Chapter 30: The Yellow Room

"It goes in the slot," said Jasper's nephew. "Not the hole. The slot."

"That's what I said."

"You said the hole."

"I said hole because the instructions say hole."

The boy, six now, in a dinosaur shirt, took the allen key out of Jasper's hand and put it in mine.

"Aunt Imogen does it."

"I'm not an aunt."

"You will be," he said, with total confidence.

I turned the key, and the crib rail clicked home.

Jasper stood in the doorway of the coast house's second bedroom with a screwdriver in his fist and his mouth twitching.

Nathan sat on the floor with a stuffed rabbit he had bought in three different sizes, and he did not look up.

"I want it noted," my brother said, "that I tried to hire a crew."

"Noted," I said.

"I have four hundred people who build towers."

"They don't build cribs with Jasper's nephew."

"Jasper isn't her husband," said Jasper.

"Not yet," Nathan said to the rabbit.

I laughed so hard that I had to sit on the rocking chair with a hand under my belly.

The room was yellow, a pale warm yellow that I had picked by holding up squares of paint at the window.

Over the crib hung a small sketch in a frame.

A heartbeat line, drawn in pencil, and under it, in my own handwriting, nothing at all.

I had left the space blank on purpose.

Nathan took the boy to get ice cream at dusk, and the house got quiet.

Jasper locked the front door, and came back, and stood in front of the rocking chair.

"Thirty-six weeks," he said.

"Don't count."

"I count everything." He knelt and put his forehead against my stomach. "I'm counting you."

I put my fingers in his hair.

"Take me to bed," I said.

"Is that safe?"

"The doctor said yes. I asked her twice."

He lifted his head, and his eyes were dark.

"Then I'm taking my time."

He carried me down the hall, which he was not supposed to do, and put me on the bed in the main bedroom with the window open to the sound of the sea.

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