I never knew how many shades of red existed in the world; never knew that there was an entire color wheel spanning from tamarisk to falu; coral to crimson; a thousand minute variations in between -
- the persimmon of the blood dripping off of Willow's fingertips; the salmon mask of Peeta's waxen face; Firebrick on her dress; Claret in his hair. Incarnadine streaks on the floor beneath them, darker splashes of mordant. Rose-thorn tacks of dried upsdell on her neck; petal blossoms of venetian on his chest. Poppy and carmine; rose madder and stammel; even on the ceiling there are swirls of vermillion and amaranth, carnelian, terra cotta, coquelicot; splattered on the walls, puddling on the floor, dancing paths of cheerful roseate around the motionless bodies with entwined hands and glazed-over eyes that stare at me with russet accusation -
Peeta's hand on my skin, and a shriek that shatters any solitude like so many panes of glass, jerking me out of sleep and into drowsy warmth, Peeta and Willow staring at me with identical looks of shock in their identical cobalt eyes. They are tangled up with their heads together on Peeta's pillow, her dark hair overlapped with his golden strands, a book dangling forgotten from Peeta's fingers as Willow blinks those huge blue eyes once, twice, and bursts into tears.
His hand leaves my arm, the skin beneath it going cold in his abandonment, and for a moment the air is thick with the soothing inanity that only parents and nurses can manage with much success. He gets her down to hiccups and wails that are tinged with connivance, but even when she sucks in a watery breath and calls for me I cannot make myself move, cannot stop the deluge as her tears taper off and mine begin
That's the night when I realize that I'm pregnant with Rye.
I don't tell anyone for weeks. I'm not sick with him the way that I was with her, and Willow is aflutter with two-year old enthusiasm, sending us darting through the days like they're a marathon, too busy coloring the walls in the rooms that are teeming with the dust of desertion; fashioning crowns out of flowers that grow over graves; learning how to walk and then run and then dance in the burned out husk of the Hob.
Peeta teaches her how to ice miniature cakes, and stands with her for hours while her chubby fingers coax impossibly gorgeous animals out of the frosting they blend together at the crack of dawn; gives her lessons on how to mix paint and then laughs as her tiny paintbrush scrawls at the bottom of a canvas while his floats elegantly above; listens to her patiently while she tries valiantly to describe her adventures with "Graymush," all of which seem to end with them having something cold to drink and screaming at the last remaining goose.
Every night Peeta reads to her while I stand at the doorway of her room and watch with envy at the way her eyes, always redolent with contentment, slip easily into the deep security of sleep, at the way that she can sleep with her windows closed and her door shut, at how she can sleep the entire night through.
Late spring, six weeks after we celebrate Willow's third birthday with a cake shaped like a frog, and flowers blossoming on her wall in every color that Peeta's paints can produce, I leave her room after reassuring her for the fourth time that I have not eaten all of the muffins in the house, and hear a pair of voices in the kitchen. It's close to midnight, an hour at which Haymitch is usually comatose on the floor or outside shouting at the crickets, and with a nose wrinkled in trepidation, I try to sneak closer to make out their words.
"-don't know what you're going to do about it at this point," Haymitch is saying when I stick one toe through the banister and lean over as far as I can balance. "It's pretty much permanent, don't you think?"
A strained whisper that I recognize immediately as Peeta's, and I tilt further out over the banister, trying vainly to catch a glimpse of him at the table even as my ankle wobbles dangerously.
"Do you want me to talk to her?" Haymitch asks, and I can hear Peeta's muffled voice but not what he's saying, and just as a I slip my other foot into an opening in the wood and lean forward on both hands there is a loud crack, and tiny splinters dance out of my grasp and sprinkle down on the floor below, giving me away as cleanly as a spotlight.
"Maybe right now?" Haymitch continues archly. "I'm pretty sure she's available."
"Calling him something under my breath that I would no longer dare say to his face, I tuck my feet back on solid ground and creep down the stairs, coming around the corner to see them both looking at me warily; Peeta with his wan face and red-rimmed eyes; Haymitch with tangled hair and jittery hands.
"Talk to me about what?" I ask as nonchalantly as I can, and swing into the chair next to Peeta's. He gives me a half-hearted smile and arches his eyebrows, tilting his head slightly toward Willow's room. In response, I squeeze his hand, and lean forward so that I can see past him to Haymitch.
"What are you doing here?" I ask him.
"I'm filing a complaint," he retorts. "I can't sleep with the light from your kitchen shining into my bedroom."
"Your bedroom is on the opposite end of the house from our kitchen," I say. "You're lying."
He ignores me, as he should.
"Ask her, Peeta," Haymitch says finally, standing up from the table, one hand playing absently with the zipper on the edge of his jacket. "Come over later if you need to."
He leaves us in a heavy silence, and I turn back and look at Peeta, whose blue eyes are so filled with shadows that they are almost black.
"Ask me what?" I repeat, and Peeta sighs and rubs the back of his neck.
"Did you know," he says instead, "that if you sit on the steps outside of the kitchen door, you can see into my old bedroom?"
This takes me aback, and when I stare at him in speechless surprise, he laughs abruptly.
"Of course you didn't," he says darkly. "When would you have ever looked?"
"Why was Haymitch here?" I ask slowly. "What were you talking about?"
The tiniest of tears sparkles at the corner of his eye, and he swipes at it absently and looks at the moisture on the tip of his finger in surprise, as if he is not sure where it came from.
"Are you pregnant, Katniss?" he asks me suddenly.
Unable to think of anything clever, I settle for a mute nod, and he turns his finger out to me in accusation, no gleam left of the tear that has already dried.
"Okay," he says quietly. "Okay."
I have imagined his response hundreds of times, but never in my wildest dream did I ever imagine that he would react with anything other that the champagne joy of when I told him I was pregnant with Willow; the kind that bubbles up helplessly and fizzes like a fountain whenever you set it free.
Instead, the breeze that blows in when he shuts the door behind him is decidedly chilly, and I wrap my arms around my waist and look across the street appraisingly.
Willow keeps us busy enough that we find it easy to push other things out of mind, but there are still days when Peeta stops in mid-sentence and crouches down with his hands on his knees, wheezing as his shoulders shake, tiny petals of red gleaming on his lips where his teeth bite hard enough to draw blood. Days when he sees me at breakfast and makes himself scarce for hours, days when I plait Willow's hair into braids and I see him go white even as he tries to smile and tell her she looks beautiful.
He's right; when I finally stop to look, the view is crystal clear.