You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t stick his
head in it.
— Paul Owen, player
Since Tim knew anyway, Suzanna finally broke down and headed to the maternity shop in the mall, Aunt Sadie going along with her.
“Fat clothes,” Suzanna said, holding up a pair of jeans with a huge elastic front panel in them. “I don’t want to wear fat clothes.”
“This from the woman who just downed two hamburgers and fries? How much have you gained, dear?”
Suzanna hung her head. “Fifteen pounds, seven of them this month,” she said, a sudden memory of her mother, years ago, gently steering her away from potatoes and toward the broccoli invading her head. “Dr. Phillips told me that the month I really begin to show is the month I’ll gain the most weight. At least that’s been her experience with her patients. I’ve got a thirty-five-pound limit, so I’m still doing okay.”
Aunt Sadie began ticking off on her fingers. “December, January, February, March, most of April. Five months, divided by twenty, leaves four pounds a month. Can you keep to that?”
Suzanna held up a knit, turtleneck top, cut on the bias, and large enough to use as a couch cover. “I have to do this, Aunt Sadie. I used to be fat, and I don’t ever want to be fat again. It’s all Tim’s fault, you know.”
“Oh, good, let’s blame Timothy. He deserves it.”
“No, seriously, Aunt Sadie. He used to feed me. Constantly. His mom was such a great cook, and he always shared with me so I’d share the great lunches my mom packed for me. Except he got the home-cooked roast beef sandwiches, and I got the lemon sponge cake. He’d eat two sandwiches, I’d eat two desserts. And, believe me, the last thing I needed every day was two desserts. But it didn’t stop there.”
Aunt Sadie pulled a nursing bra off the rack, looked at it, quickly put it back. “No? Where else did it go?”
Suzanna sighed. “I started eating to feel good. There’s really no other explanation, although nobody had that one back then. It’s only in the last few years that science has started talking about eating as a comfort in teenagers. Tim went to a dance; I stayed home and ate a half gallon of chocolate marshmallow ice cream. Tim gave Mindy his class ring, and I ate a whole bowl of raw chocolate-chip batter. God, I was sick for three days after that one. Not that I only started in high school. I was already pretty hefty in grade school, thanks to my mother’s own great cooking.” She looked at the other woman. “Do you suppose that’s why I don’t cook? Because, if I did, I’d eat it all?”
“Could be, I suppose. But it was baby fat, Suzanna, and gone now.”
“Only because I finally wised up, realized what I was doing, and changed my diet. And moved away from Tim. Now I’m back and what do I get—baby fat.”
“And a baby,” Aunt Sadie reminded her. “This is entirely different.”
“Yeah? Explain that to my stomach, would you? All I want to do is eat. Eat, eat, eat. When I’m upset, it’s all I do. Eat.”
“Keely ate everything that wasn’t nailed down for several months, as I recall, once the morning sickness stopped. You know you’re trying to make a perfectly rational reaction to being pregnant just another thing that’s wrong in your life, don’t you, dear?” Aunt Sadie said, moving on to the rack of maternity underwear. “Now, these don’t look so bad.”
“Am I, Aunt Sadie?” Suzanna asked, taking a pair of underpants off the rack. “Darn, and I wanted to blame Tim.”
“Hello, ladies. Which one of you is expecting a great event?”
“Cute,” Aunt Sadie said, “but nothing but a discount is going to get me to open my purse any wider than I’ve already planned.”
“Oh, Aunt Sadie, that’s not why I brought you with—”
“I know, dear, but I’ve planned your wardrobe as my Christmas present to you. Your wedding present, too, since we never got to throw you and Tim a party.”
The clerk looked from Suzanna to Aunt Sadie, measuring both of them, an avaricious glint in her eyes. “You want to start with undergarments? That’s a good place to start. When are you due, dear? You’re definitely blooming. How about we go into the dressing room, dear, and I’ll measure you?”
“Oh, God,” Suzanna said, wincing. “I’m going to hate this.”
And she did. She hated that maternity bras, while not really terrible, weren’t exactly great, either. She hated that maternity underwear, as explained by Martha, the salesperson, was to be worn with the waistband inches higher than her rapidly disappearing waist.
Standing in front of the mirrors—why on earth anyone would put three-panel mirrors in a maternity shop dressing room was totally beyond Suzanna—dressed in nothing but maternity bra and the above-the-waist underpants, she decided that the next time Tim saw her naked would be in his dreams!
Because there was no way in hell he was going to see her looking like this.
Aunt Sadie came into the room without knocking, carrying an armload of slacks, sweaters, blouses, and a few dresses. “Ready to start?”
“Ready to go hide,” Suzanna said, grabbing a pair of the slacks and quickly stepping into them. Oh, this was great. These fit around her expanded waist... and now the underwear stuck out above them. “Quick, hand me one of those tops.”
A very long ninety minutes later, Suzanna and Aunt Sadie sat in the pizza parlor across from the maternity store with several bags on the floor beside them, Aunt Sadie sipping a soda, Suzanna working on her second slice of pepperoni pizza. She’d skipped the garlic bread, and figured she was at least making a start on eating more sensibly.
“Martha told me she thinks you look just a little too advanced to be only four months along. She wanted to know if you’ve had a sonogram.”
“Had one,” Suzanna said around a mouthful of pizza. “On my first visit. I don’t get another one for a couple of months, as long as I’m doing well. Why? What does Martha think?”
“Other than that, if she’s on commission, she’s made one great sale today? Well, dear, she mentioned twins. So I told her that Tim was a twin, and—”
“Grrrummmmff!” Suzanna quickly picked up her napkin and coughed her half-chewed pizza into it before she choked. Then she grabbed another napkin and wiped at her eyes. “That is not amusing, Aunt Sadie.”
“Funny. I thought it was,” Aunt Sadie said with a grin. “When do you go to the doctor again?”
“Next week, and Tim insists on going with me.”
“He’s concerned.”
“He’s nuts, that’s what he is,” Suzanna grumbled. “Like I want him there when I step on the scale? I don’t think so.”
“But he’s going?”
“Yes, he’s going. I warned him that I’m going to tell Dr. Phillips about his male pregnancy symptoms, and he doesn’t care. He says they’re not so bad now. But I saw him downing some antacids last night, so he’s lying to me. I’m telling you, Aunt Sadie, the man is driving me crazy.”
“How?”
Suzanna looked at the rest of her pizza and knew she wasn’t hungry anymore. “How? It’s school lunch all over again. He takes me out to dinner, that’s one. He rents movies and insists I watch them with him, then pops popcorn—with butter—and all but hand feeds it to me. And he reads. He has more books on pregnancy and delivery than Dr. Phillips, I swear it. He’s obsessed with my labor and delivery.”
Aunt Sadie nodded sagely. “Because of Keely. He’s worried, Suzanna. He’s really worried.”
“Well, he should be,” Suzanna said, knowing she was being entirely irrational. “He is the one who got me this way, remember.”
“You know, dear, some would call you heartless.”
Suzanna bit her lips together.
“I mean, he’s being so good, trying so hard. We told him to court you, and he’s—”
“Wait. Back up a moment. You told him to court me? Who’s you? Keely? Mrs. B.? Or did you just send out postcards all over Whitehall, asking for a vote?”
Aunt Sadie nodded, not realizing that suddenly, Suzanna had designs on the woman’s neck, and her hands squeezing it. “He’s been so lost. We know he made a mistake, Suzanna; but he really meant well, and we told him he’d just have to take his time, prove to you that he—”
Suzanna held up her hands, really angry now. “You can stop there. I think I get it. Does anyone in this family have any idea what the concept of private lives is all about? Since when did Tim and I become some darn committee project?”
Aunt Sadie didn’t even blink. “Since the two of you began making total asses of yourselves, I suppose.”
Suzanna’s mouth opened, then shut again, and she sagged in her seat. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Okay.”
“He loves you, Suzanna,” Aunt Sadie said, reaching across the small table to take one of Suzanna’s hands in hers. “He didn’t know it when he married you, but he knows it now.”
Now the tears were threatening. “He doesn’t say anything.”
“Doesn’t he? He’s reading all the books. He wants to go to the doctor with you. He’s popping you popcorn.”
“With double butter,” Suzanna said, trying to maintain her anger, but it wasn’t working.
“It’s you now, isn’t it, dear?” Aunt Sadie asked, giving Suzanna’s hand a final squeeze, then sitting back in her chair. “You’re the one who isn’t sure.”
Suzanna lowered her head, feeling the heat rush into her cheeks. “I love him... but...”
“But you think maybe it’s leftover puppy love, like the puppy fat you got rid of years ago?”
Suzanna looked at Aunt Sadie, blinking back tears. “How can I know? How can Tim know? We got married for all the wrong reasons.”
“Tim, to save himself from a worse fate, and you, because you figured it was time you finally won one?”
Suzanna made a face. “That’s it, in a nutshell.” She put a hand on her belly. “This baby deserves better than that, Aunt Sadie.”
“Yes, dear, he does. Or she does. Or”—Aunt Sadie paused, smiled—“they do.”
“Oh, God...” Suzanna said, sinking in her chair once more.
* * *
“Don’t look. You promised not to look.”
Tim dutifully turned his back as Suzanna stepped on the scale, then turned around as the nurse, obviously not part of Suzanna’s secrecy plot, brightly called out, “One hundred forty-three. Hmmm, that’s another eight pounds, Mrs. Trehan. Dr. Phillips is not going to be happy.”
Suzanna mumbled something under her breath as she stepped off the scale, then glared at Tim. “Not one word. Not a single damn word, you got that?”
He held up his hands. “Who? Me? I wouldn’t even think about it.”
Then he grinned, once Suzanna was walking ahead of him, into one of the examination rooms. What was she worried about? She looked cute, damn cute. Her cheeks were fuller, her breasts were—no, he couldn’t think about her breasts, not if he wanted to sleep nights. And her backside? Hey, there was a handful. He had a flash of a Lone Star song in his head, one of his favorite groups. Something about hating to watch a lover leave, but sure loving watching her go.
“Are you coming, or what?” Suzanna asked from the doorway, and Tim quickly caught up with her, then wished he hadn’t.
Small room. Big table. Those stirrup things for Suzanna’s feet—somebody would have to hunt him down and tackle him to get him in that position.
And artwork. A huge poster showing the nine months of fetal development, in color. Another showing the stages of labor—the one showing the baby’s head half out of the mother was particularly vivid.
And a sort of plaster of paris wall hanging with arrows drawn on it and words like cervix, and uterus, and vulva and... Well, he really didn’t want to look.
After helping Suzanna onto the end of the table, where she sat, glaring at him, he found a pamphlet and decided the safest thing he could do was take a chair and read it.
He put it back down when he saw it was a breast feeding instruction pamphlet, with photographs. Not line drawings. Photographs.
What was he doing here? He felt about as out of water as a fish on top of the Alps.
“You could go back to the waiting room,” Suzanna said as he stared at his feet. At least they were his feet. He could trust his own feet.
“No, that’s okay,” he said, rubbing at his gut. The burrito he’d had for lunch was lying there, like Gibraltar. “I have some questions for the doctor.”
“You’re kidding.”
He looked up at her. She looked so cute in that long sweater and those slim jeans. Didn’t she know how cute she looked? “No, really. I want to know about those parents classes.”
“Birthing classes? Tim, I don’t think you want to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because, then you’d have to be in the delivery room, remember? Like Jack?”
“Jack never made it to the delivery room,” Tim said, feeling the muscles clenching in his jaw.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. You don’t want me there. You don’t want me to be your cheerleader.”
“Oh, Tim—” Suzanna said, sighing. Then the door opened, and Dr. Phillips and a nurse stepped into the room.
Tim ran a hand under the collar of his shirt, suddenly claustrophobic. What was he doing here with all these women and all these pictures of... women stuff? His had been a male household, except for his mom, who definitely had been outnumbered.
He had a sudden flashback of the day he’d been looking for another bar of soap and found his mom’s sanitary products under the bathroom sink. He’d asked what the box was for, and got his one and only sex education lesson from his mother.
After that, he did his best to stay away from “women stuff.”
Now he was surrounded by it.
“Mr. Trehan, how nice to meet you,” Dr. Phillips said, extending a hand to him as he stood up, remembering his manners. “You look very much like your brother.”
“Yeah. Identical twins.”
“Interesting. One sperm, one ovum, and a split. Fraternal twins are more common. Well, Suzanna,” she said, turning to her, “I take it any morning sickness is definitely all gone?”
Suzanna blushed to the roots of her hair. “I gained eight pounds. I know.”
“You’re still under the limit, and even limits have extensions; but I would like to measure your belly if that’s all right with you?”
Suzanna nodded, then lay back on the table, the nurse draping a paper sheet over her.
“I... I mean, maybe I should...?”
“No, no, Daddy,” Dr. Phillips said. “You’re a part of this.”
Yes, he was, wasn’t he? Tim stepped closer to the table.
“What’s that?” he asked as the nurse squeezed something from a tube onto Suzanna’s now bare belly, and then Dr. Phillips began moving a small plastic rectangle across Suzanna’s skin.
“I’m looking for the baby’s heartbeat,” the doctor told him, and Tim had this sudden urge to sit down again. But he stood there, waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
“Ah, here we are. Hiding, weren’t you?” Dr. Phillips said as a quick thump-thum-thump echoed in the room. The nurse held up her arm, watched her wristwatch. “So?”
“One-forty-four, Doctor.”
“Thank you. All right, now let’s measure.”
Expecting something else high-tech, Tim was surprised to see the nurse hand the doctor a regular cloth tape measure. He looked away as she pulled Suzanna’s slacks lower, then measured from there to Suzanna’s navel.
She glanced over at Suzanna’s opened chart, then looked at the tape measure again.
“Hmmm, let’s do that one again, shall we?”
“Why? What?” Tim asked, instantly panicking.
Dr. Phillips ignored him. “No, that’s right. Suzanna, when was your last sonogram?”
“Why? What?” Tim asked, reaching the second level of panic. After this, it was either the doctor talked to him, or he grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her until she did.
“Nothing’s wrong, Mr. Trehan,” Dr. Phillips said, going over to the sink and washing her hands as the nurse helped Suzanna pull up her slacks and sit up once more. “It’s just that your wife’s uterus is growing faster than I expected. Unless we’ve got the due date wrong, of course. Suzanna? Are you sure of the date?”
“No, I told you I wasn’t. The earliest I can figure is near the end of July,” Suzanna said, looking at Tim.
He flinched, remembering the day he’d tossed that “if I am the father” line at her in the heat of anger.
“Yes, I remember now,” Dr. Phillips said, paging through Suzanna’s chart. “Irregular periods. All right, this is what we do. We get another sonogram. Iris? Set it up, please.”
“So that’s it?” Suzanna asked. “You think I’m farther along than we thought? But I can’t be.”
“Then maybe we’ve got multiples.”
“Multiples?” Tim asked, the sound of the ocean somehow rushing in his ears.
“Twins, Mr. Trehan. I only got one heartbeat, but twins can be tricky. One could be hiding behind the other one.”
Tim didn’t remember hitting the floor....
* * *
It was the longest ten days in Suzanna’s life, waiting for the appointment at the hospital, and the sonogram that would tell them if, just maybe, she was carrying twins.
“Are you okay?”
She looked across the car at Tim as he cut the engine in the hospital parking lot. “I’m fine. Please stop looking at me as if I’m going to explode at any moment. You’re driving me crazy.”
“Sorry,” he said, pulling the key from the ignition. “It’s just that... I mean... twins?”
“Or I’m just fat,” she said, opening the door and stepping out into the late November cold. She pulled her jacket around her, but it didn’t quite reach, so she couldn’t zipper it. She needed a new coat. Maybe a horse blanket, if she hoped to wear it for the entire winter.
There had been a light, early snow two days after Thanksgiving, and the cold temperatures had kept it from melting, so she was glad when Tim took her arm as they walked through the parking lot.
“You feel okay?”
“Tim, please, just stop asking that. If it’s twins, it’s twins. There’s not a whole lot we can do about it now.”
“I know, but I feel... responsible.”
She rolled her eyes, trying not to laugh. “That’s because you are, dummo. You and your little swimmers.”
She loved doing that to him. Anything faintly related to conception made him go all confused and flustered.
Except this time, he didn’t get flustered. “I wonder, do you think they were doing the backstroke? Or did they do a fifty-yard dash while your egg stood on the street corner, her skirt hitched up, and a come-hither look in her eyes?”
“Tim!” Suzanna exclaimed, blushing. “Control yourself.”
“Hey, if we can’t joke around at a time like this, when can we, Suze? Or aren’t you as nervous as I am?”
“Oh, I’m nervous,” she said as they approached the desk in the Ultrasound Department. “Suzanna Trehan, here for a sonogram?”
“And Mr. Trehan,” Tim piped up immediately.
“Okay,” the desk clerk said, smiling at both of them. “Dr. Phillips is in the hospital and asked that we page her when you showed up. If you’ll just sit down over there? We’ll be with you as soon as possible.”
Suzanna looked at Tim, then took his hand. “She’s here? She just got the report the first time. I don’t like this, Tim.”
They sat quietly, still holding hands, until a technician called their names, and they followed him into a darkened room filled with several large pieces of medical equipment.
Suzanna got up on the table, and there she was again, bare belly sticking out with Tim standing right there to see it all. How glamorous.
“Good morning, everybody,” Dr. Phillips chirped happily as she came into the room in scrubs and a white lab coat. “Just delivered Miss Elizabeth Anne, seven pounds, three ounces. It’s a lovely day.”
Suzanna squeezed Tim’s hand, trying to relax. After all, Dr. Phillips was smiling. “That’s nice, Doctor,” she said. “Isn’t that nice, Tim? Elizabeth Anne. What a pretty name.”
“You two have any names yet?” Dr. Phillips asked, washing her hands at the sink, then taking the piece of equipment the technician handed her.
“No.”
“Yes.”
Suzanna looked at Tim. “You’ve looked at names?”
“Just a couple,” he told her, grinning. “Hermione, Archibald. You know, the usual stuff.”
“Idiot,” she said, wanting to hug him. He was being so sweet, and she was being such a bear.
But she was so scared.
Let it be one baby; let it be twins. Quintuplets, she didn’t care. Just let them be healthy. And bless Tim for understanding that this baby was all-consuming to her right now, that even he had to at last take a backseat in her life.
As long as he came along for the ride.
* * *
“So, how did it go?” Jack asked, walking into the pro shop at the golf course.
Tim was there, taking some inventory. The course was closed, but the pro shop was still busy with Christmas shoppers, although they would close soon after the holiday, reopening when the course did.
“Okay,” he said, his back still turned to his brother as he counted golf gloves. “The baby’s fine.”
“Just one baby? Keely told me—”
“Nope. Just one. Dr. Phillips spent a lot of time, sure there were two, but she never found another one, or another heartbeat. She says that happens sometimes. We get another sonogram next month.”
“Bummer. So you still don’t know for sure?”
“Nope,” Tim bit out, putting down the stack of gloves. He’d lost count anyway. “Want a soda?”
“Sure,” Jack said, following him into the snack bar, then sitting down on one of the stools as Tim went behind the bar and pulled out two cans. “Hey, your head looks all healed. That must have been something, fainting like that?”
Tim rubbed at the spot where a huge scab had finally dried up and fallen off. He’d not only fainted like a jerk, but he’d hit his head on one of the damn stirrups on the way down. “It was embarrassing; that’s what it was. Damn nurse, leaning over me, shoving that smelly thing under my nose.”
“You had a shock,” Jack said, trying to hide a smile, and not succeeding.
“I made a jackass out of myself, bro. Just say it.”
“I don’t have to; you just did. How’s Suzanna?”
“Fine, I guess. Relieved. Dr. Phillips says the baby looks extremely healthy to her.”
“Good,” Jack said, turning the soda can in his hands. “Hey, bro, would you do me a favor?”
Tim looked at his brother, wondering at his serious tone. “Sure. An arm, a leg, a kidney. Name it.”
“Nothing that serious, thank you anyway,” Jack said, grinning. “Keely and I want you and Suzanna to stand as godparents to Johnny. Would you mind?”
“Mind?” Tim thought his grin might split his face. “God, that’s great. What do we have to do?”
“Take godparent classes, for one thing. First one is next Friday.”
“Friday, huh? That’s okay. We start parents class on Thursday.”
Jack held out his hand to high five his brother. “Way to go! She’s agreed to let you be her coach?”
“As long as I promise not to faint, yeah. Dr. Phillips says I have to master that one, or nobody will let me in the delivery room. Well, she’d let me in, but she warned me that if I keel over, they’re just going to let me lie there and step over me.”
Jack shook his head. “Big, bad Tim the Tiger Trehan. Hitting the floor. I still don’t believe it.”
“It wasn’t my most shining hour,” Tim admitted, downing the last of his soda. “Hey, did I tell you? Suzanna’s resigning, effective the end of the year. She’s staying home.”
“Fantastic. And you don’t leave for spring training for a couple of months after that. Well, almost a couple of months. This is good. You need time together. Maybe you can take a trip, have that honeymoon.”
“Honeymoon? You mean Suzanna, me, and her belly? I don’t think so. I’m still sleeping in the back bedroom. The cats don’t even sleep with me.”
“Well, there is that,” Jack said, scratching, at the side of his cheek. “No progress, huh?”
“Some. She talks to me. She cooks for me.”
“That’s progress? Keely says Suzanna’s got a long way to go before she should solo in the kitchen.”
“No, really, she’s getting pretty good. You know Suzanna. When she puts her mind to something, it usually gets done, and gets done right. Although I have remembered that she was kept off high honors twice in our senior year because she got C’s in home economics. Now I know why.”
They were both silent for a few minutes, thinking their own thoughts, before Tim said, “Do you think she’d do it?”
“Do what? I was just taking a moment to catch up on my sleep. Johnny thinks we run an all-night diner.”
“Go away with me. After the first of the year, I mean, once she isn’t working anymore?”
Jack shrugged. “I guess you’d have to ask her, bro. Keely and I, and everyone else, have resigned from The Help Tim Club, you know. Suzanna got pretty peeved when she finally figured out that we all told you she was pregnant.”
“Joey’s still giving me advice,” Tim said as they walked back to the pro shop.
“You’re kidding.”
“No, really. He sent me some psych books, and a couple of letters. I don’t think they teach spelling in Bayonne. Anyway, he’s coming up for Christmas, with Bruno. Suzanna invited them. I think he thinks he’s Dear Abby or something.”
“He sure has changed, hasn’t he, now that dear sister Cecily’s out of the picture.”
“And good riddance,” Tim said. “The last thing Candy needs in her life is a visit from Cecily.”
“That won’t happen. Candy’s all legally ours now, and Cecily hasn’t so much as sent a card since the day she left. Joey told me he’d heard that she’s in South America, doing God only knows what. She just sends home for money.”
“Senorita Cecily. Has a certain ring to it, I suppose. Wonder if she’s starting a revolution—she could do that, you know,” Tim said, locking up the pro shop and heading to the parking lot, where only his and Jack’s cars waited. “Well, time to go home to Little Mother. Wonder who she’s going to be tonight.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, bro, that either I come home to a house smelling of supper cooking, or I come home to a woman waiting for me, coat over her arm, so we can go to Tony’s for dinner. Good mommy day, dinner at home, where we actually talk to each other a little, some television, early bed. Bad day? Well, the early to bed stays the same.”
“Tony’s, huh? That’s not so bad. I like their desserts. Banana cream pie? Could do worse, right?”
“Right. Except that Suzanna always makes sure she sits with her back to the dessert case, and then gives in and orders something anyway. Then she glares at me, like it’s all my fault.”
“Ah, pregnancy. Those were the days, Tim. I’m not looking forward to the next time.”
“Next time? After what you and Keely went through? Are you nuts?”
“No, Tim,” Jack said, as his tone went quite serious. “We want more children, definitely. Dr. Phillips says the odds are very high that this will never happen again. Life is life, Tim, and we have to live it. For Keely, and for me, that includes more children. If they come along, great; if they don’t, then we’ll live with that. But we will live.”
Tim put his arm around his brother’s shoulders, gave him a squeeze. “You’ve always been my hero, Jack, do you know that?”
“And you’re mine, except when you swoon like some Victorian lady. Now, let’s go home to our wives.”
Twenty minutes later, Tim walked into the kitchen to see Suzanna frowning over something in a frying pan on the stove.
“Problem?” he asked, leaving the door open before the smoke alarm could go off, then making his way through the haze, to the stove.
“Oh, Tim, I burnt the pork chops,” Suzanna wailed, turning to him. “One minute they were fine, and the next—”
He held his arms out to her, and she allowed him to hold her, comfort her.
“It’s okay, babe, it’s okay. I wanted some banana cream pie anyway, honest.” Then he kissed her hair, snuggled her closer. He could swear he felt his heart growing larger, warmer, inside his chest.
It was a start.