Then I felt something move.
A fluttering. A shifting. Like water sloshing in a jar. Followed by a deep, tight fullness that made it impossible to lie still.
I put my hand on my stomach.Study Anatomy
Something shifted again under my palm.
I’ve had three babies. I know what it feels like when something moves inside you. This was nothing like that. And at eighty, with my husband twelve years in the ground, I knew perfectly well it couldn’t be.
For the first time, I was really frightened.
I lay there until the sun came up. I didn’t sleep. I just kept my hand on my stomach and listened to the clock in the hallway, the one Robert wound every Sunday for forty years, and that I still wind every Sunday now.
At seven o’clock, I called Daniel.
“Mom? Is everything okay?”
Daniel’s voice is the one in my family that sounds most like Robert’s. Low and calm, with a little gravel in it.Plan Family Trips
