Chapter 31
1024 Words
*Elena's POV*
It started with a YouTube video.
That should have been my first warning.
I came downstairs to find Liam sitting at the kitchen counter with his laptop open, he had his reading glasses on which I was not going to comment on , while he was watching a video titled "How To Talk To Your Unborn Baby: A Complete Guide For First Time Dads."
I stood in the doorway and stared at him for a full ten seconds.
"What," I said, "are you doing?"
He looked up. Completely unbothered. "Research."
"Research."
"Did I stutter?"
"Liam, you are watching a YouTube video about talking to a baby."
"An unborn baby." He pointed at the screen. "There is a difference apparently. The acoustics are different in the womb. You have to adjust your tone." He said this with the seriousness of a man who had just discovered a scientific breakthrough and was generously sharing it with the world.
I pressed my lips together very hard.
"Adjust your tone," I repeated.
"Lower register. More soothing. Less ... apparently the way I normally speak." He frowned slightly at the screen. "The man in this video has a very calming voice. I've been practising."
"You've been ....what Liam?." I tried not to hide my laugh
"Do you want to hear it?"
"Absolutely not..."
He cleared his throat, straightened his spine, and in the most theatrically gentle voice I had ever heard from a fully grown adult man said, "Hello, little one. This is your father speaking. I hope you are comfortable in there."
The silence that followed was enormous.
I sat down on the kitchen floor.
Not because my legs gave out. But because I needed to laugh at a lower altitude and I needed to do it immediately.
"Elena." He looked over the counter at me on the floor. "Was that not soothing?"
"That was..." I wheezed. "That was so soothing, Liam. The baby is definitely..." I had to stop. "The baby is definitely very comforted right now."
"You're laughing at me."
"I would never."
"You're on the floor."
"I'm resting."
He closed the laptop with great dignity and took his glasses off and looked at me with the expression of a man who was used to being the most composed person in any given situation and was finding this particular situation very challenging.
It got worse after lunch.
I was sitting on the sofa with my feet up, Liam's instructions, he said it was non-negotiable and good for the baby. He had pointed at the sofa and said "feet up" and I had decided this was not a hill worth dying on when he appeared in the living room doorway holding a book.
"What To Expect When You're Expecting."
He had a pen.
He also had highlighted sections.
"Mr White." I stared at the book. "Where did you get that?"
"I ordered it."
"When?"
"Three days ago." He sat down in the chair across from me and opened it with the energy of a man preparing for an exam. "Now. The book says in the second trimester you may experience lower back pain, swollen ankles, and..." he squinted at his own notes in the margin— "something called round ligament pain which sounds deeply unpleasant. Are you experiencing any of these?"
I blinked at him.
"Because if you are," he continued, "the book recommends a warm compress, light stretching, and..." he turned the page... "someone to massage the lower back area which I am prepared to do on a schedule if you would like to set one."
"You want to set a massage schedule."
"Preventatively, yes."
"Liam."
"Elena."
"You highlighted a pregnancy book."
"I colour-coded it, actually." He held it up. "Yellow is symptoms to watch for. Pink is nutrition. Green is things I need to do." He paused. "There is a lot of green."
I looked at the ceiling.
I looked back at him.
"You are insane," I said with complete affection. I was horrified to notice. "You are absolutely, completely insane."
"I prefer thorough." He turned another page. "Now. Are you getting enough iron? The book is quite firm about iron."
_____
But the best moment ... the one I knew I was going to be thinking about for a very long time ... came in the evening.
I was sitting at the kitchen table when I heard him talking.
Not on the phone. Not to me. I could hear his voice coming from the living room ... low and calm and completely sincere, and I got up quietly and moved to the doorway and looked in.
Liam was sitting on the sofa.
Leaning slightly forward.
Talking to my stomach.
From across the room.
"I know you can't understand me yet," he was saying, in that ridiculous gentle voice from the YouTube video, pitched low and soft, his elbows on his knees and his full attention directed at the general direction of where my bump would be if I was sitting there. Which I wasn't. I was standing in the doorway. He had not noticed. "But I want you to know that you are going to be okay. Both of you. I'm going to make sure of it."
He paused.
Like he was giving the baby a chance to respond.
"Your mum is very stubborn," he continued conversationally. "And she will probably tell you that she doesn't need any help and she is fine. She is not always fine. She just doesn't like to say so." Another pause. "I am going to look after her anyway. Even when she argues with me about it. Which she will. Frequently."
I stood in the doorway and felt something move through my chest that was warm and enormous and slightly terrifying.
He was talking to an empty sofa.
He had colour-coded a pregnancy book.
He had practised his lower register from a YouTube tutorial.
And I was absolutely, completely, catastrophically in trouble.
I stepped back quietly before he could turn around.
And stood in the hallway with my back against the wall and my hand over my heart.
"was I falling in love with this man"?
- Writer
