All She Ever Wanted by Rosalind Noonan Page A

sang along under his breath with the radio, allowing himself to feel a little happy. It was the end of the week, his last meeting had gone well, and he and Chelsea had their first dinner date in a long time.
    Man, he needed a night out. They both did.
    The past few months had been hell for Chelsea, he knew that, but he also knew things would get better soon. Well, he hoped so.
    Chelsea had gotten a double whammy, losing her mom and then going through a difficult C-section just days later. And because of the baby coming, Chelsea wasn’t allowed to fly down to Florida for the funeral. The timing had been terrible.
    Judith’s death had cast a shadow over their baby’s birth—at least for Chelsea. From the outside looking in, Leo could see that without being swept away by the feelings that had overcome his wife. Emotional grief from losing her mother and physical shock and pain from the surgery. If depression was a churning river, Chelsea had slipped in around the time of their baby’s birth and she was still struggling against the current.
    And here I am, kneeling at the edge of the river, clutching her hand to keep her from being swept away.
    He wouldn’t give up. He kept trying to pull her out. But honestly, he had thought they would have made some progress by now. Three whole months. People lost their parents, and time healed those wounds, right? And the doctor said her body was fully recovered from the C-section. But still, whenever Leo was around, she sat in the corner of the couch, curled in a ball. Tuned out, checked out . . . sometimes emotionally vacant. When she cried, she couldn’t tell him what had set her off.
    This was not the girl he had married. He had fallen in love with a capable, fast-talking dynamo of energy. Full of life and ideas and dreams and hopes . . . that was the thing. Chelsea’s beautiful blue eyes had lost that glimmer of hope.
    Sometimes, when he talked about news from the office or possible renovations to their house, she perked up. She would lift her head from the sofa and speak and even fire back ideas at him. Traces of the old Chelsea made him wonder if it had been a mistake to let her give up her job at the magazine to be a full-time mom, but when Chelsea made that decision there’d been no arguing with her. “A baby needs full-time care the first year of its life,” she had told Leo, “and I’m not going to let someone else step in and do that for us. I’m the DIY Girl, right? I’m going to be home for our baby.”
    Her decision had appealed to the part of him that loved old traditions. His mom had been at home for him and his siblings, and though he’d resented her meddling at times, in the long run he knew that her watchful eye and guidance had kept them all on the right path.
    He wanted the same for his daughter . . . but somehow it wasn’t working out that way. Right now, Chelsea wasn’t there for anyone. Not for him or for Annabee. Her aloofness had pressed him to spend more time cuddling and cajoling little Lady Baldy. He and the baby had bonded in a way that surprised him, but he hated seeing Chelsea watching them from the outside. It tore him up to see her crying, and it really annoyed him when she said there was nothing wrong.
    But he was past annoyance now.
    He had moved into action phase, pressing her to reach out for help, and finally, Chelsea was there, too.
    She had made an appointment with her doctor. Today was the day, and from talking with Emma he was pretty sure his wife would be starting on antidepressants. “Postpartum depression,” Emma had called it. He didn’t know much about women’s things, but he was glad it had a name and a cure. Medication and maybe some counseling. Once Chelsea figured it out, she would be all over it, driving across town to therapy and setting her phone alarm to remember her medication.
    Or at least that was the way Chelsea used to be, before the baby.
    He