Page 136 of Indigo Sky

"The ground level has two bedrooms," she went on, explaining the floor plan of my parents' house as if I hadn't spent most of my life there. "Your parents were telling me that, especially now that they're older, they don't want their bedroom to be upstairs anymore. They're tired of always climbing the stairs."

This was true. Mom had been complaining more often about the arthritis in her knees, and Dad … he was just tired.

"They thought about selling the house since it's just them in this giant six-bedroom place."

This was also true. I remembered thinking it was ridiculous that my parents had even bought such a huge house in the first place. Sure, they had utilized the rooms in one way or another—Mom and Dad both had separate home offices; I’d had a playroom, growing up; the TV was in a den and not the living room; and of course, once Nate had moved in, there had been no trouble making space for him. But now, it was just a big, empty house with only my parents to inject life into it.

Well, most days anyway.

Sundays were a different story—when Nate, Cassie, Jagger, Kate, and I went over for dinner. There was plenty of life in those walls then, and I knew my parents—especially Mom—loved it.

"So …" Kate sighed as I parked the car and turned to finally give her my full attention. "When I told them I took a few pregnancy tests—all of which were positive—"

"Mom cried, didn't she?" I asked, smirking.

“Oh, yeah," Kate replied, her lips twitching reluctantly into a grin. "She's been dying to say something to you, but I kept telling her I hadn't told you yet."

"Why didn't you tell me right away?"

She shrugged helplessly. "I didn't think you'd be happy. The timing is—"

"Listen, I have no idea how this even happened in the first place—"

She interrupted with a sardonic huff. "Yeah, about that. Remember when I had that respiratory infection a few weeks ago?"

"Yeah …"

"Well, apparently, antibiotics can make the pill less effective. I had no freakin' clue until my period just … didn't show up."

I couldn't help but laugh, blown away by the way things just happened. And, sure, maybe it was just a faulty interaction of a couple of medications … or maybe it was fate interrupting our plans to say,Ready or not, here I come.

"Sweetheart," I said softly, reaching out to take her hand from her lap, "the timing might not be perfect, but this is. I couldneverbe unhappy about this."

"That's what your mom said you'd say," she whispered, swatting a tear away. "She told me we could take over the upstairs. We could share the kitchen, but otherwise, we’d have all the space and privacy we need up there. They would move their bedroom downstairs, which they wanna do anyway. And I know it's probably not what you want to do, Rev, but I think it's actually a—"

"Okay."

"Good idea. I love your parents’ house. It feels like a home. And I love that it's still close to the nursing home, and it's closerto Cassie, and I'm sure she and Nate are probably going to have more kids eventually, so we could get together for playdates, and—"

“Sweetheart"—I squeezed her hand—"I said, okay."

The car was dark and silent, and although I couldn't see well within shadows this deep, I could feel her gaze on me.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really," I said, nodding.

She pulled in a deep breath, her nose sniffling. "You have no idea how badly I wanted you to say that."

And so, six months after we'd moved into our own place, we broke the lease with the landlord and moved back into my parents' house. For the third time in my life, I stepped through my bedroom door and knew I was home, but this time, it was without an end goal in sight. This place, this house …

This was it. We were home. And I couldn't wait for this next imperfect, wonderful, and wild chapter to begin.

“Babe.”

I glanced over my shoulder to watch Kate walk into my—our—room.

“Yeah?”

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