Rowan Ashford's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Two years passed the way winters pass in Permafrost, one long white season at a time. Rowan and Collin's daughter came in the spring after the first pregnancy. They named her Lovley. She had Collin's black hair and Rowan's temper, and she had just turned one. Her birthday cake still sat under a cloth on the counter of the big house Collin had bought them after Lovley was born. Rowan had not wanted to leave her childhood home. She left it anyway, because Collin asked, and because the new house had two hearths and room for more. Rowan took the test in the same bathroom she had used the first time. She sat on the tile with Lovley on her hip and watched the strip on the sink edge. The second line came up before she counted to ten. She set Lovley down and took a second test from the box. She did it because the first line looked too dark, too fast. The second strip matched. Two tests. Two clear positives. She lined them up on the counter and stared at them until Lovley pulled at her sock. She carried both strips and the baby downstairs. Collin was at the stove, turning something in a pan that smelled like his grandmother's kitchen. He looked up when she came in. She put the two tests on the counter next to the salt. "Again," she said. He wiped his hands on the towel at his waist. He looked at the strips, then at her, then at Lovley, who was chewing the collar of Rowan's sweater. "Both are positive," he said. "I know," Rowan said. "I took two because I didn't believe the first one." Collin picked up one strip and set it down. "That's not why there are two." He met her eyes. "My mother had twins. Nova had twins." He said it plain, the way he said most things. "I should have told you sooner." Rowan sat down at the table. Lovley slid off her lap and went for the dog bowl. Rowan looked at the two strips on the counter and the man across from her and the child on the floor. She had pulled Collin out of a blizzard three years ago and had barely spoken to him for a week after. She had married him inside seven days. She had given him one daughter and was carrying two more children now, probably, and he was still a man she was learning. "Okay," she said. She used his word on purpose. "We can do that." Collin came around the table and put his hand on the back of her neck, warm from the pan. He did not smile. He nodded once. Outside, snow started again against the windows of the big house, and Rowan understood the next winter was already spoken for.