On the second night, I told him about the name.

It was late. Rachel had gone home to shower and sleep. Daniel was asleep in the chair in the corner, with his head tipped back and his mouth open.

“I picked a name,” I whispered to my father. “For the baby. I know what I want to call her. I haven’t even told Daniel yet. We keep going back and forth, and every time we make a list, we don’t agree on anything. But I know. I’ve known for weeks.”

I squeezed his hand.

“And I’m not telling you until you wake up,” I said. “So you’d better wake up. Because you’re going to want to hear this one.”

On the third morning, his eyes opened.

I was half asleep in the chair with my head on the edge of his bed. Something moved under my cheek. His fingers.

I sat up so fast I knocked over a cup of water.

He was looking at me. His eyes were blurry and red. But he was looking right at me.

“Dad?”

He opened his mouth. It took him a few tries. His voice was a dry little scratch.

“You look terrible,” he whispered.

I started laughing and crying at the same time.

“Nice to see you, too,” I said.

He managed a smile. A small crooked one, just one corner of his mouth.

I ran into the hallway and shouted for the nurse.

By the next afternoon, he was complaining about the coffee.

“It tastes like somebody boiled a sock,” he told the nurse. “A dirty sock. A sock from a gym.”

The nurse, a young guy named Marcus, laughed. “I’ll tell the kitchen you said so, Mr. Reyes.”

“Tell them I said they should be ashamed.”

Rachel sat on the other side of the bed with her arms crossed, shaking her head. But she was smiling. It was the first time I’d seen her smile in four days.

“He’s back,” she said to me. “God help us all. He’s back.”

The doctors said he’d need weeks of rest and then cardiac rehab. A new diet. No more lifting forty-pound bags of soil. No more working in the yard in the middle of the afternoon in July.

Dad listened to all of it with the face of a man who had no intention of following a single rule.

That evening, he asked Rachel and Daniel to give us a minute.

When they’d left, he patted the bed beside him. I sat down carefully, because my back hurt and my belly made everything awkward.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m awake. What’s her name?”

I shook my head.

“Not yet.”

“Hannah. You promised.”

“I said I’d tell you when you woke up,” I said. “I didn’t say when you woke up the first time. I want to tell you in person, with her here. When you can hold her.”

He squinted at me.

“That’s cheating.”

“You taught me how to cheat at Monopoly,” I said. “This is your fault.”

He laughed. Then he winced and put his hand on his chest, and I panicked, and he waved me off.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fine. Listen to me.”

He took my hand.

“Go home,” he said.

“Dad…”

“Go home, Hannah. I’m going to be fine. Rachel’s here. Your Aunt Lupe’s driving in tomorrow from Tucson. I’ll have more women fussing over me than I know what to do with.” He squeezed my fingers. “You’ve got somebody else to worry about now.”

“I want to stay.”

“I know you do,” he said. “But I don’t want you having that baby in Arizona. All your stuff is in Chicago. Your doctor’s in Chicago. Go home.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Promise me something,” he said.

“What?”

“Promise me you’ll come back,” he said. “With my granddaughter. As soon as the doctors say you can. And you’ll put her in my arms in my backyard, next to the tomatoes. And then you’ll tell me her name.”

I looked at him for a long time.

“I promise,” I said.