Emily loved watching Ezra doing things around the house. He was remarkably domestic but did everything with a doctor’s concentration, with medical precision. He sewed torn seams in their clothing as carefully as if he were suturing a child, using the same zigzag stitch he’d learned in medical school. He excised rotten spots in apples as if he were cutting out a tumor, making sure it had clean margins on all sides. And he followed recipes only if they made sense, questioning any step that seemed like it might cause a culinary problem down the line. They even adjusted recipes that had been passed down from his great-grandmother. A glass of flour, one read.

“Well, that’s ridiculous,” Ezra had said, the first time he tried to make his nana’s chocolate squares. “Does she mean a tall glass or a short glass? A mug? A tumbler?”

“Maybe she means about a cup?” Emily offered. “It’s probably an old recipe. One that wasn’t written in the U.S.”

Ezra looked at her, then at the recipe, then at the oven. “Huh. Well, we’re going to find out how much we should really use,” he said.

That day, they made three trays of chocolate squares. One with a cup of flour, another with ten ounces, and another with twelve—the amounts that their two glasses held. They’d decided that the juice glasses, which held only about four ounces, probably would be much too small. All three options tasted good—but the consistency of the ones with ten ounces of flour seemed the best. So Ezra fixed the recipe.

—

Emily was making those same chocolate squares for dessert, while Ezra made the meatballs for dinner, because the smell of the raw meat made her gag.

“It’s like someone turned up the volume on my nose,” Emily said. “Do you have cinnamon gum in your pocket?”

Ezra reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a pack of cinnamon Trident. “I had no idea pregnancy would give you a superpower. Maybe we should test it out. How far away do you have to be from this cinnamon gum not to smell it?”

“You’re bananas,” Emily told him. “For now, though, would you mind sticking it back in your pocket? It’s accosting me.”

Ezra did as she asked, and lined the meatballs up in a frying pan while she slid the brownies into the oven. Then they worked together to make pasta. Fettuccini was the easiest, so that was what they made.

“Are you okay telling our families before the twelve-week mark?” Ezra asked.

She nodded. “We’d tell them if something went wrong anyway, so . . .” She shrugged, hoping, praying that nothing would. “Might as well tell them now.”