What was there was — a woman crying with her hair coming slightly loose from however she'd arranged it at the start of the evening, her floral dress adjusted around the full, round weight of her belly, her hand pressing the handkerchief to her eyes.
Her shoulders rounded with the crying. The specific, vulnerable rounding of someone whose usual posture had been temporarily overridden.
He looked at her.
His expression was what it was — concerned, present, the specific neutral warmth of someone who was exactly what he appeared to be at this moment.
His eyes, briefly, on her.
The moonlight finding the curve of her belly — the five months of it, the specific, full weight of a life being assembled inside a body, the way the floral fabric lay across it. The specific, unselfconscious way she rested her hand there, palm flat, as automatic as breathing.
