Mike Armstrong used to think happiness would feel louder. He had imagined it as something obvious—celebratory, unmistakable. Fireworks. Big moments. Proof that life had finally tilted in his favor. But when Maxine was born, happiness arrived differently. It settled. It stayed. It breathed. She was small, pink, and impossibly warm against his chest.
Mike remembered the weight of her that first night, how afraid he’d been to shift even an inch, terrified he might do something wrong just by existing too close to her. Carrie had watched him from the hospital bed, exhausted and smiling through tears, and whispered, “You can breathe. She’s not made of glass.” But she felt like it. Maxine was everything they had waited for.