And now that I’d given myself permission to do something I’d been longing to do all my life, it wasn’t happening. I told myself there was no rush. Five months of trying to get pregnant was nothing. I was as healthy and fit as a twenty-year-old. When the time came, it would come, and I had to stop worrying about it. Easy to say; near-impossible to do. I’ve spent a lifetime perfecting the art of fretting, and I’m not about to abandon my craft now.

My stomach growled. Clay’s hand slid across it, smiling, eyes still closed.

“That’s what happens when you chase me instead of dinner,” he said.

“I’ll remember that next time.”

He opened one eye. “On second thought, forget it. Chase me and I’ll feed you afterward. Anything you want.”

“Ice cream.”

He laughed and opened the other eye. “I thought that was after you get pregnant.”

“I’m practicing.”

“Ice cream it is, then. Do we have any?”

I slid off him. “The Creamery opened last week. Two-for-one banana splits all month.”

“One for you and one for—”

I snorted.

He grinned. “Okay, two for you, two for me.”

He pushed to his feet and looked around.

“Clothing southwest,” I said. “Near the pond.”

“Are you sure?”

“Let’s hope so.”

I stepped from the forest into the backyard. As the clouds swept past again, shafts of sunlight slid over the house. The freshly painted trim gleamed dark green, the color matching the tendrils of ivy that struggled to maintain a hold on the stone walls. The gardens below were equally green, evergreens and bushes interspersed with the occasional clump of tulips from a fall gardening spree a few years ago, the tulips ending at the patio wall, which was as far as I’d gotten before getting distracted and leaving the bag of bulbs to rot in the rain. That was our typical approach to gardening: every now and then we’d buy a plant or two, maybe even get it in the ground, but most times we were content just to sit back and see what came up naturally.

The casual air suited the house and the slightly overgrown yard that blended into the fields and forests beyond. A wild sanctuary, the air smelling of last night’s fire and new grass and distant manure, the silence broken only by the twitter of birds, the chirp of cicadas…and the regular crack of gunfire.