It was well past midnight, the hospital finally settling into its quiet overnight rhythm, family visits concluded and Sterling dozing uncomfortably in the chair beside her bed, that Ivy lay awake watching their daughter sleep in the small bassinet beside her, unable to fully close her own exhausted eyes against the sheer, overwhelming reality of everything that had finally, fully arrived.

A year ago, she'd been buffing a marble floor at two in the morning, terrified about her mother's medical bills, entirely unaware that a rude, exhausted stranger stepping around her wet floor sign was about to reshape every single piece of her life. Now she lay in a hospital...