They had been married for three years. They'd met at a friend's Halloween party where he'd been dressed as a mortgage—a cardboard box with "30-YR FIXED" written on it in Sharpie—and she'd been dressed as a lighthouse, and he'd said, "Thank God, I've been lost all night," and it was so bad that she'd laughed for a full minute. He was the first man she'd dated who called when he said he would. He had cried at their wedding. He had cried at the twelve-week ultrasound, real tears, gripping her hand so hard her ring cut into her finger.
"Did you look at the stuff?" he asked.
"What stuff?"
"The insurance thing. I left it on the desk. You just have to initial where the flags are. And there's the updated beneficiary form, and Mom—your mom, I mean—said she'd stamp it today so we don't have to drive over to the branch."
"Today? It's the shower."
"It'll take two minutes. She brought her kit." He kissed her ear. "I just want it done before the baby. You know how I get. I want everything buttoned up. If something happened to me—"
"Nothing's going to happen to you."
"If something happened to me," he said, "I want you and her taken care of. That's all."
That was the thing about Grant. He said things like that, and meant them, and it made her feel like a monster for being tired of signing things. Since April it had been a steady drizzle of paper: the life insurance policy, the updated will, the advance healthcare directive, a durable power of attorney "in case you're out of it after delivery and someone needs to deal with the bank." Every few weeks there was another stack on the desk in the den with little yellow arrow flags sticking out of it like the feathers of some bureaucratic bird. Her mother had notarized most of them. Diane would come by after work in her credit union blazer, set her black zippered case on the dining table, and open her journal, and Nora would sign where the flags were while Grant explained what each page was in his calm loan-officer voice, and Diane would press her stamp and write in her slanting hand, and sometimes the three of them would have dinner afterward, and it had felt like being cared for. It had felt like the adults were handling things.
"After the party," Nora said.
"Sure. After the party."
He kissed her again and went back out. Through the window she watched him cross the yard. Her mother was on the stepladder now, hanging the last lantern from the lowest branch of the lemon tree, and Grant reached up without a word and steadied the ladder with one hand, and Diane looked down at him and said something Nora couldn't hear.
He had not come to hold the ladder for her.