Having The Soldier's Baby (Parent Portal 1)

Following her around in stores, lifting boxes into carts, and then, after paying for them, into the trunk of his car, unloading them, fitting pieces into proper places—it all fit his parameters.

“We really need some paint on these walls,” Emily said as he finished putting the crib together without mentioning at all that it seemed a bit premature to build a bed for someone who wouldn’t be there for months and months. “I just think we should wait until we know if it’s a boy or a girl before we do that,” she added. The same thing she’d said when she looked at, and then passed by, sheets and other crib paraphernalia that afternoon.

She was standing there in a short black T-shirt dress, her long legs tanned and perfect as they’d always been, her stomach still looking the same to him.

The same being...rather delicious. And her breasts... He knew them up close and personal and kept picturing the view from the night he’d walked in on her looking at herself in the mirror.

It occurred to him then that painting would be a good activity for the next day. And getting it all done would free him up to be gone as soon as Time convinced Emily that she wanted a divorce.

“There was that one design,” he said, willing his body to stay down while sharing that suddenly-too-intimate space with her. “A version of it everywhere,” he added, and took a breath as she frowned, watching him like she was concerned.

He didn’t need her concern.

“The jungle animals, in shades of green and yellow.” The way became clear to him, as it always did. “You could do the walls in those colors, and buy that motif for everything else. It would work for either gender. We can paint tomorrow.”

There. He got to the goal. Painting. The next day. So it would be done.

So he’d be busy all day.

So, so, so. Just like Adamson.

What did so have to do with anything?

And when would Time get its butt in gear and get this job done?

* * *

He wanted jungle animals. Green and yellow! Lying in bed that night, Emily smiled into the darkness. More and more he was showing himself to her. Oddly, yes. Not like Winston used to. But he was emerging.

She’d been thinking more of pastel rainbows, with an emphasis on blue or pink depending on whether they were having a girl or a boy, but she’d take puce gorillas if it was what Winston wanted.

He wanted them.

That was all that mattered.

Which was what she kept telling herself the next day as he acted more like hired help than the m

an of the house. Her husband. Or the father of her child.

He’d suggested the motif. The colors. And then had stood back and refused to take part in any of the actual choices. And back home, with plastic covering the carpet, he had waited for her to make all of the decisions in terms of what walls were green, which were yellow—she ended up with three a pale yellow and one a bolder green, and then when she wondered about the trim, she had had to decide that, too. She wanted to change it up, do some in green and some in yellow, but hadn’t been sure. He gave her nothing.

She figured she’d make the decision when they got to that stage in the painting.

“We need to tell our parents about the baby,” she said as they began rolling paint on opposite sides of the room.

He didn’t respond. Because he wasn’t ready to deal with grandparents? Or just because mute seemed to be his volume of choice these days?

“They’re going to know the next time they visit,” she said, pointing out the obvious. Besides the new decor for what used to be their spare room, her stomach was already starting to paunch a tiny bit. Her mother would wonder about that.

“That might not be for a while.”

True. After the initial flurry of visits, things were settling back down. Before Afghanistan they’d go three months without visits. Everyone was busy, had their own lives. They talked often and that was sufficient.

Painting continued silently, save for the music she’d put on, a streaming station that played songs from their high school days.

“I want to go this week to have the NIPT test,” she offered twenty minutes later. He’d said he wanted to know everything.

“That was the one to determine Down syndrome,” he said.