In May of the fourth year, I found out I was pregnant.
Not with the same surprise as the first time. Not with the same navigating of complicated timing and legal situations and what it would mean. This time I sat in the bathroom of the estate on a Monday morning with the test in my hand and felt the particular quality of something expected and still astonishing, which is its own separate category of surprise.
I told Damien at breakfast.
He was at the counter with his coffee and his paper, the May morning doing its work through the windows, and I sat down and said, “There’s going to be a second.”
He put down his paper.
He looked at me.
He said nothing for a moment.
Then he smiled.
Not the corner version. The full version, the one that arrived infrequently enough to be a specific eve
