You Will Be Home.

“She’s coming soon,” Abigail told Jon as she slipped on her pajamas and slid into bed. “I can just feel it.”

Jon walked in through the bedroom door, closing it behind him with a quiet click. His footsteps approached the bed and made small patting sounds before he tumbled in softly in beside his wife.

Abigail had her hands around her stomach, holding it gently. Jon watched as she traced the protruding curve with her fingertips, the way her nightgown fell over the arc that jutted upwards toward the ceiling. He merely watched as she took his hand and placed it right on top of sheathed life; he didn’t quite understand it how his instincts led him to place both on the mound, or even how he felt like there was this peace building in his chest when he remembered that his daughter was only inches away from him.

He looked up at Abigail; she was staring back at him, smiling with this kindness that cried out of her eyes, invisible to everyone else but he. And it was then that he knew, for whatever reason it was, that he had made the right decision to have a child.

“Hey, little girl,” he murmured, speaking quietly. He leaned down toward Abigail’s belly. “I can’t wait to see you.”

Abigail placed her hand on top of Jon’s, firmly holding down on her stomach.

“Are you excited to see us?” she cooed.

Jon glanced back up at her, then leaned over so that he was just inches away from her. He hovered over her for a moment, though it was only a moment before he collapsed and caught her lips in his. He held them; delicate and supple. And she brought one hand up to hold his cheek, and he held his up to cup her neck. It was naiveté and romanticism and innocence all at once; it was love.

When the two parted, Jon didn’t turn out the light. He left it on, choosing instead to bury his head in the crook of Abigail’s neck. They each had a hand on her stomach, resting in a silence that engulfed their entire home that night in the middle of July. And things were warm and calm and content.

“I’m nervous about the pregnancy,” Abigail confessed.

“The pain won’t be ask bad as you think it will be,” Jon told her in consolation, “and it won’t last forever.”

“Not about the pain, Jon,” she told him, her voice diminishing quickly into a whisper. She gulped quietly. “I mean, what if something goes wrong?”

Jon sighed; he rubbed her stomach, careful and aware that the pregnancy could always go wrong, and when the time came, she might have to have a cesarean section. Or, what Jon was sure Abigail was most afraid of, the possibility of stillbirth.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he told her, kissing her once upon her jaw line.

She bent her head down and rested it on his own. They were quiet again, and for the final time that night they held each other and wondered of the birth of their first child.

Jon turned off the light and wrapped his arms around Abigail; his fingertips met at the crest of her stomach. They drifted into the darkness of dreams like snow, and they melted in the reflection of stars on their windowpane. They laid in bed for hours, sleeping off their worries and inhibitions of possible pregnancy failure, of trouble and vague tension amongst Jon’s band. It floated with their snow and leaked out the open window and flew off into the sky on the wind.

And everything just snapped when Jon was shook awake by a frantic Abigail.

“Jon,” she whispered fervently, “I think my water just broke.”