Free Dream of You by Lauren Gilley

late.”
                  Jess’s eyes widened. “You’re pregnant?”
                  “Oh my God.” Delta’s voice from the threshold sent a shot of adrenaline to Jo’s heart. Her head whipped in that direction and she found the brunette frozen in her tracks, a steaming mug held in both hands, tail of a tea bag dangling over its rim. “Jo, you’re pregnant ?” Her dark eyes were big as half dollars. “Oh my God!”
                  “Please,” Jo said, desperation rallying in her belly. “I haven’t been to the doc - ”
                  “Oh, gosh,” Delta continued. “I wasn’t going to say anything because it’s so early - ”
                  “Delta,” Jo pleaded. “Don’t - ”
                  “ – but I’m pregnant too!” she said with a happy squeal, eyes crinkling to slits as a rare, honest smile sliced across her face.
                  “Do not say anything,” Jess warned, but Delta didn’t hear them.
                  “This is so exciting, girls! We can be pregnant together – oh! Tandem baby showers!” She scowled. “You better not have yours before mine. It’s bad enough you got married first. When are you due?”
                  “That’s the thing.” Jo’s pulse had accelerated to an alarming rate. She lifted her hands in a slow down gesture. “I haven’t verified with the doctor yet, so - ”
                  “But you took more than one test, right? God, Jo, isn’t this just the most exciting thing ever? Baby!” she yelled, and started backing out of the room. “Michael! You’ll never guess!”
                  “Oh shit,” Jess and Jo said in the same breath, and were on their feet, scrambling after their new sister-in-law.
                  “Delta, no!” Jo hissed as she hurried down the hall toward the living room, cursing how much taller, and longer legged, the brunette was. “ Delta !”
                  She made a dive, hand closing over empty air instead of Delta’s blazer, and lost her balance. Jess snagged the back of her t-shirt and kept her from falling. In the moments between losing her balance and finding it again, Jo’s eyes went to the floor that was rushing up toward her, and her panic shifted. The baby . What if she fell? What if –
                  But then she realized Delta was in the middle of the living room, everyone staring at her, and that stupid smile was still stamped across her face.
                  “What?” Mike asked, staring up at his wife with veiled patience as she blocked his view of the TV.
                  Like something out of a slow motion nightmare, Jo felt like her feet were rooted in cement as Delta announced to the room, “Jo’s pregnant too!”
                  For a handful of heartbeats, the rumble of the TV was the only sound. Jo watched every pair of eyes sweep toward her, all of them full of shock, all but Tam’s. His were accusatory. Betrayed. How could you? They said, and then he glanced away from her and that was the hardest blow of all.
    **
                  Ellie loved the upstairs windows in her grandmother’s old house. The sills were wide and deep enough to sit in, and despite the lack of insulation, something about the way they radiated heat and cold, the way they steamed and fogged, was a homey and comfortable sort of imperfection. The back yard was wooded and she had the sense of being in the trees – long, leafy branches beckoning to her through the glass. With a view of the driveway where it fed into the garage, no one ever surprised her, and on Saturdays, with the house to herself, she sat “on her perch” as Paige liked to say, and wrote.
                  Her current project had begun as a short story, but slowly, with a careful, breath-held kind of certainty, she was