His Best Friend's Baby

“I’ll get it.”

He soon returned with a mattress covered in protective plastic. Together they worked to remove it. Ryan lifted the bedding and dropped it into place.

“It almost makes it real,” she said with a note of wonder.

“What?”

“A baby coming.”

He chuckled. “I would think that large mound you’re sporting out front would make it seem pretty real.”

“It does but the bed is something tangible.”

“What about a rocker or any other furniture?”

She shrugged. “I’ll have to go buy something. I was hoping I could find some pieces at a garage sale that I could redo. I wanted to paint it bright and add animals and plants, that sort of thing.”

“You mean like the other folk art you have in the living room?”

She looked at him with a brightness that said they were talking about a passion of hers. “You know about folk art?”

“Only what it is. I’m more a straight paint and stain kind of guy. Fancy painting isn’t my thing. So, if you’ll show me where you want these books, I’ll start moving them.”

“They go in my bedroom.”

She went out the doorway and turned toward the end of the hall, then went through an open doorway. Ryan followed more slowly. Why did it bother him that he had just been invited into his buddy’s wife’s bedroom? She hadn’t even thought about what she was saying. When she looked back he was standing in the doorway.

“They go on this bookshelf. If you’ll bring them to me, I can shelve them.”

Ryan returned with an armload of books. She’d taken a seat on the floor in front of the shelving while he’d been gone.

He stacked the books on the floor and she went to work, putting them in place.

Ryan looked down at Phoebe. He saw pregnant women day in and day out, but there was something almost angelic about the way her golden hair covered a portion of her face and her small hands put the books so neatly into their spots.