Her name may have been Eleanor June, but she was born on March 27th. A spring child, wrapped in sunlight instead of the soft June gloom her middle name suggested. Marjorie always said the date didn’t matter — that the name held a rhythm, a warmth, something old-fashioned and lovely. But when I held her for the first time, tiny fingers curling around the tip of my thumb, I couldn’t help but think that nothing about her had been planned. Not the timing, not the wedding, not even the way she arrived two weeks early, impatient to see the world.
Marjorie laughed through the haze of pain and exhaustion, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead as she whispered, “She came when she wanted. Just like her father.”
I rolled my eyes, but she wasn’t wrong.
The nurses had swaddled Eleanor in a pa
