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I replied No photos unless Wren says.

He came back with Fair.

Handful, the clown, sent eleven bird GIFs.

I’d thought about taking a gift. But turning up with something felt too much like trying to buy my way through a door Wren had barely opened.

The only thing I had for Sparrow was the onesie Wren had ordered a year ago. It was folded in the bedside drawer at the cottage, exactly as it had arrived. That wasn’t a gift. It was proof of everything I’d missed.

I closed the drawer.

At two twenty, my phone pinged.

Handful. Stop staring at your phone and go meet your baby girl.

I read it twice and took a deep breath. It took me a second to recognise the feeling tightening my chest. I was nervous.

I’d gone into the boathouse on Monday with every word lined up. I knew what I needed to say to Wren, even if she never forgave me for any of it. I had no idea what to say to my daughter. Would she let me hold her? Would Wren let me hold her? Would she cry the second Wren handed her over? Would she like me?

I put my phone in my pocket and headed for the boathouse. At three exactly, I knocked on the door.

Nick let me in without a word. He led me into the meeting room. A long table took up one side. On the other was a play mat, a baby seat and a basket of toys under the window. Two armchairs stood beside the mat.

Robin and Simon were in the main room. Moff sat at the long bench, while Dion and Nick stood over an open toolbox neither of them was looking at. They’d given Wren the privacy she’d asked for without going far.

Wren was in the chair on the far side with her back to the window and the baby in the crook of her arm, and she looked up when I came in.

For one second, I couldn’t move.

Wren and Sparrow. My whole life in one chair, and I had no claim on either of them.

“Sit down,” she said.

I sat but I kept my eyes on Wren, even with my daughter cradled against her chest. I wanted to look at Sparrow. Fuck, I wanted to. But Wren had carried her, given birth to her and raised her without one hour of help from me. She deserved more than me walking in and looking straight past her to our daughter.

She held my gaze. Something in her expression softened. “You can look at her, Seb,” Wren said.

Only then did I let myself look at my daughter. She was in a green outfit with a bird on it, and she had a fist against her mouth. She had black hair. A full head of it.

She had my hair.

I don’t know why the hair undid me. Of everything I’d imagined over the last year, it had never occurred to me that she’d have mine.

“She was born with a full head of it,” Wren said.

“Hey, Sparrow.” My voice came out rough.

Her head turned toward the unfamiliar voice. She found my face across the room and held my gaze. She didn’t smile or cry. She studied me. I had braced for her to be frightened of me. I’d thought about it at four in the morning more than once—a stranger coming into the room, the noise, the size of me.

But she wasn’t frightened. She’d spent every day of her life surrounded by Robin and his crew. Five men built like me were already part of her world. My size was nothing new to her. But I was a new voice and she seemed intrigued by that.

Sparrow broke the silence. Her arms started waving and she let out a string of happy sounds that made Wren smile.

“Someone has plenty to say today.” Wren stood and came toward me. “Sparrow, this is your daddy.”

My head came up sharply.

Wren shrugged. “What? It’s a fact.”