Evelyn had added, She will thank you eventually.
I stood in my kitchen with a damp cloth in one hand and felt something colder than embarrassment settle inside me.
Piper appeared in the doorway wearing her purple pajamas.
“Mom?”
I locked the tablet and turned it facedown.
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
She twisted one pajama sleeve around her wrist. “Is your body bad now?”
The question nearly broke me.
I crouched carefully so we were eye to eye.
“No. My body is healing. Healing and bad are not the same thing.”
“Aunt Tessa made it sound bad.”
“Aunt Tessa was wrong.”
Piper studied my face. “Dad laughed.”
“Yes,” I said, because I would not teach my daughter to pretend she had not seen what she had seen. “He was wrong too.”
I tucked her back into bed, fed Owen at midnight, Nora at twelve-twenty, and Eli at twelve-forty-five. Grant slept through all three alarms.
At 8:00 Monday morning, the doorbell rang.
I opened the door expecting a package.
A woman in black athletic clothes stood on the porch beside a rolling photography case. She held a tablet with the ForgeWell logo across the screen.
“Laurel?” she asked brightly. “I’m Hannah, your transformation coach.”
Behind her, a photographer lifted two folded studio lights from the trunk of a car.
Hannah smiled.
“Your husband said we should start with the before pictures while the babies are sleeping.”
PART 2 — THE GIFT
I did not let them cross the doorway.
“There won’t be any pictures,” I said.
Hannah’s smile disappeared. “I’m sorry?”
“I didn’t schedule this. I didn’t hire you, and I did not agree to be photographed.”
The photographer stopped halfway up the walk.
Hannah looked at her tablet, then back at me. She was probably in her early thirties. There was nothing mocking in her face now—only confusion.
“I have a signed enrollment and media consent,” she said. “The notes say your husband arranged the timing because this was a surprise gift.”
“The surprise is that I know nothing about it.”
Nora began fussing in the living room. Hannah heard her and lowered her voice.
