Winter thaws to Spring. Spring slips into Summer. Delly's baby is born and I watch Peeta thoughtfully as he tickles his rolling belly. Finnick and Annie come and stay for a month. Jo takes his first steps on our living room floor. Finnick and I get lost in the woods together. Rye tags along. He likes Finnick, even though he tries not to.
It's when I'm sitting in the bathroom staring at the blood between my legs that my life starts to change.
"I started my period," I tell Peeta that night as he's folding clothes and putting them in our drawers. He stops.
"Really?" he asks, a wary smile on his lips.
I should have started months ago. When I didn't, we assumed my womb was something else Snow took from me. That I lost Cinna and motherhood in the beating before the Quell.
"I'm not ready," I spit out quickly. It doesn't erase the smile.
"I know. But, I'm just glad you have a choice now," Peeta says back before he places the pile of folded shirts in my drawer.
A choice.
I'm not ready. Days slip by. Months. Our life becomes wonderfully monotonous. We have traditions. Our makeshift family shares holidays. The following year District 12 brings back Midsummer. Peeta makes lemon squares and Effie forces Haymitch to dance.
One morning I swing by the Hawthorne house to take Rory hunting and find the red-headed girl asleep in his bed. Hazelle curses like I've never heard her curse before. Rory spends the Fall building himself a house. The toasting is boisterous and large. Half the district shows up. Peeta squeezes my hand and I think of that night in the blanket, just the two of us. Promises and fire and bread. The kids that come to the bakery call Peeta Mr. Mellark. It's bittersweet and beautiful at the same time.
My mother comes every so often. We see her in the winter in District 4. Hazelle and Rye run the bakery in Peeta's absence. When we get back he spends weeks trying to put things back where they belong.
Peeta faces triggers now and again. The first one came nearly three years after we were home. I'm still not sure if the word was iron or board. I was pressing one of his shirts for an event in town and the words were barely in the air before he doubled over.
"Peeta!" I cried out, running toward him. I didn't think it was a trigger. I didn't think it could be. It had been so long. His fists balled in his hair and he rocked back and forth on his heels. Finnick came pounding up the stairs and the two of us talked him down. He managed to stay in control, but it was excruciating. I stripped his sweat-soaked clothes from his body and put him to bed. Annie stayed vigilantly at his side while I had a silent breakdown in the hallway outside our bedroom door. Finnick wrapped his hands around my shoulders and squeezed me tight while we listened to Jo playing downstairs.
"I just thought it was over," I breathed into his shirt.
Triggers come and go now. Sometimes I'll find him clutching the back of a chair, grinding his teeth to get through the pain. He's never once raised a hand at me. He's never once lost control. He'll spend the rest of the day in our room with all the lights off, then he'll stay up all night painting. He comes to bed with dried paint on his hands and the early morning light in the sky. He'll wrap himself around me and lift my nightshirt, pressing his stomach into my back. He finds his way home to me.
The book grows. Faces and names and stories of those we left behind. Those that built our story. Pages of memories and loss and growth and joy.
The bakery is a tribute in and of itself. Peeta has the family's traditions, yes – frosted cookies and sourdough bread. But he channels his life into his work. He makes a strawberry dessert dressed with airy whipped cream blended with lemon zest. He calls it a Foxfaced Treat. He makes a dense shortbread with perfectly square angles and calls it Boggs Bread. He makes tiny candies with walnuts and caramel and dark chocolate and calls them Rues. He makes cinnamon balls so potent they set your mouth on fire – Jojos. Once a year he makes a fluffy white cake with cream as light as clouds. He orders gold leaf from the Capitol and dresses the peaks until they glitter. I know it's meant for Cinna.
We build a community.
We find routine. He bakes. I hunt. Haymitch's geese are noisy and I hate them, but he hasn't touched white liquor since they came to stay. Since Effie didn't leave.
When Greasy Sae finally passes away, I let myself grieve in a way I hadn't been able to with the deaths before hers. She died a free woman. Death isn't so terrible when your life was rich and good. When you know the person knew happiness and safety and love. We don't mourn the same way we did before. We hurt, yes. But we also celebrate her life. Sae's granddaughter moves in with a family in town whose son is a little slow, too. The two of them run a farm stand on the weekends. Everyone overpays them for everything.
The medicine factory goes up. Instead of sending our men and women underground, we learn a new trade. The pay is good, the hours are reasonable. We have something to be proud of in our district. People move here. The population grows. We are still far and away the smallest district, but we have a sense of kinship here.
It's over a decade before I let my guard down. My last shot expires and I stare at the page in the Capitol catalogue to order another. I look up and see Peeta in the kitchen shaving carrots with a paring knife. I put the pen down.
My period stops six months later. The early mornings find me sitting on the bathroom tile. Rory is frustrated I'm not hunting more. When I confirm my suspicions, the happy feeling I thought would overcome me is markedly absent. Instead, a primal fear rushes over my body, a fear as old as time itself. It feels like my veins are full of acid and I puke into the toilet. As I watch the bile flush away, I remember sitting on the bathroom floor with Prim. She'd eaten something out of a dumpster during our bad times and spent hours retching into the toilet. I don't think my mom noticed. She certainly didn't care.
"It will be over soon, little duck," I'd whispered as I rubbed my hand over her back. Her muscles ached from heaving. I offered what little comfort I could. I ran a wet washcloth over her face; I sang soft melodies. Eventually she was just passing bile and then nothing at all. She was barely seven when she stared up at me with her crystal blue eyes, the whites pink from strain.
"You're going to make a really good mother someday," she said before curling into my lap and sleeping on the bathroom floor.
Her words ring in my head and the panic subsides. I will love this baby. I will make a good mother. Someday. Someday soon.
When I go downstairs Peeta is on a stool in the kitchen, drinking coffee and drawing in the margin of the Sunday newspaper. I kiss his neck and he squirms playfully. He hasn't noticed my new morning toilet ritual as most days he's at the bakery by dawn. I pour myself a mug of herbal barley tea and stand on the opposite side of the island, leaning over and watching him sketch. His eyes draw up from the page and he watches me.
"You look pretty this morning," he says softly, taking me in before dropping his eyes to the pencil again.
I want tell him in a special way, so he remembers it. I chew the inside of my lip and play out the scenarios.
"What's got you thinking so hard?" Peeta asks. He reaches over and pushes a stray hair behind my ear.
"We're pregnant," I spit out. We are pregnant. Nothing is just me or him anymore. It hasn't been for a long time. We are in this together. This is our baby. We are pregnant.
The pencil slips from Peeta's finger and bounces across the countertop. It rolls over the edge and clatters lightly on the floor. Before I register what's happening Peeta is up and over the counter, the most direct route to his pregnant wife. He cups my face in his hands and kisses me through a teethy smile.
"Really? Really? This is real?" he asks on bubbling breaths.
"Yeah, it's real," I respond.
As terrified as I am, as many horrible memories as I have permanently etched in the crevices of my brain, I will never forget his smile the moment I told Peeta he was going to be a father.
The pregnancy is difficult for me. When I feel the baby kick, I panic that he's trashing in pain. The nausea goes away but is replaced by an unforgiving fatigue. The only time I feel okay is when I sing to the baby, and so I sing a lot. I rub my hands on my swollen belly and offer melodies from long ago. Peeta is doting to the point of absurdity and more than once I have to throw him out of the house.
I still have two months left of my pregnancy when I feel a sharp pain and substantial pressure between my legs. I've been ignoring cramping off and on all morning. With no healer in town, I've delivered my fair share of babies in the years we've been home. I know when to tell a nervous mother to calm down. But this feels different. This feels serious.
"Peeta!" I scream out, but he's not home. I waddle to the front door, hand on my stomach. I'm so swollen now I barely recognize myself. I don't bother with shoes. My feet are too engorged and I can't bend over to put them on anyway. I make my way to Haymitch's house and slam on the door with my fist. Another wave of pressure comes again and I clench my legs together. It feels like my intestines are curling and writhing in my body.
"Haymitch!" I bellow, but there's no answer.
I walk to the bakery, pausing every couple minutes to kneel over. I take the front door since the back has stairs. I never enter through the front, so when Peeta sees me sweat-ridden and panting at the glass display case, he knows.
"This is all your fault, Mellark," I complain loudly as he ushers me out back. Another contraction hits. My knees feel weak. "It's too early," I whimper, but it doesn't matter what I want or don't want at that point. I give birth to our son on the floor on the bakery. The wood feels like it's grinding into my hips and it takes days for my body to remember not to hurt. The baby is impossibly tiny and perfect. Peeta looks at him with an inimitable love. Peeta comes to bed and spies Wren splayed on my stomach, blissfully milk drunk. He wraps his arms around me.
"I didn't know it was possible to love a person this much," Peeta whispers, pressing his lips to my temple.
The girl comes a couple years later – Juniper. My son grows up in my silent footsteps. We spend our lives slipping between the trees with Rory and his red-haired daughter Willow. Juniper is glued to her father. She paints and draws and molds things out of clay.
Neither of them can bake. Peeta blames himself, but they both have a spark of impatience they got from their mom.
Haymitch and Effie spoil the children rotten. I'll often notice one missing from the yard and find them on Haymitch's porch, sitting on his knee and feeding the geese.
I'm nearly forty when I realize I'm pregnant again. The other two are already halfway through school. Jo is engaged to be married. I complain about starting over, about diapers and sleepless nights, but when our last is born, it's like she's the piece of our family we didn't know was missing. Blonde hair, pale gray eyes.
Autumn.
She bakes.
I tell our children about the past. Kids ask blunt questions. Where did Daddy's leg go? I don't know how to answer why my skin doesn't look like theirs. I don't know how to explain why sometimes Daddy gets headaches and needs to be left alone. I don't know what to say when they ask what I was like when I was a kid. The world was a different place then.
I tell them the truth as best I can.
We don't lie in this house.
At night, when the kids are settling to sleep, we make a list. Every night we list every good thing we saw that day. We remind ourselves why we are free. We remember those we lost along the way. We thank the universe for letting us stay, like Auntie Delly does at dinner.
When I close the bedroom door, Peeta weaves his hand in mine.
"Bed?" he asks.
"Bed," I nod. He brushes his teeth. I sit on the toilet lid and braid my hair. He opens the window and drops into bed, sliding his prosthetic on the floor. I lay my head on his chest and count the beats as the rhythm slows with sleep.
"I love you, Katniss," he whispers as dreams lull him under.
I remember how once those words would have made me run. I tug his shirt up a little until I see his skin, and do the same with mine. I press my stomach into his back and feel him hot against me. He's like a furnace, keeping my bed, my heart, my home warm.
"I love you too," I answer back.
