"Dax," I said.
"Yes."
"That is possibly the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me."
He looked at me.
"I was describing a security assessment," he said.
"You were describing love," I said. "In the vocabulary of a security assessment. Which is entirely you."
He was quiet.
"Yes," he said, after a moment. "I suppose it is."
I put my hand over his on the pillow.
Isolde moved again — a long, slow shift, the full-body repositioning of thirty weeks.
"She's doing it on purpose," I said.
"That's biologically—"
"She's doing it on purpose," I said.
He exhaled. The particular quiet sound of someone who has decided to stop arguing with the bloodline's relationship with the biological literature.
"Yes," he said. "Probably."
We lay in the Saturday morning together. The March light
