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While Aisling watched television with the volume down low, and Devon napped on and off, the morning unfolded. The fog never lifted, and a spit of rain woke him up briefly when it hit the glass windows. He sat up and looked over at her, her eyes open, watching a marathon of some reality program, twirling her hair like a young girl.
“How do you feel?”
“Whatever it was passed,” she said. “I’m actually getting hungry. It might be time for our late Thanksgiving feast.”
“Okay. I’ll get up,” he said, stretching.
“No, you stay put. I can see you from the kitchen; if I need anything, I’ll holler.”
When she got up, Tilly moved over to Devon’s chair. “Traitor,” she said, laughing.
In twenty minutes she had everything they’d purchased heated up and on the table.
“Come and get it,” she announced. “Only the rolls need to bake, and the pies heated up.”
They sat down across from each other in their sweats, loading up plates, talking comfortably. It didn’t take long for them to push back from the table.
“I’m about ready to explode,” Devon said.
“Me too. I can’t eat any more.”
“Go back to the couch and I’ll clean up,” he said, stacking plates. “I think I’m officially turkeyed out.”
“Yuck. Me too,” Aisling said. “Usually I’d insist on helping, but today I think I’ll take you up on it. My morning sickness has returned.”
Immediately, they looked at each other.
“Say what?” Devon asked, frowning.
“Ignore that,” she said, flustered. “I must be in a food fog.”
“Freudian slip,” Devon replied, carrying plates to the kitchen.
“I meant the nausea. Not morning sickness. It couldn’t be.”
He stopped and looked at her, worried. “Could it?”
She smoothed her hands over her belly. “Let me look at the calendar.” On the arm of the couch her phone waited, a sentinel. “Oh great phone, don’t disappoint me.”
On the calendar, she counted days and weeks and then, horrifyingly, months.
“Ugh.”
“What?” He put the dishes down on the counter and walked over to her with his hand outstretched.
“Look at the little red Xs. That’s my period.”
Flushing, Devon wasn’t really used to talking to women about their menses, but he took the phone and looked, counting days. The X marked October first. Mike had died in the middle of the month. It was now the end of November.
“So when was it due?” he asked.
“November first. It’s now the twenty-eighth. I’m four weeks late.”
Staring at the phone for a while longer, Devon was speechless. He had a thousand questions that he’d never ask her. Were they trying to have a baby?
“I’m probably about six weeks, if I’m pregnant.”
She remembered the last time they’d made love the day before he died. It would have been right during her fertile period, too. Why didn’t her birth control work though?
