"He slid his hand onto Riley's bare abdomen. "I got to thinkin' that a few years down the line, when yer older, what if that was our baby and I could feel it right here under my hand. Feel the life we'd created." Riley's eyes moistened. "Girl or boy?" "Doesn't matter. If it's a girl, we can name her after my gran. Her name was Emily Rose." "Hmm...I like that. Maybe the boy could be Paul Arthur, like my dad." "Yeah, that works. But that's all the way down the line, isn't it?" It might never come to pass."

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She lay on her back and walked her fingers down her ribs, skipped them over her abdomen, and landed on her pelvic bones. She tapped them with her Knuckles. [. . .] I can hear my bones, she thought. Her fingers moved up from her pelvic bones to her waist. The elastic of her underpants barely touched the center of her abdomen. The bridge is almost finished, she thought. The elastic hung loosely around each thigh. More progress. She put her knees together and raised them in the air. No matter how tightly she pressed them together, her thighs did not touch.

— Steven Levenkron