Darcie carried the lavender comforter home in a giant Macy's bag. Edward saw her struggling from the upstairs window and met her at the door to help.

"Sale," Darcie finger-spelled, smiling. She handed him a stuffed puppy that the store had given as a bonus. "Free beagle." Edward put the dog in the corner of Anna's crib with the lion, zebra, frog.

The nursery connected to their bedroom and they slept with the door open and the monitor turned up all the way. Darcie was deaf, but she knew when the baby stirred. Before Edward was awakened by the cry for the missing bottle, for the dropped torn cubbie that Anna liked to keep by her face, Darcie would already be at her crib.

"I can do this," he'd explain, but she couldn't sleep until she'd seen Anna for herself.

Darcie stripped the bed and Edward helped her put on clean sheets. He folded the thin coverlet into eighths and then in half again, and put it away in the closet.

They slept under the new comforter. The fabric was silk, smooth as new skin. Edward talked to Darcie until she fell asleep. He held her so she could feel the hum in his chest, and told her good things about himself that he'd never said out loud.