If Hollis had been outside her body, observing this scene—if she had watched the four of them turn simultaneously, if she had heard the collective intake of breath and seen their eyes bug out of their heads like Wile E. Coyote—she might have laughed.
But she was not outside her body.
She was here, watching Gwen Bardo—dark jeans, high boots, Rapunzel hair—kiss Will Bardo on the lips. She was here, watching Will smile and place a hand on Gwen’s belly.
“What the…” Noah spluttered. “Is that … is she…”
“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘plot twist,’” Abby said.
Hollis blinked. Will’s wife was pregnant, right? She hadn’t just eaten a really big lunch?
No. Hollis shook her head. That belly was freakishly large. Unlike the rest of Gwen Bardo, which looked pretty much the same as it had in the wet suit, on her bio page for the Eden Prairie Cooperative Learning Center. Now, she just looked like she’d swallowed a watermelon. A ginormous watermelon. A ginormous watermelon that Will was gazing at, rubbing with both hands.
“What is he doing?” Abby said.
And JJ—JJ Rabinowitz of all people—said, “He’s communing with the baby.”
Communing with the baby.
A thought popped unbidden into Hollis’s head. Pam had done this, too. When Leigh was pregnant with Hollis. There was a photo somewhere, of Leigh in a butt-ugly maternity shirt—God, what had been on that shirt? Cowboy hats? Sombreros? Hollis couldn’t remember. But she could picture that photo in her mind’s eye: Pam’s hands on Leigh’s belly, both of them gazing down, smiling.
“We can’t go over there,” Hollis blurted.
Milo looked at her. She realized that he hadn’t spoken a word. That he was still not speaking.
“I mean—” Hollis hesitated. “Look at them.”
Will and Gwen. She was handing him something now. It looked like one of those insulated lunch boxes.
“Aww,” Abby said. “She brought snacks.”
Hollis imagined Gwen standing at the kitchen counter of their little farmhouse, chopping up apples. Scooping Goldfish crackers into a baggie. And in that moment of imagining, something loosened inside her.
“They have a life,” she said softly.
Milo nodded. “I know.”
“We can’t just—”
“I know.”