Jason

She's pregnant.

There's a little me and her growing 3 feet away from me.

We're going to be parents together…Then I'm going to be a single parent…

That's the one that keeps getting me. The one I keep hiding from her.

It petrifies me.

It's not scary like it was with Michael, I know what to do, I know all of things that go into raising a child. I just don't want to do it alone. I don't want to take our child to visit his mother's grave every Mother's Day. I want there to be a God like everyone always says there is. I want him to take me instead of her. Right here, right now, my life for hers.

I think back to that tacky wedding chapel, I think about how angry I was with her for forcing my hand. Getting married to protect two other marriages. I think about the fact that I married a woman that two other men loved more than their spouses. I understand why they love her now. Everything about her just pulls you in deeper.

She dances around the kitchen when we cook, sometimes even when there's no music. She throws popcorn at me when I look too into a movie. She doesn't sing in the shower, but she'll dance just for a moment or two I'll see a rapid movement of her body that corresponds to the music, she sings though when she takes a bath.

She's reflective now in a way she had never been before. She stops and watches things. A couple in a fight, a couple touching gently and not even realizing it. The fresh snow on a tree, all perfect and still after the end of the storm. I think part of her is wanting to live every moment to its fullest trying to appreciate the things we normally walk by, but I think another part of her is looking for the last time. Will this be her last winter she wonders?

I know now she'll start looking at things and wondering if she'll ever do that with our child. Will he big enough before she's gone for her to push him in a swing? Or what will our daughter wear as I walk her to the school for the first time? I know that it's not just the firsts that matter to Brenda, she wants to be there for it all. The mornings that just don't work out and everything's rushed and frantic. Talking to the principal. Tears over an ended friendship or a broken relationship. Not our child's wedding, but all the months of planning that go into it.

I hate thinking like Brenda….I'm the one that keeps telling her to think in the present since no one's guaranteed a future anyway, yet I keep dwelling.

"What's wrong?"

I turn to her "Hmm? Nothing?"

"You sure? You have a really serious look on your face."

"It's nothing."

"You're lying, but I'm not gonna push. Anyway I'm late. Robin and I are having lunch."

"You gonna tell her about the baby?"

"Any reason why I shouldn't?" she asks

"No" I shake my head. There's a small part of me that worries that something will go wrong and this baby will be taken from her, but I've got to believe that the world couldn't be so cruel. They couldn't be taking her life and that of our child's, her last chance for joy. "I think we should keep it from the Quartermaines for awhile though or we'll never get any peace."

"What about Lila?"

I smile thinking how happy this news will make my grandmother, actually it will make everyone in that family ecstatic, "We have tea with her next week don't we?"

She nods.

"We'll tell her then."

"Sounds good."

Yea it does, almost all of this sounds good except for the fact that we're going to lose