Mallards live on the brook. They quack and swim loudly away when Charlie eagerly approaches. The river is windswept. The buds, reddening. The woods are full of broken, open-faced things, like this cracked branch. Twenty-one years ago tonight, I climbed into bed unaware that the next day would be THE day my daughter, my third baby, my last, to be born. The four of us slept soundly in the house that would soon be hers to come home to. We wanted to be five of us under the same roof.