Nova blackish's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Two years passed the way winters do here, one long white stretch cut into days by feedings and firewood. Leo and Pisces turned three in the log cabin with two hearths. They walked. They ran. They climbed the porch rail and fell off it and climbed back up. Nova finally slept through a night. She and Brock had a rhythm now — his axe at dawn, her kettle by six, the boys awake by seven demanding oatmeal with both hands. She stood at the top of the stairs one morning holding two small white sticks and knew the rhythm was about to break. She walked down the steps slow. Brock sat at the table lacing his boots. The boys were on the rug pushing wooden blocks at each other. Nova set the two tests on the table in front of him, side by side. Both showed a clear line. He looked at them. He looked at her. She said, we did it again. He said, twins. She said, I know. He said, you don't know that yet. She said, I know. Brock did not say anything for a minute. Then he stood up and counted the bedrooms out loud the way he counted board feet. Seven. He said the boys could share the small room upstairs. He said the new babies could take the room off the kitchen where the stove kept it warm. He said he would build two more cribs by spring. He said it plain and then he stopped talking, which was how she knew he meant it. She went to see Rowan that afternoon. Rowan opened the door with one hand on her lower back. Nova did not have to say it. Rowan looked at her face and started laughing, then crying, then laughing again. Rowan was already carrying twins herself, due in July. Collin came in from the woodpile and heard, and set his gloves down on the counter without a word. He said he would double the meat share through winter. He said he would talk to the tundra midwife tonight, before the road closed. He said four babies in one town in one summer was a lot of babies. Nova said she knew. Rowan said her aunt would come again. Nova believed her. That night Nova stood at the top of the stairs and listened to the boys breathing in the small room. Three years ago she had wanted a loud house. She had one now, and by summer it would be louder. She went down to the kitchen where Brock was sharpening a chisel by the lamp. She said, we are going to be buried. He said, we will dig out. He did not look up from the chisel. She sat across from him and put her hands flat on the table and understood that the plan she had made this morning was already the wrong plan.