Chapter 123 Something Bigger

Chapter 123 Something Bigger
William's hand rested over Melissa’s.
"You know what I keep thinking?" he asked quietly.
"What?"
He looked toward the fountain. "That we almost missed this."
Melissa's throat tightened. "William..."
"We almost lost everything." His voice was low.
He swallowed.
"If one thing had gone differently..."
Melissa turned toward him.
"But it didn't."
She reached up and touched his face. "We're here." 
Then he smiled the smile she loved most. His face was completely still. Not the controlled stillness he used in boardrooms. This was different. 
This was the stillness of a man whose entire internal world was moving very fast and whose face had not caught up yet.
She had started to say something. He held up one finger.
“One more second.” He said.
He laughed. This came from somewhere below all of that loud and sudden and entirely helpless, the laugh of a man ambushed by joy in his own kitchen.
He pressed his fist to his mouth, but the laugh kept coming.
"William"
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, I just"
He laughed again.
Melissa stared at him. "Is this your reaction? You're laughing?"
"I'm not laughing at you," he said. "I'm laughing at" He gestured broadly at everything. The kitchen. The house. The universe. 
"All of it. We are getting married in thirteen days, the company is finally breathing again, Lily has just this week decided her life's ambition is to be a professional crayon reviewer, and now this." 
He held out his hand for the test, and she gave it to him. He looked at it up close.
The laugh stopped. His eyes went bright.
He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth.
"Oh," he said.
"I'm fine," he said. 
His eyes filled.
He looked up at the ceiling the way people do when they try to use gravity to solve a problem gravity cannot solve.
"Thirteen days," he said. "We will be together finally."
"Yes, William."
He looked at her.
"We're having a baby," he said.
He crossed the kitchen in two steps and pulled her in so completely and so suddenly that she made an involuntary sound of surprise that she would later deny making.
He held her the way he had held her at the courthouse steps, not desperately, but with the careful, deliberate gratitude of a man who has learned the difference between taking something for granted and choosing it.
She felt him exhale against her hair.
Long. Slow. Like he had been holding it since the moment she held up the test.
"Hi," he said into her hair. Again. The same word from the stairs earlier.
"You keep saying that," she said into his chest.
"You keep giving me reasons to."
She pressed her face harder against him. Felt him laugh again, the one that lived in his chest.
They stood in the kitchen for what was probably three minutes and felt like longer.
Outside, the evening continued. Inside, the cartoons played. Lily's occasional commentary on the animation drifted through the wall with the comfortable certainty of a child who had no idea the world had just expanded.
"We have to tell her," Melissa said eventually.
William pulled back and looked at her.
"Tonight?"
"She'll know something is happening. She always knows."
This was true. Lily had the instincts of someone who had spent her whole short life paying close attention to the emotional weather of the adults around her. 
You could not hide a significant feeling from Lily Hill. You could only decide whether to explain it or let her draw her own conclusions, and her own conclusions were frequently creative.
"Do you want us to tell her together?" he asked.
"Definitely together," Melissa said. "I need a witness."
They found her exactly as they left her, cross-legged on the sitting room floor, approximately eight inches from the television.
"Lily," William called.
"Mm."
"Can you turn that down?"
Lily considered the fairness of this observation, then picked up the remote and lowered the volume with the air of someone making a generous concession.
She looked at them.
Her eyes moved between their faces with the rapid assessment of a child who is very good at reading rooms.
"What happened?" she asked.
William sat on the sofa, and Melissa sat beside him. They looked at Lily on the floor, and she looked back. She clearly looked confused.
"Is it good or bad?" Lily said.
"Good," Melissa said.
"Very good," William said.
Lily's expression shifted from assessment to interest. She turned fully toward them and sat up straighter.
"Tell me," she said.
William and Melissa looked at each other—the briefest negotiation.
They looked back at Lily.
"You know how it's been you and me and Mama?" William said.
"And also Nana Grant," Lily said, with the accuracy of a child who does not appreciate incomplete inventories.
"Yes, and Nana Grant," he agreed. "And everyone else but the three of us, here, in this house."
"Yes," Lily said slowly. 
"How would you feel about there being four of us?" Melissa said carefully.
Lily stared at her.
"Four," she said.
The silence lasted exactly as long as it took Lily to do the arithmetic. Then her mouth dropped open.
"Is there another baby coming?" she said, at a volume that suggested the neighbors two houses down had now also been informed.
"Lily"
"Yes," Melissa said. "But you don't need to"
Lily rose from cross-legged to fully upright in one movement, which was physically impressive and slightly alarming.
"I’m going to be a big sister," she announced to the room and to anyone within a reasonable radius.
"Yes, you are," William said. 
Lily spun around once, a complete three-sixty, apparently an involuntary physical response to significant news, and then dropped to her knees directly in front of Melissa.
She looked at Melissa's stomach with the focused intensity of a scientist examining a discovery.
"Can it hear me?" she asked.
"Not yet," Melissa said.
"When?"
"A while yet."
Lily leaned forward anyway. Put her face close to Melissa's stomach.
"Hello," she said. Loudly, apparently not trusting the science.
"Lily"
"I'm practicing," Lily said, pulling back with the dignity of a professional. William pressed his fist against his mouth.
Melissa pointed at him. "Do not encourage her."
The naming conversation began approximately ninety seconds later.
Lily had climbed onto the sofa between them and produced, from somewhere, the small notebook she used for what she called her important lists.
"Names," she said, pen ready.
"We don't know if it's a boy or girl yet," Melissa said.
Lily looked at her with polite patience.
"I'll do both," she said.
William rubbed his face with both hands.
"Go ahead," he said.
Lily consulted the blank page with great seriousness.
"For a girl," she said. "Rose because flowers are nice." She wrote this down with enormous letters. "Or Sunshine, that can be a name."
"It can be a nickname," William said carefully.
"I'll put it as a nickname," Lily agreed, making amendments. "For a boy." She thought. "James or  Biscuit."
"Biscuit is not a name," Melissa said.
"It could be a nickname."
Lily wrote it down anyway, in smaller letters, as if size would make it less visible.