She looked over at me and smiled from where she was lying under the window. “What are you doing here?” I asked as I crawled toward her. “We’re leaving for the market in a little bit.”

I sat down beside her and lay back, gazing at the small slice of blue sky that showed through the glass. We’d made good use of this loft while our house was being built and we still lived with Emily’s parents. But now that we had our own place, and plenty of privacy, we hadn’t had reason to come up here much.

“I know,” she said. “This is probably the last time I’ll come up here for a while.” She ran her hand over her barely rounded stomach and smiled over at me. “Climbing ladders will have to be on hold temporarily.”

I smiled back and lay my hand on top of hers, that same zing of fear and joy reverberating through me that I’d felt when she’d first told me about the baby as we lay in front of our fireplace. Only now, the joy was greater than the fear. This baby was an embodiment of hope in the future, and a living symbol of everything we’d been through to get here. He or she was more precious than the trees or the land or the seeds we planted in the ground. He or she would ensure that the world went on and, as a wise prophet had once said, was proof that life longed for itself.

“Do you think Gretel will have those caramels she brought last week?” Emily asked.

I smiled. She’d eaten so many of those, she swore she was never going to look at another caramel again. “If she was able to find more sugar,” I said.

“Do you know that she brought them there in a Louis Vuitton purse?” Emily laughed. “She used it just like a brown paper bag. The purse was worthless. It was the caramels everyone was drooling over,” she said, her voice mildly incredulous.

“Things have changed,” I said with a chuckle.

She rolled toward me and propped her hands on my chest and laid her chin there. “Yes,” she agreed. “Lots has changed. But other things have stayed the same.”

She leaned up and kissed me and rubbed her nose over mine. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Come on, Mattice,” she said, as she got up. “Caramels await. And maybe we can find a few books to add to that library of yours.”

I descended the ladder first and she followed, and then we exited the barn, strolling hand in hand through the orchard. The cloudless sky stretched over the land, what, to us, was the whole wide world, our patch of heaven, and where our journey had ended, all woven together by a thread of love.

* * * * *

acknowledgments