Invisible String

51

It was still dark when I stirred—just barely. The kind of early morning where the world feels like it’s holding its breath. Baylor was curled up in the bassinet beside the bed, making those tiny newborn sighs in his sleep. Mira was sprawled across my legs like a human paperweight, and Lily was asleep on a pillow at the foot of the bed, one arm slung over a stuffed dinosaur she’d brought from home.

I didn’t open my eyes until I felt Travis shift beside me.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand, faint but insistent. He reached over groggily, careful not to jostle Mira. The screen lit his face just enough for me to see the way his expression changed. His eyes widened. Then softened.

“Babe,” he whispered, nudging my shoulder gently. “Tay.”

I mumbled something unintelligible, half-asleep and half-aware. “Mira’s heavy.”

“I know,” he chuckled softly. “But hey… Jason texted.”

That snapped me a little more awake. “What? Is Kylie—?”

“She had the baby,” he said quietly, his voice warm and amazed all at once. “Little boy. Just after five this morning. He’s here.”

I blinked up at him, eyes heavy but filling with tears anyway. “Oh my God. She did it.”

“She did it,” he said, smiling down at the screen again. “Jason said both are doing great. He sent a picture too.”

He turned the phone toward me. I lifted my head just enough to look—there he was. Tiny, pink, wrapped in a blue-striped blanket with a full head of dark hair and Jason’s nose. Kylie was smiling in the background, hair messy, eyes exhausted and glowing.

“Look at him,” I whispered. “He’s perfect.”

Travis grinned and leaned down, kissing the side of my head. “Another cousin. Mira and Baylor are gonna have so much chaos to join.”

I glanced down at the pile of sleeping children sprawled across our borrowed bed and snorted. “As if there wasn’t enough already.”

He set the phone back down and laid back beside me, one arm reaching across the tangle of our life to rest on my hip.

“Seven kids yesterday,” he murmured. “Now eight.”

I let my head rest against his chest, the first flickers of sunlight creeping through the curtains. “We better start training for the holidays now.”

He laughed, low and soft. “We’re gonna need more coffee.”

And then we laid there—just for a few more minutes—in the calm before the house woke up again, holding on to the peace of a new life and the beautiful mess we already had.

Ten minutes later, the sun was barely up, and our bedroom had transformed into a mini wrestling ring of morning chaos.

Mira was already on the floor, crawling at top speed with a pacifier dangling from her mouth and one sock on. Baylor was fussing in my arms, making that newborn “I’m about to lose it” warning sound, and Lily was twirling in the corner in a tutu she did not go to bed wearing.

Meanwhile, Wyatt, Bennett, Finnley, and Elliott were trailing into the room in varying states of bedhead and confusion.

“Girls,” Travis said, raising his voice just slightly over the noise as he bent down to scoop Mira up before she could crawl under the dresser again. “Hey—can we all sit down for a sec? We’ve got some big news.”

“We already know you’re tired,” Finnley offered, climbing up onto the foot of the bed and nearly stepping on Lily’s dinosaur.

“Bigger than that,” I said, sitting down carefully with Baylor in one arm and patting the space next to me. “Come on, everyone. Couch meeting. Bedroom floor meeting. Whatever works—just sitting.”