She went to the doctor alone, in the early mornings, before work, using her mother's maiden name, paying in cash, sitting in waiting rooms full of women who were openly pregnant, who wore their bellies proudly, who talked about names and nurseries and husbands who held their hands, and Mia sat among them, in her black coat, with her ring on a chain beneath her collar, and she felt, at once, both a part of them and apart from them, a mother among mothers, and a secret among secrets, and when the doctor, a kind woman with grey hair, asked her, gently, "And the father, dear, is he here? Is he supportive? Is he kind?" Mia said, "Yes, he is kind, he is just afraid," and the doctor nodded, as if she had heard that answer many times before, and said, "Fear is not cruelty, my dear, but fear that keeps a woman hiding is not protection, either. A baby needs a mother who is safe, and a mother who is safe needs a life that is honest. Think about that, when you go home tonight, and think about what you will tell your child, one day, about why you hid." Mia thought about it, every night, in the dark, with her hand on her belly, feeling the baby kick, feeling the baby settle, feeling the baby ask, in the wordless way babies ask, "Mummy, who am I? And why can no one see me?" And Mia did not have an answer, and she was afraid to find one, and she was more afraid not to find one, and she touched the ring beneath her collar, and she whispered, to the baby, to herself, to the darkness, "Soon, my love, soon, your father will tell them, and then we will not have to hide, I promise, I promise, soon," and soon, like tomorrow, became a word that meant nothing, and a word that meant everything, all at the same time.
She kept her nursing prospectus, too, in the drawer beside her bed, under a pile of old scarves, folded and refolded so many times that the creases were soft, and a letter, not of acceptance, but of a course she had once been offered and had turned down, a course she had dreamed of taking, a course she still dreamed of taking, when the baby was older, when things were better, when she was not so tired, and she looked at it, sometimes, late at night, when Luca was asleep, and she imagined herself in a nurse's uniform, with a badge, walking hospital corridors, telling frightened patients that everything would be all right, and meaning it, and she imagined her daughter, years from now, asking her, "Mummy, what did you do before you were a nurse?" And Mia imagined answering, honestly, "I served dinners, my love, and I hid, and I learned, the hard way, that hiding hurts, and that telling the truth, however late, is the only way to live, and that is why I became a nurse, so that I could help other people tell the truth, and so that I could help them live in the open, the way I learned to, the way you taught me to, by being born, and by being loved, openly, in the light."
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Luca had not always been a man who hid the truth, and he had not always been a man who let fear make his decisions for him. He had grown up in a house where truth was a luxury his father could not afford, where his father, a hard, ambitious man who had built an empire from nothing, believed that a son's duty was to obey, and that a man's feelings were a weakness to be hidden, and that marriage was a business, not a choice. Luca had been taught, from childhood, to smile at dinners, to shake hands, to sign papers, to be the son his father needed, and he had done it, for years, because he loved his father, and because he was afraid of disappointing him, and because he told himself that duty was a kind of love, and that love, real love, would come later, after the business was safe, after the family was safe, after everything was safe, and he had believed that, until he met Mia, and until he understood, suddenly and completely, that safety bought with a lie is not safety at all, it is a prison, and that he had been living in it for so long he had forgotten what fresh air felt like.