Work Text:
While I pray for promised land
to replace all I have made,
darkness steals the light I bear
and the hope of a lifetime fades.
Mary puts the needle down on side two of Bridge Over Troubled Water, waits through the hiss and crackle until the music starts. Just those first strummed notes let the tension start bleeding out of her shoulders. She presses her hands to her lower back and stretches with a sigh, belly pushed out ridiculously in front of her. It’s amazing how fast those easy harmonies, that pretty guitar, help her relax. Helps more that John can’t complain about her music, if he’s not around.
She shakes her head and moves back over to the window in the dining room, watches Dean run wild over the lawn, tiny cowboy to invisible Indians. She’s still amazed, sometimes, that her little cheerful boy came from her—and now, another baby, swelling her stomach and keeping her up at night. Keeping her over-warm, especially this unseasonably sunny April, and she leans her temple against the cool wallpaper, eyes on the green lawn and the budding trees but not seeing them.
She wonders when John’s going to come back. If she pushed him away for good this time. She can’t even remember what they started arguing about—and she knows that it’s more than half her fault, her growing guilt over what’s coming making her impatient, irritable, even as she wants to cling closer with everything she has. She’s resolved, though. She won’t do anything, won’t run or hide, because there’s no point. She has learned that much. All she ever wanted was to make a life, a normal life in which she married her lover, bore his children, raised them to be happy and safe. She isn’t going to compromise that by uprooting everything and ruining their lives for a desperate last-ditch plan that wouldn’t work anyway.
Outside, Dean’s laughing about something, faint giggles weaving with the music inside, and she smiles involuntarily, turns her face up into the afternoon sun. She’s not afraid, not really. There’s a kind of peace that comes from having certainty of an end, from knowing the cost she paid was well worth the future she bought with it.
There’s a kick, sharp and hard right into a kidney, and she lets out a little oof, puts a hand on the swell of her belly. “Shh, Sam.”
Samuel. She decided on the name as soon as she knew the pregnancy was going to stick—leaving the doctor’s office on the rainy anniversary of her father’s death, November air cold on her wet cheeks. Dean’s still laughing, out in the yard, but he’s gone outside her line of sight. The baby rolls over, a slow mysterious wave that roils her womb. She wraps both arms around her belly, closes her eyes. “Shh, sweetheart, you’ll be okay. Your daddy and your big brother are going to take good care of you.”