In fact, it isn’t only easy. It feels right.
My hand glides along my stomach once again. Yeah…it feels right.
At nineteen years old, my path is taking off in a different direction. One where I’m going to build a family with the guy I love.
The wind picks up its tempo just as the lights around the park flickered to life, making my blonde strands of hair fly and the empty swings around me sway with quiet creaks in theirold joints. The dead leaves surrounding the ground scattered impulsively in a little whirlwind while the ones on the branches were waving around me, like tiny, willowy arms, almost as if hustling me out of their quiet domain.
I should probably listen to them. I should get moving if I don’t want to be caught in the crosshairs of this storm that’s brewing tonight while walking over to Joey’s house, yet something is keeping me rooted to the spot.
I feel at peace here.
But as another gust of wind sweeps over my chilled body, I finally make myself move. Thankfully, the walk to Joey’s place isn’t a long one. His apartment is on the locals’ side of Iris Lake and not the flashy, expensive tourist one his parents favor, keeping their vacation home there.
So, I draw the lapels of my coat and hurry along the slowly deserting streets.
Stella has offered to give me a loan for a car countless times—knowing I’d never accept it as a gift—but still, I’ve never taken it. Cars are expensive, even the old kind. You still need to fill them up and fix them, and I just don’t have the money for that when Dad can’t keep working as much as he used to and with my brother upping his game more and more every day.
Thankfully, my small town in Vermont is just that…small, and it’s quite easy to get around on foot.
Well, that will change in about seven months…
My hand lands on my still-flat stomach.
A lot of things are about to change.
Maybe I won’t even be in Iris Lake then. Joey will most likely want us to move to Boston seeing as he’s getting progressively further in his studies and then he has law school. It wouldn’t make sense for us to live in Iris Lake. We’ve talked about it before, without even knowing about my pregnancy, so it only makes sense…
A slow trickle of frigid wind licks at my face in a warning before the sky lights up with lightning so bright it blinds me for a second, making me stop in my tracks. A moment later, the growling thunder catches up with it, making the trees around me shake with its power. Its angry roar seeping underneath my skin and taking hold.
It looks like a bad one, which means I need to get home before the buckets I’ve set up fill with rain water from the leaking ceiling. The last thing I want to do tonight after coming home soaked from head to toe is mop the floors in the dead of night.
Electricity isn’t always a given in our house, but Dad tries as hard as he can. I know that, just like I know I can go over to my trainer’s house and she’d help me out, but she’s already doing more than enough for me. I can take care of myself, and I do. And I’ll take care of my baby.
Both Joey and I will take care of our baby.
He will have everything I never even dreamed about as a kid. He will never have to walk the streets in the evening, looking for scraps behind restaurants or watch tourists like a hawk to see if any of them left their hot coffee or tea behind when they were shopping, just so I could get at least a sip of something warm into my system during the cold winter days.
My hand clutches over my stomach as excitement strums through my blood at the thought but just as fast as it came, it was chased away by another bout of a ruckus thunder.
The sound so loud, so vicious, it shook the ground I knew to be my life, shooting straight through me. Making me halt and look up at the darkening sky. The storm turns the usual deep blues and whites into shades of rich, angry purple as the sky cracks open with yet another lightning.
The trees shake again and then…a whisper runs through my blood.
Startled, I gasp and turn around, my eyes sweeping across the street but it’s empty, deserted. There’s no one to whisper those words into my ear.
No one but the storm.
I didn’t have to look down to feel the hairs on my body raise just as the most ominous feeling settles over me.
There’s something in the air. Something dark and dangerous and it’s coming fast. A song carried by a thousand winds. My eyes scan the dark night once again, trying to listen past the howling and thunder to decipher what it’s saying.
But the wind only picks up, hasting its pace as each beat ricochets off my ears. Almost as if taunting me to decipher it. To heed their warning, but I can’t.
Crack, crack, crack…
My heart starts racing and fear courses though my blood, tainting it as the storm picks up and gained force.
It almost feels like…like…
