It was storming the day she was born. At least, that's the way that Lainey's mother, Rebekah, always tells it. It always starts the same way, her mother heaves a sigh (exaggerated and playful), and says in a tone that pretends to be disinterested in telling this story for the thousandth time...

"It was such an ugly day. It had done nothing for two whole days beforehand but be the kind of hot that meant if you took a shower, the second you stepped out you'd be covered in a film of heavy air and sticky sweat all over again. It was like swimming through a solid block of hot. It was the kind of heat that glimmered in the air over the scorching hot asphalt. It was so miserable that everyone just lay in a puddle of flesh, unable or unwilling to move. And I was four days overdue. There's something about being four days overdue in the middle of a heatwave that just feels like the most unfair thing in the universe."

She always pretends to give a scathing look to Lainey then, but she's already trying not to laugh. This whole show has gone on as long as Lainey's been alive, as far as she knows, and she adores it.

"I had just about given up on the idea of you ever coming, at least without some serious medical intervention, and about the time I was starting to feel real pathetic, there was a shift to the air. A slight coolness to the breeze that you could almost convince yourself was your imagination. It wasn't, though. That breeze turned cooler, and the sky went dark in what seemed like no time at all. Then the rumbles of thunder started. I was so relieved that we were getting a break in the heat that my whole body relaxed in that way where all of your bones feel loose."

She always stops there and lets her body flop a little, like a ragdoll, which always makes Lainey laugh. By now they're usually both starting to, because they both know where this story goes. It's a little like a well-loved storybook, read over and over until the pages start to turn colors from the passage of time.

"I had maybe five minutes of relief before the first big contraction hit. Now, I'd been having little ones for weeks now, and they'd done exactly zero to progress things but this one just felt different. I waited to see if it was going to happen again. Five minutes, ten, fifteen... We'd gone about seventeen minutes when the next one hit, and I felt it start to build as another roll of thunder practically shook the house. It was one of those storms that had the threat of a tornado behind it, and when the emergency alert started across the TV, I actually rolled my eyes. Leave it to one of my kids to decide the moment there was a tornado threat, they were ready to show themselves. I couldn't even pretend to be surprised. Millie had been born with fireworks, Ace was born after a night of pizza and poker... why not have one in the middle of a storm? Bring it on."

Now they're both laughing. Rebekah Tapper is a tough cookie. That's what Gram always says, and she's right. It's a trait Rebekah has passed down to her kids.

"Of course, it could just as easily have been a false alarm. The day before when I'd gone to see the OB/GYN she'd told me that she'd had one woman who had gone three weeks overdue. The contractions might fade out as quickly as they came on. Maybe the storm would pass and you'd decide you were quite comfortable in there, thank you, and that you would just stay there. I was ready to evict you if you tried, but life has a way of being that kind of a pain in the ass. Over the next hour, the storm kept building. It was doing that whole backbuilding thing, where it was like it had stalled over the county, just getting bigger and bigger like it was doing a big deep inhale, waiting to let loose of everything in one big whoop of a storm. There had been reports of small funnel clouds, barely touching down in fields along the highway, too!

When the storm finally did break, and the rain poured down in buckets, I felt wet, too. I was inside, though, so that wasn't normal. It took me a minute or so to realize what had actually happened, and I reached for the phone to call your Dad at work. He could barely hear me, and I had to raise my voice louder and louder before he finally got the picture. He's lucky he's so handsome or I'd never put up with him."

She loves knowing her parents still love each other so much. That when Rebekah says things like that, she smiles that soft, secret smile that says so much in such a small movement of her mouth. Geoff usually reaches over to gently tug a lock of her hair when she teases him, and it makes Lainey bubble up inside to know that in a world that can be ugly, there is such beauty in the love her family shares with each other freely. It's something she's made sure echoes in her own life, in the family she's built.

"So here I was, in the house with two kids, with another on the way, in the middle of a storm that was creating tornadoes in neighboring towns, in actual labor and suddenly there was too much to do and no time to do any of it. I needed to call your Nanny to get her to come get Millie and Ace, I needed to be sure I had everything for the hospital, I needed to pause every eight minutes or so to have a contraction. It was all overwhelming. You'd think in the four days I'd been overdue I would have done better planning, but apparently I thought I'd have it together enough. I did not have it together. At all. When your Dad walked in the door from work, I was sitting in the same spot I'd called him from, crying."

By now she's really laughing, and Lainey laughs harder. It's hard to believe someone as put together as her Mom would have been in such a state, but Geoff always confirms it, nodding and grinning. "She was. I had to call Nanny and Gram, pick up the bag for the hospital, remember to bring two pillows from the bed, and get the other two kids to the car so we could drop them off on the way through. I left your Mom to just take care of herself, but that was too much at the time, too. She was crying harder by the time I came back in from putting Mil and Ace into the car and I was starting to get really worried."

It's only in hindsight that it's funny, of course. Lainey can only imagine how he must have felt that day. The spike of fear that must have gone through him.

"And of course, that's when the sirens outside started going off. I was sure I was about to have this baby in the middle of a goddamn tornado. Your Dad helped me up and very gently guided me to the car. It took us twenty-five minutes to get to the hospital. About fourteen of that was dropping the older kids off and telling Nanny we'd call her later. When we left her house, I realized things were about to be bad. I looked at your Dad and said 'Drive fast' and I must have had a look on my face because he got us to the hospital in ten minutes. That should have been an almost twenty minute trip. It was so bad by the time we got there that I was holding myself up above the seat with my elbows on the armrest and the door, because I was in so much pain that any pressure against that area was absolutely not happening. And there was a very real possibility that I might reach down and feel the top of your head. It was insanity how fast it was happening, once it got started."

She knows this story so well. She knows the siren was going and her Mom was hovering over the seat and there was a man at the ER door who was picking up his wife, who was walking out so slowly, and how her Dad had pulled up behind him, practically bouncing in the driver's seat, pleading for him to move.

"And this woman, coming out of the ER, she was so slow. I couldn't stand it, so I opened the door and started trying to get out, but another contraction hit, and I almost fell, and your daddy started honking the horn to try to get people's attention, and I was holding onto the door, trying to stay upright and all I could picture was sliding under the car and having you right there."

Geoff cuts in then, always. "I threw the car into park and ran into the ER, yelling that my wife was having a baby in the parking lot," he says, shaking his head. "It felt like nobody moved for a full minute, but it couldn't have been more than a few seconds, and then three people went running outside, but all they took was a wheelchair, no bed!"

"They did. And they tried putting me into that stupid chair six times before I yelled that they could walk me in or they could put their hands out and catch! Which is how I wound up between two nurses, practically being carried in. We'd barely gotten into the door when another contraction hit, and I knew. I just knew. The TV anchor was talking about tornadoes touching down in the city, and you were not waiting. Not a single second more. Somehow, they got me up on a bed, and into the ER hallway, and there you were. I didn't even have to push! Just, oh look, a baby."

"I always have liked making an entrance," Lainey teases, and her dad reaches over to ruffle her hair, always saying something that ends with her baby nickname ("Stormy," he says, his voice full of love, and she flaps her hand at him, as if brushing it off, but some part of her chest feels like it's filled with light). "Daaaaad," she moans, flopping back against the chair, "stop."

There's more to the story, of course, like how the main lights in the hospital went off with the storm, and how a tree on their street was uprooted, but the parts she's always begged to hear over and over again are all there in the laughter and the storm and the way her Dad musses her hair a little. It's in the familiarity of well-loved refrains and the looks between her parents, and she smiles to herself every time. Someday, these stories won't be told by the same voices, but she'll never forget the way they are now.