Pete pulled into the driveway as Natalie finished the dishes. Baal and Abaddon were standing on the balcony watching when he stepped out of the car. The legion of lesser demons stood silently by, clearing a path as he passed through the horde.

  "Home!" Pete announced, entering the kitchen.

  "About time," Natalie joked. She could hardly contain herself, picturing Pete's reaction to the pregnancy test. She was in the bedroom pretending to go through her clothes so that she wouldn't give away her surprise. "How was your day?"

  Pete took off his jacket, still in the kitchen, and opened the fridge to get a drink. "It was a day. Nothing special." He closed the fridge and went into the bedroom, walking right past the dresser and plugging in his phone. "How 'bout you?"

  Natalie couldn't even make eye contact with him. She was sure he was going to spot it, any second. "Oh, it wasn't super great. I was feeling kind of sick today."

  "Sick?" Pete asked, concerned, and now, turning toward her.

  At this point, she knew she had to look at him, and she wondered if she'd be able to hide her joy. But as she turned to meet his gaze, her eye caught something strange.

  Something wrong with Pete's hand.

  He was standing there, with the dresser and test behind him, waiting for her explanation. And it all would have seemed normal, except Natalie noticed that the fingers on his right hand were flexed unnaturally, partially curled, and moving erratic at his side.

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  “Is he in pain?” She thought at first, watching, briefly, as they bent, and straightened. “It looks like he’s trying to play a piano.”

  But she caught herself, replying. “Umm, I wasn't feeling well at school today. Probably just caught a bug from one of the kids." She looked away from Pete's oddly contorted fingers, abruptly turning back to her fake task. "It's no big deal. I'm just going to take it easy and see how I feel in the morning."

  Pete seemed not to notice and finished with his phone.

  But staring at her folded jeans Natalie had started to panic. Red flags, emerging everywhere. "He's not alright," she realized. "He's not himself." She tried to breathe. "I don't think he can handle this right now. Oh God. I made a mistake. What do I do?"

  A tingling heat washed across her body. That electric concoction of adrenaline and doom. The test was still behind him. He hadn't noticed it yet, but all he had to do was turn around, look at the dresser, and it would all be over.

  No going back.

  The seconds slowed to eternity, and in her fear, Natalie could practically see Lilith again. Her mysterious face, her cloth-covered eyes. And then, she remembered the strange woman’s words: "You're a protector . . . keep him calm," she'd said.

  “Wait!” She looked around the now empty room. “Where did he go?”

  While she had been paralyzed by unexpected terror, Pete had walked back into the kitchen. Immediately, Natalie ran to the dresser and grabbed the pregnancy test. She hid it in one of the drawers and closed it shut.

  "He can’t handle this right now," she whispered.

  And trembling, she was hit with a strange combination of guilt, and relief. Relief in knowing she’d avoided a mistake. Guilt over not telling her husband she was pregnant. The kind of shame that only love can bring when one partner has to accept that, (for whatever reason), they've lost faith in the ability of the other.

  "What am I gonna do now?"

  And as the evening progressed, it was Natalie Bishop “going through the motions", pretending to be normal. Natalie, hiding a secret to protect her spouse. Which she managed, all the way to bed, where the sporadic nature of anxious sleep awaited a wife who had never been so alone.