“Daniel.”
“Yes?”
“I think I want to try someday.”
He turned.
“Try what?”
She stared.
He understood.
His face softened.
“Someday.”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
“You're not going to make a speech?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you'll accuse me of practicing.”
She smiled.
Daniel touched her cheek.
“Whenever you're ready.”
That spring, they did not make plans.
They simply stopped being afraid of the possibility.
Months passed.
Nothing happened.
Emily told herself she was fine.
Then one morning she realized she was counting.
Days.
Weeks.
She hated it.
Daniel noticed.
“You're doing arithmetic.”
“No.”
“At breakfast.”
“I can count at breakfast.”
“Dangerous habit.”
She glared.
He smiled.
Then saw her expression.
His disappeared.
“Emily.”
She looked down.
“Nothing.”
He waited.
Finally:
“I thought maybe…”
Daniel understood.
“You're late?”
“I was.”
Her eyes filled.
“Not anymore.”
He sat beside her.
Emily whispered:
“I didn't realize I wanted it this much until I thought maybe it happened.”
Daniel took her hand.
No reassurance.
No “next time.”
No false optimism.
He simply sat with her.
That mattered.
They tried.
Carefully.
Not obsessively.
Still, months became a year.
No child.
Emily’s grief changed shape.
Not constant.
It arrived unexpectedly.
A baptism.
A neighbor announcing pregnancy.
Finding a tiny knitted cap her mother had saved.
Daniel grieved too.
Quietly.
Once Emily found him alone near the south fence watching a father teach his son to throw a rope.
Daniel looked away quickly.
She sat beside him.
“You can be sad.”
“I know.”
“You don't have to hide it because of me.”
He swallowed.
“I don't want my sadness to become your burden.”
“It already is.”
He looked toward her sharply.
Emily squeezed his hand.
“That's marriage.”
His eyes filled.
They sat together until sunset.
Another year passed.
Then something happened that neither expected.
A fire destroyed the Dawson farmhouse six miles east.
The parents survived.
Their youngest daughter did not.
Their oldest son, Nathan, was thirteen.
His mother suffered severe burns.
His father broke both legs.
The boy needed somewhere to stay for weeks.
Daniel brought him home for “a few nights.”
Nathan remained three months.
He was quiet at first.
Angry.
Refused school.
Refused food unless Emily left it and walked away.
Daniel did not know what to do with him.