The first three months were the hardest thing I had ever done.
Not because of the marriage. The marriage, improbably, was holding. Marcus was present in a way he had never been before Ava, the kind of present that meant he was the one who got up at two a.m. half the time without being asked, who learned which of her sounds meant hunger and which meant discomfort and which meant she simply wanted company. He was, it turned out, a natural at it. I had not expected that. It moved me more than I could say.
The hard part was myself. Finding out who I was when I was also a mother. Holding the shape of my own ambition alongside a love so large it threatened to crowd everything else out. Learning that wanting things for myself was not in conflict with wanting things for her, that the two could c
