaction before he'd had a chance to have one."Paris pushed to February," she said. "They need me there four weeks minimum. Final installation oversight."He set his fork down. "February.""I'll be eight months."He didn't say anything right away. She watched his face carefully, the way he went still — not the alarmed kind of still, the thinking kind, the kind she'd learned to read correctly over two years of watching him process instead of suppress."What do you want to do," he asked finally."I want to go," she said. "I know how that sounds. I know the timing is—""What does your doctor say.""I haven't asked yet. I wanted to tell you first."He nodded slowly, turning that over."Ask her," he said. "If she says it's safe, we go.""We?""Obviously we."She studied him across the table. "You'd come to Paris for a month. In the mi

What Wren Is Afraid Of

They met most Tuesdays now, when schedules allowed, a small standing lunch that neither of them had officially named but both quietly protected.Wren was settling into the booth carefully, one hand braced on the table, ten weeks behind Isla now, just starting to show, still wearing the faintly astonished expression of someone who kept forgetting and then remembering."You okay," Isla asked, watching her lower herself down."Fine. Everything just takes longer than it used to. Sitting. Standing. Deciding what to eat.""Welcome to the second half."Wren ordered tea instead of her usual coffee, and for a while they talked about nothing important — the Paris trip, Reid's schedule, a mutual friend's baby shower neither of them had strong opinions about.Then Wren went quiet, turning her cup slowly on the table, and Isla recognized the shift immediately."What," Isla said."I'm afraid of becoming my mother," Wren said. No preamble. That was how Wren said things now, when it mattered.Isla se

Paris Preparation

The apartment had turned into a kind of organized chaos three weeks out — commission boards stacked against the studio wall, fabric samples pinned to a corkboard that hadn't existed a month ago, and baby things arriving in waves that seemed to have no schedule of their own."Another box," Zachary said, carrying one in from the hallway. "This one's from Caden.""We didn't order anything from Caden.""I'm aware."He opened it on the kitchen counter. Inside was a mobile shaped like tiny hot air balloons, a stack of onesies in three different sizes, and a card that read *saw these and thought of you both, no occasion needed, love C.*"That's actually sweet," Isla said."It's also the fourth unrequested delivery this week.""I know. I've stopped questioning it."Sloane's package arrived the next day — no card, no explanation, just a single item wrapped in plain brown paper that neither of them could immediately identify."What is this," Isla said, turning it over in her hands."I have no i

All The Way Forward

Isla woke early, the room still grey, Zachary asleep beside her, and lay there for a while just thinking.Her father, choosing to go out anyway. Not recklessly. Deliberately.She thought about the elevator, the door frame, the second she'd almost said no to Hartwell's contract entirely, back when the timing had felt wrong and she'd talked herself into yes anyway.She thought about standing outside Connor's hotel room years ago, hand raised to knock, and turning around instead and walking home in the cold.She thought about the first time she'd asked Zachary directly if he was sick — the way her voice had shaken asking it, the way everything good that came after had depended entirely on her asking that terrifying question instead of staying quiet and safe.She'd been living all the way forward this whole time. She just hadn't known her father had a name for it.Over breakfast, she told Zachary the whole thing again, slower this time, the fisherman, the feeling, her father's choice.He

Paris

The apartment sat above a bookshop on a narrow street in the 11th, nothing grand about it, nothing designed for tourists, which was exactly right for both of them."There are twenty-two stairs," Isla announced, halfway up on the first evening, one hand braced against the wall. "I counted.""You could have told me that before I let the movers unload the crib on the fourth floor.""It was a discovery in progress."Paris in February wasn't performing for anyone — grey sky, cold air, the city just being itself in winter light, and Isla loved it immediately, standing at the kitchen window that first morning looking down at the street below."There's a bookshop right underneath us," she said. "I didn't even plan that.""You picked the apartment.""I picked it for the light. The bookshop's a bonus."The gallery team had been cautious at first — Céleste had warned her, gently, before they arrived. "They have strong opinions." But within the first week, the French curators had shifted from pro