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And something inside me goes thump.

I freeze with the pickle halfway to my mouth.

Thump.

“Rowan. Give me your hand. Quick.”

He drops the bee. I grab his hand and press it flat on my belly, and we both hold still.

Nothing. Nothing.

Thump. Right against his palm.

Rowan goes dead still. He stares at his hand for a long second. Then this slow, smug grin spreads across his whole face.

“It knows me,” he says.

“Baby, it kicked.”

“It kicked me. It’s been quiet for months, and the second I put my hand there…”

“It doesn’t know who you are, Rowan.”

Thump.

He looks up at me like he just won the honey contest.

“It knows me.”

I drop my pickle on his head.

* * *

By February, I can’t see my feet.

I’m big. Round. I waddle. I hate it, and Rowan loves it, and he won’t stop watching me walk across the kitchen.

“Quit staring at me.”

“No.”

“I look like I swallowed a whole pumpkin.”

“You look like you swallowed my baby.”

“Boy, that’s what I just said.”

He carries me through the snow to the hives every morning, because he refuses to let me walk on ice and I’ve given up fighting him on it. The bees are all clustered up for the winter, sleeping. He puts his hand flat on the side of every single hive and stands there for a minute.

The first time, I asked him what the hell he was doing.

“Listening,” he said. “They’re fine.”

I don’t ask anymore.

The whole village has lost its damn mind over this baby. Auntie Bess and Auntie Marigold have knitted enough hats for fifteen of them. The baker’s wife sends a pie every Sunday. The mayor’s wife walks up the hill once a week to cry at my belly. Every week. Like it’s her job.

And Gareth Tolley crosses the street when he sees me coming. Every time. Last week, he tipped his hat at me from across the square and walked straight into the well.