Elara arrived as soon as she
Fiona saw her mother before Elara saw her. A cab pulling up at the far end of the drop-off zone, the door opening before it had fully stopped, Elara stepping out with the focused urgency of a woman who had not waited to find her good coat and was wearing the older one she kept by the door for emergencies. That detail, the emergency coat rather than the good one, landed somewhere in Fiona's chest with a warmth she had not expected to feel in this moment.
Elara crossed the pavement and reached her and took both her hands and looked at her face with the comprehensive, assessing look of a mother checking her child for damage.
"Are you alright?" she said. "The baby?"
"Fine," Fiona said. "Both of us. The appointment was good before it happened."
