My dearest Jacob –

It feels weird to finally have a name in my mind as I write to you, even an image, as indistinct as it may be. I hope you’ll look like your father. You’ll be a heartbreaker if you do. If I’m very lucky, I’ll get to see it for myself.

Today was the first time that I could tell that you’re a boy on the sonogram. I don’t think your father figured it out. He always looks at the screen like he can’t quite believe that it’s real – that you are real. I doubt he’ll really believe until he holds you in his arms. I hope I’ll be there to see that, too.

He’s the one who chose your name. I didn’t ask, but I think there’s a story there. Maybe you’ll ask him, some day. I had picked Angela if you had turned out to be a girl. It was my grandmother’s name.

Boy or girl, I really had no preference, and neither did Andrew – or at least that’s what he says, but I know him enough to believe him. We hoped and waited for you for such a long time that, as long as you are healthy, nothing else matters. And as far as I can tell, you are healthy. A perfect little boy. Our perfect little boy.

It hurts so much to think I might not get to meet you.

I’ve said it many times through this journal and I’ll say it many times still. If something happens to me, do NOT blame yourself. You didn’t choose to be born, didn’t choose your parents or agree to the magic I had to use to bring you to us. Anything that happens to me was by my own hand and choice. No one knows, not even your father, what the risks are. My choice, and one I would make a hundred, a thousand times, as long as you come to this world healthy, and you will, I am sure of it.

The last time I wrote in this journal, I said I would tell you about meeting your father, so here we go.

The very first time I saw him, we were in a magic shop. There was something about him that caught my attention right away and drew me to him. I wasn’t finished browsing, but he was already at the counter, so I grabbed the first book that fell under my hand and went to stand in line behind him. That was when I realized what he was. I had met a few vampires before, I even worked with one at the lab, and I always feel something when I’m close to a vampire, some kind of energy that raises the hair at the back of my neck. I’ve never known anyone else who had the same ‘warning’ sense, but over the years I figured out that it was linked to my magic abilities. Vampires were created from magic, long ago, a little like you were, and I can feel that somehow.

Once I knew why he had caught my attention, what intrigued me was what he was buying in that shop: supplies that I recognized as the ingredients needed to revoke a vampire’s invitation from a home. What could a vampire possibly want to do with that, I wondered. I almost worked up the courage to ask, but already the clerk had rung up his purchase. He smiled at me on his way out. I doubt you care to know about that, but he really has a lovely smile. I hope you get that from him, too.

I watched him leave, and I promised myself that if I ever saw him again, I’d ask why he needed these magic supplies. When we met again, I did ask. I try not to break my promises, especially the ones I make to myself. If you get anything from me, I hope it’ll be that.

One last thing for today. I don’t know if I believe in fate. Some days, I think I do, and at other times I feel stupid for thinking about it. But the magic book I bought almost by accident the day I met your father was the very same book that gave me the final clue on how to bring you into our lives.