"We shouldn't be doing this."

Alan sighed. "You keep saying that, but it's fine, Ellie. The kids have our numbers. If anything happens, we're only a ten-minute drive away. And we promised we wouldn't drink tonight, just in case. It's fine."

This was a long time coming, and Alan wouldn't let Ellie back out of it. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Hailey's due date was four days ago. She was going to call the doctor on Monday to set up an appointment to be induced if nothing happened by then. And since all they could do was wait, Alan was taking Ellie out to dinner. Just the two of them.

"Come on, honey, we haven't had a meal just the two of us since April," he complained. And Alan also knew that they wouldn't have another chance to go out just the two of them for a long time. Not with Ethan and an infant in the house. Alan was insistent on taking this time when they could.

Ellie sighed, causing Alan to reach over and pat her knee where she sat in the passenger's seat of his car. She caught his hand and held it on top of her thigh. "I wish I was going to drink. God, I could use it. I can't relax waiting for Hailey to go into labor."

"What did you do when you were waiting for Charlie and Ethan?" Alan asked curiously. He and Ellie weren't speaking when she was pregnant with Charlie, and they hadn't talked about any of this when she was pregnant with Ethan.

She gave a humorless laugh. "It's different when you're the pregnant one. But Charlie was about ten days early, so I didn't have this same waiting game with him. And Ethan came right on his due date."

Alan couldn't help but smile at that. It probably had nothing to do with it, but that all felt very in line with those boys' personalities. Charlie was the eager one, and Ethan was the rule-follower. Of course Charlie would have entered the world before he was due. Of course Ethan would have been exactly on time.

"Hailey's not had the easiest time with pregnancy, and it was never like that for me. I just hope she doesn't have to go through childbirth the way I did."

"Hard labor?" Alan asked, frowning. He didn't like the idea of Ellie in pain. Obviously she'd given birth twice—and despite how tiny she was, he knew she didn't have a C-section, since he knew pretty intimately that she didn't have any scars on her belly—but Alan didn't know any of the details. It wasn't really something they would have brought up before now.

Ellie squeezed Alan's hand with her left and put her right hand over his wrist. "Yeah," she said simply. "Hard labor. Thirty hours with Charlie. Only ten with Ethan, but there were complications. Which is why I've only got the two kids. Mark got a vasectomy after that. Too afraid of what might happen if I got pregnant again."

Alan had reached a stop sign and looked over to her. "What kind of complications?" he asked in horror.

"Childbirth is dangerous, Alan. Complications aren't uncommon. And both me and Ethan were fine, but we were in the hospital for a week. And it's really not an issue now. It's not like we have to worry about me getting pregnant," she told him dryly.

He let out a slow breath and turned down a side street to look for parking near the Italian restaurant where he'd made dinner reservations for them. "I just don't like the idea of you not being okay," he told her.

Ellie lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it gently. "I know. And it's okay. I'm fine. Everyone's fine. And the second that Hailey goes into labor, we'll get her to Good Samaritan, and she'll be fine."

Alan found a parking spot and turned off the engine.

Before he could say anything, Ellie unbuckled her seatbelt and patted his arm. "Come on, I'm starving. We're already out, so let's go have fun."

He was back to smiling at that remark. That was the thing about Ellie. One of many, many things that Alan loved about her. She had this way of focusing on the present. She could worry better than anyone, but as soon as there was a task to do or a something else to pay attention to, that's all that existed for her. It was frustrating sometimes, the way she could get so single-minded over something, but that stubborn focus of hers was almost always for the best.

They held hands and walked down the block to the old Victorian house that had been converted into a restaurant. It was a place they'd passed by in the village before when they'd first moved to Saratoga, but they hadn't been here yet. Alan hoped that surprising her with dinner reservations would be a good idea. So far, so good.

Of course, when they sat down at an intimate table in the corner and opened the menus, Alan made the mistake of looking at the wine list. And it was a very good selection. He lamented that.

"We can come back," she said, seeing the longing look on his face and hearing the small whimper her made upon seeing the surprisingly good price for a Caymus he'd love to try.

"Yeah, you're right," he grumbled.

"Do you wanna order that rigatoni and I'll get the bucatini and we can share?" Ellie asked.

Alan glanced at the menu and saw that those were exactly the two things he would have ordered and likely wouldn't have been able to decide between them. He looked up at her with a gentle, affectionate smile.

Her face fell. "What?"

She did that sometimes. When he was quiet or when he looked at her a certain way after she said something that made her a little too excited or made her surer of herself than she thought she should be.

But that was just another thing he loved about her. For all that she was strong and confident and brilliant, she was never arrogant. She was never above that moment of second-guessing herself. Just in case.

"Nothing," he answered. "I just love you."

A grin spread on her face, and nothing in the world made him feel happier than seeing Ellie look so pleased when he told her he loved her.

Alan continued, "It still surprises me, sometimes, that you know me so well. That you can look at a menu in a restaurant we've never been to and know exactly what I'd want to order."

"Well sure," she replied, a hint of teasing in her tone. "But that's just because I love you, too. And I know you because I've spent more than half my life loving you. We might have had a few years here and there when we weren't together, but you haven't really changed much, Alan."

It was more than a few years here and there, and they both knew it. Ellie left less than a year after Jurassic Park and he hadn't seen or spoken to her for five years after that. And then as he moved around and the boys were growing up, they emailed each other about once a year to discuss something one of them had written that the other ready. She sent him a Christmas card every year. But the time apart wasn't what had caught his attention about her words. "You don't think I've changed?" he asked.

Ellie shook her head. "You're more open-minded than you used to be. Softer. But no, otherwise you haven't really changed. You think you have?"

He considered that for a moment. "I guess you're right."

"You guess? You don't need to guess, Dr. Grant."

Alan chuckled at that. "No, you are right. I see our life now, and I don't think I could have even imagined this thirty years ago."

"You didn't think we'd be together?"

"I didn't think we'd ever be getting ready to welcome a baby into our home. Certainly not a grandchild."

"The grandchild part is unexpected," she conceded. "But I guess I've always known you better than you know yourself. Because I always knew that we'd be welcoming a baby together. Thirty years ago, I expected it to be our baby, but somehow I always knew you'd be a great family man. Despite your protests."

Alan almost asked her if she still wished they could have had a baby together. But that wasn't fair. To either of them. It would only remind Alan of his own regrets and it would put Ellie in that awful position of comparing what she had wanted for them together to the great life she'd gotten to have with Mark and Charlie and Ethan. Wishing she'd gotten to have a family with Alan meant no Mark or Charlie or Ethan. So Alan kept his mouth shut.

"Are you ready to order, or do you need another few minutes?" the server asked, coming over to their table and interrupting the silence.

Ellie launched into the order, saying she wanted the bucatini and Alan would have the rigatoni. Alan confirmed that and asked for a club soda.

When the server left, Ellie regarded him thoughtfully before saying, "I think everything's gonna work out okay, babe."

Something shifted in the pit of Alan's stomach that he tried to ignore. He told Ellie, "Yeah, I think so."