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Rose sits on Tom's lap, her bum on one thigh, both legs over the other and stretched out on the couch beyond, like a child. Tom has one arm firmly around her back, the other over her knees, his big palm against her thigh. She has looped her arms about his neck and is resting her head against his shoulder, waiting.
She just told him she is pregnant.
Not twenty minutes ago, they were standing side by side in the kitchen, cleaning the dishes. Will had just gone off to bed - exhausted from the celebration of his second birthday (not the real one, which was three months prior, but the one they set for him on his fake birth certificate), having run around the house like a wild creature unchecked for most of the day. Tom tried to keep up and nearly managed -- Will was a bit softer toward him these days, especially after the presents and the cake and pizza and the endless spins in the backyard until the cake and pizza nearly returned. It was very late but the dishes needed doing or else they were going to have to take a chisel to the hardened-after-melting ice cream and sugar-filled icing that lined the plates come morning.
She washed, he dried. He fussed over her putting her bare hands into the hot water and soap, and insisted she wear the silly rubber gloves that she really didn't like, but tolerated to humor him. Impulsively, she hip-checked him as she handed him one of the last dishes, and caught his puzzled look as he accepted the dish. A few more minutes passed, and she hip-checked him again, gently, after handing him the large cake dish. This time she did smirk at him, and he smiled a bit, although he didn't return her gaze. When they finished, and she shook the water off the gloves before settling them to dry over the edge of the sink, he hip-checked her, but reached around to catch her from the other side with his hand, and pulled her close to him.
"You're in a mood tonight," he murmured.
She looked up at him, pushing down the smile she'd been struggling with since the pregnancy test. "I have something to tell you."
He quirked an eyebrow. "Something important, I'm assuming?"
She nodded. "Let's go into the living room." She took his moist hand in her dry one and pulled him with her into the living room, seating him on the couch. Then, she gently knelt in front of him and showed him the test she'd been carrying around in her pocket.
His shocked look almost derailed her. He stared at the stick (which she couldn't help but think of as the stick she peed on and he was holding tightly) as if he didn't quite understand it, and then the brow furrowed as he looked at her again.
Now the smile wilted of its own accord. "Is it...it this okay?"
The old image of the sun appearing behind dark stormy clouds didn't quite do justice to the brilliance and joy of the smile that suddenly crept across his face. But in her nervous state she had stood up, and he grasped both her hands with his one free one and pulled her down.
"Okay? Are you...joking?" Now Rose saw the smile, and Tom pulled her toward him, onto his lap, and he kissed her several times and whispered how wonderful it was, how much he loved her, and now she sits on his lap, waiting for him to finish absorbing this news.
"Talk to me," she murmurs, giving him a little tug on his collar, dipping her fingers inside to trace them along his collarbone.
Tom's hands both tighten against her. "Just...thinking."
"About?"
"Keeping all of us safe," Tom sighs. "Having the few neighbors over today was a risk. And with you pregnant we'll probably have to interact with them more."
"Why is that?" Rose asks softly.
"Once they find out I'm sure they'll be filled with congratulations and asking you if you need anything," Tom replies. "Can't get more reclusive, it will attract suspicion. It's good that Will gets along with the Ronalds' boy. At least we have a reason to be closer to them than anyone else."
Will. Rose didn't quite think about it. Will has had a hard enough time adjusting to Tom, but with a little brother or sister, the jealousy issues could get worse. She doesn't realize how she tenses, but Tom apparently does, with the way he looks down at her.
"What's wrong?"
"Just worrying about Will," she says as dismissively as she can. But Tom does not take anything lightly when it comes to Will.
"What about him?"
"Well, you know," she says, giving Tom a little nudge with her shoulder, tucked against his armpit. "I just don't want him to make all this progress and then regress."
"We have to make sure he's included in everything," Tom says, more to himself than to her. "Share the excitement with him." He gives her a wistful smile, but it fades. She can see the crease over his nose and reaches up to stroke it.
"Yes?"
"Again, thinking...about when you found out about Will," he says, his voice strained. She fights back the scowl, but can't help it.
"Why would you think about that?"
"Why wouldn't I? You were happy to tell me this," Tom says, his voice going slightly monotone. "You were excited. And nervous. But when you found out about Will...I guess I can understand why you didn't tell me. Things weren't good between us."
She shakes her head. "It was unfair not to tell you."
He shakes his head back, his lips quirking. "Don't. I know the man I was then, Rose. As angry as I was at you...you did what you thought would keep him safe."
"And it didn't," she reminds him.
"Still," he says, stroking her shoulder and arm, "if you hadn't, we wouldn't have this now. This is better than anything." He kisses her forehead, and his lips drag down to the bridge of her nose to the tip, where he kisses her again. Then he hops off the tip and lightly pecks her lips.
But she knows Tom thinks about it. She can see it in his face when the doctor confirms a few days later that she is nearly two months along.
"Two months?" Tom says to her later, as the three of them sit on the couch with Will tucked between him, Tom's long arm around her shoulder, watching television after dinner. Tom and Will share a bag of microwave popcorn -- Rose has never liked popcorn, as she dislikes the kernels getting stuck in her teeth. "You haven't even been sick." It's idle conversation but there's no such thing with him, not really. Even when he tries to act like it's an off-the-cuff comment, she can see through it. It still bothers him.
"I wasn't with Will, either," Rose says, adjusting the iPad on which Will is watching his cartoons from sliding off his lap. "The only way I knew was because I had skipped my...monthly." She glances down at Will. He's paying no attention, absorbed in the cartoon versions of Superman and Batman.
"I guess you vomiting would have given the game away," Tom mutters. Yes, she's right. He's still thinking about it.
What would it have been like? Nothing like this. Nothing like the warmth and comfort in this simple life. She and Tom had barely been speaking at that point. Even the intimacy that led to Will's conception had come about because of too much alcohol and bad judgment, and had been treated afterwards as a mistake (at least on her part). Telling that Tom that she carried his child would not have led to the joy and wonder in his eyes, the kisses, the cuddling, and even if he had wanted to do those things, she would not have accepted them.
Rose reaches across, over Will's blond curls and into Tom's, running her fingers along the ones that settle across the back of his neck. He looks at her, expectant, but she just smiles at him, and whispers, "I love you."
His answer confirms her thoughts. "I love you too." He never would have said as much to her then. And she knows he will be twice as devoted to her as any man to his pregnant wife, to make up for what was lost.
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Over the next couple of days, Tom seems to be in a dream-like state. His eyes go unfocused at dinner, drifting away to his own thoughts. Then when she moves, they sharpen and go to her, watching her carefully, as if he can see the tiny life beginning to grow inside of her.
This is fine, at first. But then he starts to question the rigorousness of her activity. Especially when she picks up Will.
"Should you be doing that?" he asks when he comes in from whatever yard work he'd found to occupy himself outside, to find her picking up Will from where he's standing on the dining room table chair.
Rose counts to five in her head. Tom is just being protective, she knows. "It's fine," she says. "He's not that heavy."
Tom reaches for Will, who momentarily clings to his mother before remembering, somehow, that his father is fun, too, and lets himself be taken. "I just don't want you to strain yourself."
"I did a lot worse when I was pregnant with Will and we were fine," she argues, but regrets the words the moment they come out of her mouth at the flash of pain that zings across his features.
"Well, I'm here, and I can do any lifting you need," he says, trying to recover.
She sighs, shakes her head. "You are not going to hover around me, Tom. Not yet, at least, it's too early. You'll burn yourself out and then when I'm as big as a whale and don't want to move off the couch you'll ---"
"It'll be fine," Tom assures her.
"Tom, you are not going to keep me from picking up my son. At least not for a while."
He nods. "We'll see." He gives her a little smile. He somehow knows not to challenge her, just to smile, nod, and do whatever the hell he's going to do. As sweetly as he can.
But the truth is, Rose cannot bring herself to be too annoyed. She knows that Tom is only trying to make things up to her, things he doesn't need to, but won't be convinced of that, not if his life depended on it. Even though he's already a father, it's different to watch the process from the beginning. Will came into his life already eighteen months, so many important stages already come and gone. Tom had helped with the potty training, that was about as much as he'd gotten. Will had all his teeth, could walk, run, and was starting to talk -- although Tom helped a lot with that.
She knows he's doing all of this to show her he loves her. He loves her, he's there for her, he's happy to be a father (again) and he wants each and every moment of it that he can get.
Tom in this state is something not even she quite expects.
A few weeks later, they schedule the first ultrasound. She's eleven weeks along, almost three months. Tom watches as the device is pressed along Rose's lower abdomen, and his eyes light up at the little figure moving around, giving little wiggles with its tiny feet, and even sucking its thumb.
"Another seven weeks or so and we'll be able to tell the gender," the technician says. "I take it you'd like a picture?"
"Yes!" Tom says, a bit too enthusiastically, and he blushes slightly but Rose just smiles up at him and strokes his cheek as the woman finishes up.
"Here you go, you can clean up," she says, handing Rose a towel. "Go ahead and get dressed and come on out when you're ready. Your little son has charmed old Benny, so don't rush."
The couple smiles at the technician. Tom wanted to bring Will back with them but realized his attention would be too divided between the toddler and the screen, so one of the older nurses had volunteered to watch him. They could see him just outside the door as the tech went back through it.
Tom takes the towel from Rose and mops up the gel they'd squirted on her belly. "So they can't tell the gender yet?" he asks.
"Not until at least eighteen weeks," Rose says, directing the towel to a few places Tom is missing. "So, what do you want, then? A boy or a girl?"
He looks up, surprised. "Do you think it matters?"
"No, of course not," Rose says. "But we already have a son...having a daughter would be a nice matched set. But a boy would be wonderful, too, I think Will would be thrilled to have another boy around."
"Either way," Tom says, handing her her clothes. "I don't care. I just want a healthy child."
"You care," Rose says, narrowing one eye at him. "You just don't want to say."
"I swear, I don't care," he chuckles, and kisses her temple. "I'll be outside with Will, unless you need help."
"I am capable of getting my clothes on," Rose huffs.
Tom nods. "Just not getting them off. Without help."
She almost throws her underwear at him. "That's more you than me!" she barks, but she's smiling in spite of herself as he tosses her a wink before going through the door.
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Romantic is not a word Rose would ever have used to describe Tom. Sensual, yes. Passionate, yes. And recently, warm and loving, definitely yes. But not romantic. It is possible, when the mood strikes him, but not to the degree he has recently allowed.
So it's a bit of a surprise when she comes into the living room later that afternoon and finds Tom playing an old song on their laptop, by Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass. Her grandmother had been particularly fond of it, even though it was relatively new by their standards, in 1968. Her mother had loved it, and it had been her parents' wedding song, even in the early eighties. So Rose had a very soft spot for this song.
And Tom was playing it. Pulled it up on YouTube and connected it to the surround speakers. They sway gently, his large hand practically around her hips. His forehead gently rests against hers, and she closes her eyes, just relishing the peace of the moment. Softly, Tom murmurs some of the words.
"Yes, I'm in love, who looks at you the way I do..."
It was in moments like these that Rose knows it was somehow all worth it. Just to have this moment, to have Tom openly love her in this way, not hiding himself, not pushing her away. To say that he has changed in these last months is not quite true -- he's become more himself, more who she saw that first day she caught his gaze across a crowded room. More who she wanted to know all along.
Tom raises his head, his eyebrows high. "Someone is not a fan," he murmurs.
Rose follows his gaze to where William is sitting on the couch. With his head burrowed into the pillows. His small fists are clenched into the cushions, and from how his muscles are tensed Rose knows he's not playing hide and seek.
She sighs. It's been difficult, Will's jealousy. Tom has been tested past what she ever thought were the limits of his endurance, yet he keeps on. He wants to lose his temper, every now and again, she can see it in the set of his jaw. But he doesn't. He simply draws a breath, calms himself, and carries on.
Tom lets go of her and approaches Will's hunched form. Gently, he grasps the boy by his hips and lifts him up. At first, the pillow comes too, but it's too bulky and Will's hold is broken. He squirms, but then he realizes that Tom is turning him directly toward his mother, and his arms go about her neck like a vise.
They exchange a look. Tom obviously has gotten the message about not getting in the way of Rose carrying her son.
She chuckles into the little boy's hair. "What's wrong, sweetie? Mommy and Daddy are just dancing." She rubs his back as his legs link around her hips. He's long, like his father, all arms and legs. His soft golden curls are silken against the skin of her neck and shoulders as he presses his face into his spot right under her jaw.
Like father, like son.
Tom is back, then, his arm going around both Will and Rose, pulling them to his hip firmly. This startles Will enough so that he looks up, and Rose sees with relief that while his cheeks are a bit red, he hasn't been crying. Will is securely sandwiched between them when Tom starts to move again, resuming the rhythm of the song. Will looks confused for a moment, and then, to Rose's personal surprise, he relaxes. And lays his head back down against Rose's shoulder, but not with his face pressed away, instead turned toward his father.
A small smile comes to the two-year-old's face when Tom starts singing again. The music, a great rising swell of orchestra, then backs down and the chorus starts again, as it usually did in those days of dramatic song.
Then something utterly amazing happens. Will lifts up his hand, and lays it on Tom's upper arm. It's a small gesture, but in that moment it means everything. Rose feels her eyes prick with tears and Tom looks at the little hand as if it's the most precious thing in the world. He almost looks like he's going to cry, too.
Almost.
The song loops about and starts again as the little family continues to rock soothingly. Tom bends over and presses his lips firmly to Rose's forehead, lingering there longer than normal. Will doesn't do anything, just stares at them both, that little smile still stuck on his face. His arm has moved so that it grasps more firmly at Tom's bicep, his fingers curling into the shirt. He links his parents together, and Rose is happy that Tom has been wise enough to keep the song playing for as long as they want.
It is going to be a while.