Month 6-11
At week 20, Sara had an ultrasound, followed by an amniocentesis. The more information the better, they both agreed, except for one thing: they'd decided they didn't need to know the sex of the baby.
"It doesn't matter this time," Sara said, feeling out the statement on her tongue and deciding it was true. The fierce drive for a boy she'd experienced during her first pregnancy had faded to an equal fondness for either pink or blue. As the technician squeezed the goop on her stomach and slid the wand over her skin, she found her gaze unexpectedly torn in two directions: on the monitor, of course, for her first glimpse of their second child, but also on Michael's face, watching the monitor. She was pretty sure her feminist card would be revoked should she admit it, but she felt an almost primal pride in knowing she was giving him this, that she was again having his baby.
Michael's reaction didn't disappoint. He looked almost stunned as he watched the monitor, his mouth open in a half-O of awe. He kept splaying his fingers against his pant leg, as though he wanted to touch the screen but managed to stop himself at the last second. This brought a bubble of laugher to Sara's chest, which she just managed to squelch. "Look at the heart," he breathed, where it fluttered like she imagined a quivering hummingbird's would, on the screen. "Look at that, Sara."
She looked, and her own heart constricted tightly. He squeezed her hand.
The amnio was less fun, but Sara had insisted. She was seven years older than during her last pregnancy, she's reminded Michael the previous week.
He'd scoffed. "Not feeling your age, are you?"
She'd risen gingerly from the chair she'd deposited herself into, feeling something cramp, tendons she'd never noticed before stretching taut across her belly, and said, "A little bit, if you must know."
The testing all came back clean, normal, negative…all the words they wanted to hear, and back at home, Michael flipped between the printed images of their child he'd snagged as souvenirs and a pamphlet they'd been given at the appointment. Birth Plan Options something or other. Sara had already tried to throw it away twice…she'd learned you could plan for birth all you wanted, but you'd never really be prepared anyway.
Michael, however, studied the tri-fold glossy print religiously. "I have a sinking feeling that if you were anti-nausea medication in the first trimester, you're going to resist all these handy pain management options in labor and delivery?" he asked, pointing to a bullet-pointed list of narcotic-laced anesthetics.
Sara had already looked at it…it read like a junkie's Christmas list. She didn't even bother to glance at it now. "Natural birth worked fine with Mike, and it will be fine this time too."
"I don't even get a vote?" he asked. His tone remained light, but she felt the rise of his resentment as tangibly as the spring sunlight burning through the kitchen window.
She sighed. "You get a vote," she conceded, "but I get more." At least her feminism card was tucked back in her pocket where it belonged, she thought. "It's my body, Michael. I decide."
She considered the case closed, which made her wonder later if she had any business claiming she knew her husband at all. "I just want to be of help to you," he argued, during his next affront a few days later. He'd read way too many books by this point, which she'd warned him not to do. Right now, for instance, he flipped between What to Expect When You're Expecting and something called Birth Your Way. Whose way, exactly? Sara thought wryly. "It seems this is going to be really intense, Sara," he pointed out, and she bit back a comment about understatements. He read a line he'd snagged out of the book. "Medically prescribed anesthetics can relax the mother-to-be, allowing for a calmer birth." He looked up hopefully. "It's okay to use drugs administered by a doctor the way they're intended to be used."
She wouldn't abide a lecture on drug use in either medical or recreational form. "Do you seriously think I don't know that, Michael?"
"Maybe in theory," he mumbled.
"Why don't you go back to your books on meditation, Lamaze, and visualization," she suggested. "You're welcome to learn any or all of those techniques, if you want to help me." It was a warm afternoon, and she'd pulled her hair up into a messy bun, but tendrils still escaped to stick to the back of her neck. She swiped at them irritably. She was tired and uncomfortable as spring slid into summer, and when he stepped behind her to tuck the errant hair up into the elastic band at the top of her head, she stubbornly refused to thank him.
But then he rubbed her shoulders, digging his long fingers expertly into the corded muscle that always seemed to knot up these days. She sighed. "You have to be on my side, Michael," she said simply, because that was really all there was to it. He had to be.
He placed a kiss to the back of her neck. "I am," he agreed softly. "Always."
Mike's soccer season began in late spring, bringing with it a practice and game schedule Michael thought more closely resembled an MLS player's than a newly-turned seven-year-old's. "We might as well set up a tent on that field and live there," he noted with a lift of one eyebrow, flipping through pages of rosters, calendars, and snack schedules. "Does Mike really have to go to all of this?"
"Welcome to youth sports," Sara told him. Mike just gave him a categorical 'yes'. When he wasn't practicing, he was up in his room, watching YouTube videos of professional matches. No, Michael amended, not watching. Studying.
"See how the shooter's glance flicks to the corner of the net before the PK?" Mike asked him one afternoon, when Michael had looked at the screen over his son's shoulder and asked what was so engrossing.
Mike replayed the movement, and Michael saw it. "Yes."
"And how he's favoring his back foot as he lines up the ball? He's going to kick left. Watch." As Mike predicted, the player kicked left while the goalkeeper dove in the wrong direction. "How did he miss that?" Mike wondered, eyes narrowing at the image of the pro goalie now on the ground, head in his hands. "It was obvious."
To prove his point, he dragged out his soccer net from the recesses of the garage, donned his gloves, and challenged Michael to kick the ball at him over and over. He wasn't very good at it - Michael, not Mike - and he tried not to take offense when he was replaced pretty early in the season by Dylan. Michael watched his son leap at ball after ball, his friend testing him with arbitrary angles and strategic kicking techniques. Michael really didn't know much about soccer, but a nearly 95% save percentage seemed pretty good.
Mike's first game day proved equally illuminating. They arrived at the assigned field just a bit late, and for some reason, the sight of Mike jumping out of the car, pulling on his gloves as he ran to join his team, brought obvious relief to the faces of the fellow parents on the sidelines. By the third time some dad stopped Sara to jokingly scold her for scaring everyone, the corner of her mouth twitched. "So here's the thing you may not have realized yet," she told Michael in an undertone. "Mike is kind of a crazy good goalkeeper."
Sara tried to claim this was the reason for her own popularity among the parents on the sidelines, but Michael was less convinced. She'd thrown on jeans and some sort of maternity tee that hugged the curve of her six-month belly, her hair pulled back hastily in a ponytail threaded through a baseball cap (their tardiness had been Mike's fault, as he searched for his lucky socks), but even dressed so causally, she looked exceptionally beautiful, really, watching the game in the spring sunlight. This is my favorite time of pregnancy, I think, she'd told him just the other day, and admiring her during lulls in the action on the field, he agreed. The sixth month definitely suited her.
She didn't stand with the other mothers, Michael noticed, preferring to talk about the game with the wanna-be coach type fathers. "The dads are nicer," she said, and Michael rolled his eyes. Of course they were.
She caught his look. "I think they all know I'm spoken for, Michael," she laughed, laying a hand on her stomach. Michael didn't consider himself to be the boorish type of man who felt the need to lay possessive claim to a woman, but he had to admit her words gave him a surge of primal pleasure. He ran his palm over the swell of her belly as well, before threading his fingers through hers. "They all love Mike, anyway," she added. This seemed true enough, as they openly discussed his abilities to read the shots he saved in the goal with blatant admiration.
Michael glanced back at the other women, talking amongst themselves more than they watched the action of the game. He thought about Dakota's mom and Maddy's mom and the gossip they so seemed to enjoy, and he could hardly blame Sara for keeping her distance. He had half a mind to storm over there to shoo them away like the scattering of a flock of pesky birds. Luckily, the other half of his mind knew this would constitute a gross overreaction. Anyway, Sara could fight her own battles.
At halftime, Michael noticed Mike remained on the field getting a one-on-one talking to from the coach, clipboard in hand, while the other kids ate oranges. "Is he in trouble?" he asked the closest dad. Sara had gone in search of a restroom.
The man laughed, but not in a mean way. "Hardly. At the U8 level, that kid's the only player the coach bothers to discuss strategy with." He held out his hand, introducing himself as Sam's dad, pointing to a boy trying to balance an orange slice on his head while another boy smashed it into pulp in his hair.
"Michael shook his hand. Somewhat sheepishly, he indicated toward Mike, still huddled with the coach. "He's mine." The wording, completely arbitrary, made him feel pleasantly possessive of his family again. "It's why I wondered."
"You're Scofield's father?"
Michael forced his smile to stay in place. Here we go. "Yes. Uh, you probably know my wife, Sara."
The man's face positively lit up. "Sara's great." Of course she is. The guy turned kind of wistful, then, a look Michael didn't really appreciate, after mentioning his wife, but then he said, "Mike is an incredible player."
This simple comment hit Michael squarely in the chest, landing from two fronts: for once, he - and his - had been recognized in a positive context, his name sliding off the tongue on a compliment. More importantly, that context was Mike. The concept of feeling pride over the athletic prowess of his child was a new one on Michael, one he decided he liked. "Really?"
The man waxed on about Mike's instincts and agility and some such thing, while Michael stood there, reeling. Five minutes ago, he truly hadn't cared whether or not Mike could snatch a leather ball out of the air before it hit a net, but now? He seemed to care quite a lot. Given the myriad of ways in which Mike deserved paternal pride, this one seemed downright silly to Michael. And yet…"Do you think he should try out for the elite team next year?"
"Oh, absolutely." More details followed, include information on age cut-offs and try-out dates, but then Sara was back at his side, looking at him a bit oddly.
"You haven't drunk the punch, have you?" she asked.
"He's really good," he accused Sara. "You didn't tell me."
She just smiled. Michael flicked a glance behind them, where the cluster of moms still chatted. Maybe they weren't talking about them at all, he thought now. Maybe if Sara walked up to them, they wouldn't fall silent…maybe they'd offer a compliment on her kid in the goal and then go back to whatever engrossed them. And maybe that 'whatever' wasn't them. It was possible.
Play started again, and now, Michael watched riveted, trying to memorize the line-up and decode the coach's strategy, which honestly, seemed lacking. The star forward for the opposing team shot at the goal time and again, each kick crossing unimaginatively from the right, and after the third time Mike blocked the shot, Mike's coach called out across the pitch, praising Mike enthusiastically.
Michael looked sidelong at Sara. "Did you play soccer as a kid?"
She laughed at him. "No, Michael, I did not play soccer. I rode horseback and took ballet, which, if I remember correctly, my father declared a 'dismal failure'."
"Maybe you missed your calling," Michael mused. "The reading of the players' tells I'll claim, but that?" He pointed toward Mike, now charging the ball outside the goal box, a look of abject determination on his face, "is all you."
"Well," she said slowly, "maybe by some miracle, Mike managed to get the best of me."
"Lucky kid," Sam's dad interjected, and this time, Michael was certain he didn't appreciate his implication.
On a uneventful weeknight in June, Sara called everyone to dinner to see only Mike arrive at the table. "Where's your dad?"
"Still in the office," Mike said. He hovered by his place at the table, not quite sitting down.
"Well, can you tell him to come eat?" She had almost two full months left to go in this pregnancy, and it wasn't a good sign that already, the idea of walking the twenty steps to the office seemed exhausting.
Mike hesitated, and Sara realized he looked concerned. "He closed the door," he said, then added, "Because he was really yelling at someone."
She glanced toward the office, and could see that indeed, Michael had shut the door behind him. "Alright, well, we'll start, and I'm sure he'll be in soon."
And he was. He sat down just a few minutes later, apologized for working late, asked Mike for a progress update on his school book report due the next day, and made small talk about an article he'd read on black holes that drew his son into animated conversation until dessert. But under it all, Sara could detect a tension that hummed like a live wire. Nothing outright alarming, really, but something to cautiously sidestep.
Of course, avoidance wasn't really Sara's style, so when Mike ran up the stairs to finish his book report, she didn't waste words. "What's wrong?"
For a moment, she saw Michael's favorite mask start to slide over his face, the one that kept everything tucked away from her for safekeeping, but then he he made a concerted effort to look her in the eye. "Come with me?" he requested. Therapy, Sara decided, just might be worth every penny.
In his office, he handed her a piece of paper…a copy of an email. She glanced down. It was a bid for Michael's engineering services. He got them all the time, so she wasn't sure why he was showing her this one until she read the name of the bidder. It was the DOC, but more specifically, Ohio State Penitentiary, a super maximum security facility in Youngstown. She scanned the rest of the bid, and exhaled in surprise.
"That's a lot of zeros after that dollar sign," she said carefully. Was he showing her this because he wanted to take the work? The idea was unappealing, even for the price offered. "But if you're asking my opinion," she continued slowly, "they could add half a dozen more and I'd still want you to turn it down."
She glanced up at him, and he smiled tightly. "I already did."
Oh. "Were you angry because it's from a prison?"
"I get bids from prisons all the time, even though I state very clearly that I won't work with them. I don't get mad. I just toss them."
"But this one's different?" She felt like she was feeling her way along a dark corridor, unable to tell when and where she'd bump into obstacles.
"Does Ohio State Pen mean anything to you?" he asked her softly.
"Should it?" He looked at her almost vigilantly now, as though ready to spring at something should it cross her path. "Michael?"
He exhaled. "It's where Jacob is. Where he was transferred, after Fox River," he told her. "I know you said you didn't want to know where he was, but of course you could have changed your mind, found out for yourself, should you have wanted to. I just didn't know."
She suddenly felt like sitting down. Michael guided her into his office chair, a hand cradling the swell of her stomach as she eased into the plush leather. "But it must be a coincidence," she ventured.
He showed her a second email, this one still on his phone. It was from the warden of the prison to Michael, cc'ing a few names with DOC and Ohio state government email addresses. I'm aware that you don't customarily take prison contracts, it read, but heard you might have a vested personal interest in keeping ours secure.
Something about the words sent a shiver down Sara's spine. "Is this a threat?" she breathed.
Michael's expression darkened, but he said, "Then I'm not crazy." He began pacing the small room, while she watched him, not quite knowing what to say. The baby blithely kicked at her ribs, and in a reflex reaction, she placed a hand there. Michael caught the movement: at this maternal gesture, the live wire of his anxiety snapped.
"It's him," he hissed, his voice breathy and angry and impatient. "He's got someone in the governor's office on a puppet string or maybe the warden in his pocket, or more likely he just ran a game on him, I don't know yet, but he's giving me a message. He wanted to make sure this email came right here, right to me, into this office, in this house." He slammed a fist on the desk.
"Michael…" She'd seen him angry before. She'd ridden out plenty a storm. But never like this.
"He's supposed to have zero contact! Zero! Well, this is contact. He knows it. I know it. And I've made sure the warden knows it now, too."
She caught his wrist on his next march across the office floor. Tugged him toward her. "Michael, look at me. We still don't know anything for sure…"
"I do. I know. And I've got to go shut it down." He turned from her, gently releasing himself from her grip.
"What, go to Ohio? Michael!"
He turned back to her at the door, nearly bumping into her. She'd gotten up faster than she had in weeks. He reached for her to steady her, then seemed to truly see her through the haze of his anger for the first time. He curved a hand over her jaw to kiss her, hard. "He will not threaten my family, Sara. Not once. Not ambiguously or outright or any other clever, backhanded way, ever." He looked her as if he could will her to agree with him by force of his fury alone, then repeated, "I'm shutting. It. Down."
It was a six hour drive from Ithaca to Youngstown, but with light traffic and a speedometer edging 90 MPH, Michael made it in four and a half. The warden was not overly glad to see him, but easily intimidated. Michael could have effortlessly shaken him down for information about how, exactly, Jacob Ness had managed to obtain his work email address and then managed to convince the state of Ohio of a need to hire him, but decided that he hadn't come here to prune back an errant hedge. He'd come to pull a weed out by its roots. "I want to see him," he told the warden simply. "Now."
They made a big production out of it, shackling Ness at both the ankles and wrists and locking him behind a mesh box for their visit…all unnecessary, but Michael didn't much care. If they wanted to make him feel like an animal in a cage, so be it.
It interested him how Ness still tried to act like he held the upper hand when he greeted him. "Thought I might get a visitor this week. Kind of wish it would have been a different Scofield, but hey. Beggars can't be choosers."
Indeed. "You and I both know I can make your life a hell of a lot worse than it already is, Jacob."
He smiled, like enjoying an inside joke with himself, just like Michael remembered from countless briefings and meetings in which Ness believed himself to be the smartest man in the room. "Then why don't you?" he said. "Why'd you spring me from T-Bag's cell to set me up in these cushy digs?" He leaned forward as close as he could through his wire box. "Because we both know you're on a leash, and we both know who's holding it."
Michael refused to let him rile him. This pissing match? It wasn't why he was here. "I have no problem admitting my wife is a far better person than me."
"Better person, or conflicted person?"
Michael forced himself to shrug. "Maybe she'll tell you herself sometime. If she ever cares enough to come by. I wouldn't hold your breath, though."
"You sure?"
"You threatened her child. Our. Child. You're done, far as she's concerned."
"And as far as you're concerned?"
"Got an interesting email from the DOC and your warden this week, as you know."
"And?" The smile was back, making Michael's hand itch to slap it off his face. He would, he promised himself. Just not with his hands.
"You know what I told him?"
Jacob continued to smirk.
Michael leaned in close, lowering his voice as though sharing a confession. "I told him to save his money." A muscle in Jacob's jaw twitched, and Michael seized upon this like a carotid artery, exposed. "That's right. You think I'm going to jump to work at your bidding, ever again? You think you're worth that kind of cash? Ha! I said to him, I pass, because you know what, Warden? You don't need me. That notorious inmate of yours? He's not smart enough or talented enough to break out of your super max. I don't worry one damn day about such a laughable possibility and you shouldn't either."
He pushed his chair back, relishing the screeching sound it made scraping across the concrete floor.
"Michael," Jacob taunted, and Michael hated how effectively this simple recall halted him. "You willing to gamble your family's safety like that? Sara's? Mike's? Because no offense, but you don't seem the type."
He spun back to face him. "The way I play your game, Jacob?" He twirled one finger in the air. "Around you in circles? It isn't gambling."
Jacob finally sat back, and shut up. Michael went once more on the offensive. It felt great.
"So here's what you need to know concerning me, Ness. As far as I'm concerned, you get one of these. One. Which you've used. You threaten me again, you threaten anyone I love, and I promise you this: you'll be dead within the day." The smirk tried to return, but not even Ness could quite call it up. "Trust me, I know a guy. I know a lot of guys, all of whom would be happy to do me a favor. So if you put one toe out of line, if you reach out in any way whatsoever to anyone in my family, if someone follows my car just a little too closely, if my kid so much as says someone looked at him funny, you. Are. Dead. And your fancy contacts won't be able to save you, and your second-place brain won't be able to save you, and my wife sure as hell won't save you. So I'm going to assume we understand each other. Unless you need me to repeat myself more slowly, for you to catch on."
This time when he pushed his chair back, the screech was followed by a resounding silence.
Michael made good use of his long commute home, placing several calls in rapid order. He was in possession of a diverse and powerful contact list, and it didn't take long to request several transfers of unsavory yet surprisingly professional hit men to Ohio State Pen, just to keep Ness, as he liked to put it, on a leash. He followed this up with additional calls to replace the warden and a large handful of the prison guards of the max unit. They'd be transferred to other facilities, their incompetence someone else's problem. Lastly, he effectively had every person cc'ed on his email fired from their positions in the Ohio state government or department of corrections. By the time he turned off I-86 in Ithaca, he figured a pretty powerful message had been sent, and decided he didn't hate being in possession of the personal number for the director of the CIA.
When he walked in the front door as causally as if he'd simply been out buying a carton of milk, Sara wrapped her whole body around him, pregnant stomach be damned. "Don't ever do that to me again," she said.
"I won't have to," he answered with certainty. He told her everything, leaving nothing out, from Jacob in the cage right down to their last words, and when he got to the part about firing everyone in contact with him, Sara sat down hard on the couch.
You did what? she asked, sounding slightly faint.
"I said I wasn't going to tolerate it, and I meant it, Sara. No threats. No risks. Never."
"But assassins, Michael?" He studied her face, but there was no hint of sympathy or concern for Jacob there. Only, he realized with a pang, for him. "Bagwell was right, you know. You can't kill. It's a good thing," she added.
"In revenge, maybe not." He hadn't been able to pull the trigger in Gretchen's face, after all, much as he'd wanted to. "But in protection of you?" He placed a hand on her stomach. "Of our children?" He had no doubt. "Absolutely. In cold blood. With my bare hands."
She swallowed hard, and he attempted to lighten the mood. "No hit man necessary, actually, but it just seemed more…convenient." He quirked her a smile.
"The things we actually discuss in this house," she told him, offering him a shaky laugh.
Sara did not remember being this big last time. She felt like a school bus. And had Ithaca ever been so hot? This summer seemed sweltering, like she was stuck in an oven that was somehow also functioning as a steam room. By August, she'd had it.
"I think you look amazing," Michael told her, hands on the curve of her stomach to try to feel the baby kick, which it did, all the freaking time.
"You have to say that," she grumbled.
"You look like you're going to have a basketball, not a baby," Mike observed, "or maybe a whole team of basketballs."
"Basketballs don't have teams," she informed him. "Teams play basketball." Sheesh, maybe they needed to familiarize the kid with a sport other than soccer.
"You're grumpy," he told her.
She sighed. "I know."
She passed a lot of time watching Netflix. Possibly too much, she noted, as she blew through three seasons of her latest guilty pleasure in as many weeks, but Mike was in soccer camp most of the day, and Michael had convinced her to start her maternity leave several weeks before her due date. They were completely prepared for the baby — as if Michael would leave anything to the last minute — so what else was she supposed to do, except catch up on Orange is the New Black? Still, she had the grace to feel embarrassed when Michael caught her watching one afternoon, a huge bowl of popcorn nestled in what remained of her lap.
He grabbed the remote before she could shut off the screen. "Seriously?" he asked her, a smile already twitching on his face. "Women's prison smut?"
"It's not smut, Michael," she defended. "It's gritty realism."
"Yeah? Alright." He sat down with her, grabbing the popcorn bowl. "Let's see how realistic."
She sighed. "If you're trying to ruin this for me, you're forgetting I have more inside knowledge of the women's prison system than you do."
This gave him pause, she could tell. But he just said softly. "I didn't forget."
He watched with her for a while, mildly pointing out all the things portrayed incorrectly. As a consolation prize, he at least rubbed her feet while he was at it. "They're not doing that right," he noted, during a pat down scene at visitation, "nor that," as they watched the line of cooks in the kitchen. But in the very next scene, his eyes went a little wide and his hands stilled on her foot. He had to concede, "Looks likes she's doing that right, though," as they watched a prisoner perform a particularly ahem…smutty…act for a fellow inmate in the showers.
Sara just slid him a look that she hoped conveyed both her irritation and blatant appreciation. "Well, you would know, given you happen to share that particular talent." She bent her leg to tickle his inner thigh with her foot that rested on his knee. He grinned at her wickedly, finally clicking off the TV, but when he pulled her closer to him on the couch, it didn't take long to realize there was absolutely no way to recreate the scene they'd watched around Sara's stubbornly invasive belly.
"Ugh. Be born already," she grumbled at her stomach, as she pulled away from Michael. It was way too hot to even touch another human being, let alone attempt such acrobatics.
"They say sex can initiate labor," Michael observed, apparently not as ready to give up. He rubbed her lower back in long, sweeping arcs. She didn't think it wise to tell him that this massage felt much better than sex right now.
"But it's so much work," she sighed.
"What every husband longs to hear," he chuckled.
"There is one thing you can do," she said, and his hands stilled momentarily.
"Whatever you want," he said roughly, into her ear.
Mmm. This almost persuaded her, but then she thought about how sweaty she did not want to be right now, and shut him down. "Get the baby name book?"
"Oh."
"I would do it, but I don't think I can even move right now."
He gave her a wry smile as he lifted himself off the couch with a kiss to her hot forehead. "Yeah, I got that message loud and clear."
They passed the time until Mike returned from camp debating baby names. They had arrived at a girl name option months ago, but for some reason, a boy name eluded them. The only thing they could agree upon was that nothing sounded exactly right. "It needs to mean something," Sara insisted. "Like Mike's name does."
Michael rolled his eyes. "Well, we can't have a Michael Jr, Jr. It's time to expand our horizons a bit."
A half hour later, she tossed the baby name book aside in frustration. "None of these work."
He read the title where it rested face up on the floor. "But there are 10,000 options in there."
She simply shook her head. Maybe it would be a girl, and they would be saved from this predicament.
The day the name came to her, she'd been mindlessly watching a world news report that flashed a stock image of the Taj Mahal. It reminded her of her time in India, but something else too…something she thought Michael would like. She repeated the name in her head, feeling it out, and then she was certain. It almost scared her, how much she liked this name, because what if Michael didn't feel the same way? She told him her idea that night, whispering it in his ear as they lay together in bed, Michael's hand massaging what they'd decided was the baby's heel through her skin. He slid her a slow smile that warmed her in the first pleasant way in weeks. And then he added a middle name, an equally perfect middle name, and they were decided.
"We're not telling," they both insisted, when anyone asked, which Sara could see was super annoying. She didn't care. They loved this name, and they weren't going to utter this name until the baby was here, and they were all together.
