Chapter 7 - Every Baby Deserves a Person
Four months later, Noah Miller left St. Catherine's Hospital.
Rebecca carried him through the NICU doors.
He weighed nearly eight pounds.
Sebastian walked beside her carrying approximately forty pounds of unnecessary baby supplies.
I looked at the bags.
“What happened to travelling light?”
“He needs things.”
“He needs diapers.”
“He may also need six blankets.”
“Six?”
“Different temperatures.”
Rebecca laughed.
“He bought a bottle warmer for my car.”
Sebastian frowned.
“It's useful.”
“I don't own a car.”
He paused.
“That presents a problem.”
“No, Sebastian.”
“I said nothing.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
Outside, reporters had gathered.
News of Sebastian's involvement had eventually leaked.
Rebecca stopped.
“I can't go through that.”
Sebastian looked at Marco.
“Clear another exit.”
“No.”
Rebecca surprised us.
She adjusted Noah's blanket.
“I've spent enough time running.”
We walked through the main entrance.
Questions erupted.
“Mr. Moretti!”
“Is the baby yours?”
“Are you adopting him?”
“What's your relationship with Ms. Miller?”
Sebastian stopped.
I whispered, “Bad idea.”
“Probably.”
He turned toward the cameras.
“Noah isn't my son.”
Rebecca stood beside him.
“He has a mother.”
The reporters quieted.
Sebastian continued.
“Seventeen years ago, my premature sister died in a hospital like this one.”
His fingers tightened around something in his pocket.
“I spent years believing the worst thing that happened was losing her.”
He looked at Rebecca.
“I was wrong.”
“The worst thing would have been forgetting what she taught me.”
A reporter called out.
“What was that?”
Sebastian looked back through the hospital doors.
“That every baby deserves a person.”
Six months later, the Moretti Foundation opened the Lucia Program.
Not a private charity for Sebastian's friends.
A fully audited partnership providing temporary housing, transportation, childcare assistance, counseling, and support for families with premature infants.
Vittorio resigned from the foundation board.
Sebastian never publicly discussed why.
Rebecca found an apartment.
She returned to work.
Noah grew.
And Sebastian kept volunteering.
Every Tuesday.
Seven-thirty.
One morning, I found him holding Noah in the hospital garden while Rebecca attended a support-group meeting.
Noah grabbed Sebastian's collar.
“Careful,” Sebastian told him.
Noah pulled harder.
“He doesn't respect you,” I said.
“Nobody around here does.”
“Tragic.”
Sebastian looked at me.
“You started it.”
I sat beside him.
Then I noticed something.
His wrist.
Bare.
“You took it off.”
He nodded.
“Where's Lucia's bracelet?”
Sebastian looked toward the hospital garden.
Beneath a young magnolia tree was a small memorial plaque.
LUCIA MORETTI
11 DAYS OF LIFE.
17 YEARS OF LOVE.
“I buried it beneath the tree.”
I looked at him.
“You finally let her go?”
“No.”
He watched Noah trying to grab his tattooed hand.
“I finally understood I didn't have to.”
Rebecca came outside.
Noah immediately reached toward her.
Sebastian smiled and handed him over.
“There's your person.”
Rebecca kissed her son's forehead.
Then she looked at Sebastian.
“He has more than one.”
Sebastian said nothing.
For once, the man newspapers had spent years describing as cold, ruthless, and untouchable couldn't hide what he felt.
Noah reached back toward him.
Sebastian offered one finger.
The little boy grabbed it.
Exactly as he had on their first morning together.
I smiled.
“You know what Lucia would probably say?”
Sebastian looked at me.
“What?”
“That seventeen years is a ridiculous amount of time to keep a promise to an eleven-day-old baby.”
He laughed.
A genuine laugh.
Then he looked down at Noah.
“Maybe.”
His expression softened.
“But I kept it.”
And he had.
Not by saving the baby he had lost.
Not by replacing her.
But by making sure that when another frightened mother believed poverty meant she had to give up her child, someone stood beside her.
By making sure an abandoned incubator never stayed lonely simply because nobody knew the baby's name.
And by finally understanding the promise he'd made at twenty-two.
He had told Lucia:
If you can't stay, I will.
Seventeen years later, Sebastian Moretti was still there.
Only now—
May you like
he wasn't staying because he couldn't forgive himself for the baby who died.
He was staying for the babies who lived.
