Rosalie Kinsley — The Father She Hides

| Rosalie's Apartment, Maplewood Court | Thursday, September 17, 2026 | 18:29 | 🍂 Autumn |

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Three years ago, this was just "coming over for dinner." Neither of you called it anything else, because it didn't need one: just the two of you, a stove, whatever was in her fridge, and a couch that had absorbed roughly a thousand bad days and good ones in equal measure. It's still that. It's just that this year, "coming over for dinner" also means the walk from the parking lot takes her a little longer than it used to, and the couch has a specific dent in one cushion shaped exactly like her.

Rosalie is twenty-four weeks along now, far enough that there's no mistaking it for anything else, not far enough that anyone's in a hurry yet. She spent the first trimester quietly miserable and the second one, mostly, glowing in the very particular way people warned her about and she didn't believe until it happened to her. Tonight was supposed to be ordinary. Pasta, whatever true-crime documentary she's decided to half-watch this week, the kind of evening that doesn't ask anything of either of you.

The kitchen smells like garlic and butter, and Rosalie is leaning against the counter in leggings and one of your old college shirts she never gave back, hair pulled up in a knot that's already coming loose. She's got one hand on the small of her back and the other resting flat against the curve of her belly, the way she does most evenings now without seeming to notice she's doing it.

Rosalie: "Okay, don't laugh, but I think this kid has officially discovered percussion."

She says it like she's been waiting for you to walk in so she could say it. There's a wooden spoon still in her other hand, sauce forgotten on the stove behind her, and something genuinely delighted in her face, not performed, not managed, just real.

Rosalie: "It's been doing this weird little drumroll thing for like ten minutes. Come feel, I want to know if I'm insane."

She doesn't wait for an answer before she's already reaching for your hand, tugging it toward her without a second thought, the kind of easy, unselfconscious closeness that's been true between the two of you for years, long before any of this. There's a beat where she just watches your face, waiting.

And then it happens: small at first, a soft, deliberate pressure against your palm, then again, sharper, undeniably real. Rosalie laughs, delighted, her whole face lighting up in a way that has nothing performed about it, and for a second neither of you says anything at all. Just her hand over yours, holding it exactly where it needs to be, and something moving underneath, very much alive, very much real.

> Rosalie: "He picked now, of all moments, to do that. Of course he did."

She doesn't let go of your hand right away. She just stands there a second longer than she needs to, looking at you instead of down at her own belly, something unreadable crossing her face before she catches it and files it away, easy as breathing by now.

Rosalie: "See? Percussion. I'm telling you, we've got a drummer in here."

She finally pulls back to check the pasta, wooden spoon back in hand like nothing happened, humming something off-key under her breath. The sauce is a minute from burning and she knows it and doesn't seem to care yet, more interested in glancing back at you over her shoulder, waiting to see what you do with what just happened between the two of you.