Page 96 of Man Seeking Woman

Chapter Twenty-four

August

Six Months Later

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Time. How do you measuretime when every moment is new. How do you catalog every experience and document it so you never forget the look in her eyes?

Because that's what I've come to love and crave. The way her eyes smiled and laughed. The excitement as our baby grew and those new moments became ones we could share.

I could feel the baby in her stomach, I could watch as her belly would become a wave of movement. Every day Ella seemed to change and I changed along with her.

That's how I knew this was more than just a task, my goal had been smashed into bits and replaced by this wonderful angel who showed me that life was more than just waking up everyday and going to work.

Life was meant to be shared.

The past six months had come and gone, and it was hard to believe that the birth of our child was just around the corner. The spare room had become a nursery, decorated with yellow walls and friendly jungle animals.

It was something we had done together. I loved that room now and would find myself standing in the center just staring at what we had created together. No one else came in and did it for us. It was our gift to the baby, a room built from our own hands.

Waking up in bed, I rolled to my side and found I was alone. Ella's spot was cold to the touch, her pillow still indented where her head had been. Blinking a few times, I pushed myself up in bed and looked around.

The bathroom was open and empty, the house was quiet except for the very faint sound of music. It didn't sound like it was coming from inside. The melody was light, its sound traveling through the air as if it was being pushed through the small cracks in the building so I could hear them.

Scratching my head, I yawned and stretched as I climbed out of bed. Walking out into the living room, the music became louder. Tipping my head, I listened, noting that music sounded like it was coming from the roof.

What the hell is that?

Taking a second to look around, Ella wasn't in the kitchen or the baby's room, she wasn't laying out in a chair on the balcony drinking a coffee or cleaning some obscure place in the apartment, like the pantry.

Which I found out from doing some research was called nesting. She had been doing a lot of that lately, fixing things that didn't need to be fixed and cleaning things that were already clean.

Last week when I came home from work and caught Ella re-caulking the tub. She was huddled over the tub, her belly squished against the side as she tore the old caulk out with some metal tool. And I just let her. She felt she needed to do it, I wasn't going to argue.

Following the music, I took the stairs up to my rooftop terrace. The music was growing in volume, and I knew it was definitely coming from outside the building.