"Well, am I going crazy, or what?"
Her mother laughed, which helped ease her tension. "Well, sometimes pregnancy can take the mind where minds don't usually go, but no honey, I don't think you're crazy. Anything but. You know how proud I am of you."
"Well, what do you think this means, then?"
If she'd been there in Illinois, sitting across the room from her mother instead of calling her from two states and three hundred miles away, she would see her shrugging, her eyes opened wide. "Well honey, I think Lauren was just saying 'hello' to you in the best way she knows how."
It made as much sense as anything else. "Well next time she should just pick up the phone and call. It would have freaked me out a whole lot less."
They both laughed together for a moment. "Hey, mommy, who is that?" Hayley asked.
"It's grandma! Do you want to tell her all about your first day at school?" For the next few minutes, Linda listened as her daughter rattled on about drawing pictures and stories about giants and the colorful, soft mats they used during nap time.
If Lauren was trying to say 'hello' to her as her mother thought she was, Linda thought of a way she could say 'hello' back. After putting away the dishes and forks she realized how tired she was. Tomorrow she would have to return to work, and she would need to get up at 3:30am. After all these years, she was still working the early shift. She shuffled toward the couch and said "I'm going to turn in early. " She rubbed a hand down in the small of her back. "I'll be down here for tonight, okay?"
"Okay," Stephen said, with one eye on her and one eye on the television screen as he worked the game controller. "After I put this munchkin to bed I'll give you a massage."
Many times Stephen's delicious massages were a prelude for glorious, earth shattering sex, even as both of them had passed their mid-thirties, with a mortgage, children and all sorts of other concerns. It amazed her that someone with such a no-nonsense type a mind, a "gear-brain," as she liked to tease him, could touch her so sensually and soothingly.
Linda used the hand mirror in her sanctuary room to brush strands of her hair back into place and fix herself up so that she looked nice when Stephen came in after tucking Hayley in. On the way up, Hayley stopped in the room to give her mother a good night hug. Moments later, when Stephen returned, he sat her up in front of him, the way he always did. He would always start off with a neck rub, usually commenting about the stiffness and strain she carried there. This time he worked the area a little more gently than usual. "You're not mad about us staying in instead of going out, are you?"