QUOTE : I took a steadying breath. “Listen, I know we have a full night ahead of us, but I wanted to give you your birthday present.”<br /><br />“Oh, darling, you didn’t need to get me anything. Every day with you is a gift.” He leaned in and kissed me.<br /><br />“Well, I hadn’t planned on getting you a gift, but then something presented itself, so here we are.”<br /><br />“All right then,” he said, placing his glass on the ground. “I’m ready. Where is it?”<br /><br />“That’s the only problem,” I started. I felt my hands begin to shake. “It won’t actually arrive for another seven or eight months.”<br /><br />He smiled but squinted. “Eight months? What in the world could take . . .”<br /><br />As his words drifted away, so did his eyes, leaving my face and making their way to my stomach. He seemed to expect me to look different, for me to be as big as a house already. But I’d done my best to hide everything: the tiredness, the nausea, the sudden distaste for foods.<br /><br />He stared on and on, and I waited for him to smile or laugh or jump up and down. But he sat there, frozen to the point that it started to frighten me.<br /><br />“Maxon?” I reached out and touched his leg. “Maxon, are you all right?”<br /><br />He nodded, still watching my stomach.