"Close enough. And if something's good—really good—you say 'bendigedig.' That's the one you'll need when the baby arrives."

"Ben-di-gay-dig," I repeated, rolling the syllables around.

"Not bad for a Viking," Peter grinned. "Now, 'cariad.' That's the important one. It means love, but not in the romantic-card way. It's what you call someone when you're letting them know they're yours to care for. You'll use it for the little one. And for her, mind. Even when she's driving you mad."

I wrote the words down in the margins of my Swedish textbooks, a bilingual mess of languages that had no business being on the same page. Swedish conjugations next to Welsh endearments next to English translations. It was ridiculous. It was exactly right.

By 8:00, Mama would appear at the top of the stairs, moving slowly, one hand on the railing and one on the wall. Peter and I would both look up, our conversation pausing mid-sentence, watching her descend like she was navigating a mountain pass rather than twelve steps. The weight had shifted her center of gravity forward, and each step down was calculated, deliberate. Sometimes she'd pause halfway, her hand going to the swell of her belly, and we'd wait—both of us holding our breath—until the baby kicked or settled and she could continue.

"Stop staring," she'd say, but there was no heat in it. "I'm pregnant, not made of glass."

But she was tired. The kind of tired that showed in the purple shadows under her eyes, in the way she'd lean against the counter while waiting for tea to steep, in the small sighs that escaped when she lowered herself into a chair. The baby was active at night now—rolling, kicking, making her presence known—and sleep had become something Mama chased rather than caught.

"Could've fooled me," Peter would mutter, already up and pulling out her chair. "Sit. I'll make you something that isn't toast."

The mornings bled into the pattern of the day: Mama to college on the 9:15 bus, me walking her to the stop with the umbrella. Then the strange, in-between hours where I'd study at the cottage or walk into Crosskeys for groceries, always aware that I was living on borrowed time and borrowed charity. Afternoons, I'd meet her at the bus stop again, carrying her bag, watching her face for signs of exhaustion or pain. Evenings, the three of us around the fire, Peter pretending to watch television while actually watching us, making sure we were okay.

It was mundane. It was extraordinary. It was the slowest, quietest revolution I'd ever been part of.

January turned out to be a month of iron and slate. The rain didn't fall; it marched, a steady, grey infantry that turned the lanes into streams. And in the middle of it all was the routine. The relentless, exhausting crawl back and forth to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport.