Days went by extremely slowly. It rolled slowly and yet those days had somehow moved into weeks and weeks into months.
Neriah never went out of her room. Even when she tried to, the eyes and whispers she got were enough to make a person wish for the ground to open up and engulf her. Eventually she stopped going out of her room, she'd rather sit in front of her husband's portraits and talk to the child that was rapidly growing in her belly.
"You know, have I told you about the time he called me a pain in the neck?" She asked while stroking her stomach. She had pulled a chair in front of the most recent portrait of Barak. "I haven't?" She asked as though she had previously received a response from the child in her womb. "Oh, how could I forget? He called me a pain in the neck!" She felt a calm slow movement inside her and she smiled and nodded, taking it as her responding to her words. "Yes, he did."
