"What are you doing, honey?"
"I'm saying 'hello' to my little brother."
The thought warmed Linda's heart, but made her feel anxious at the same time.
"That's nice," she managed to say.
Hayley lifted up her head to look directly into her mother's eyes. "When is he going to be borned?"
"Soon." She stroked a few locks of Hayley's downy soft hair that framed her face. "By Halloween time. He'll be your Halloween treat."
Hayley looked down at her mother's round belly again. When she looked back up at her, she squinted, tilting her head. "Mommy, where did he come from?"
"From my belly!" Linda said, tousling her hair and jostling her shoulders. She pointed to the television. "Look, Ariel's meeting the prince!"
But it wasn't enough to distract Hayley from the subject at hand. "Mommy, how did he get in your belly?"
Linda took in a deep breath, astonished that she would have to have this kind of a conversation with Hayley, this early. She had prepared different types of answers for different types of scenarios and hoped her response would not come out sounding canned. "Well, when a mommy and daddy love each other the way your daddy and I do, little children in heaven see them. And the angels want them to come to the world to be with them, so they can love them, too. The angel sends the baby to the mommy and the mommy holds him until he's ready to be born." When she finished, she forced herself to smile.
Hayley looked back up at her. For Linda it was impossible to tell whether her daughter was waiting for her to say more or if she was just contemplating the answer. "Then he came from heaven?" she asked, so softly Linda could barely hear.
"Yes."
She turned her eyes away from her mother and looked straight ahead, saying "Oh."
After a few moments she looked up again and asked "Did I come from heaven, too?"
"Yes, you did, sweetheart!" She gathered her in for a long hug. "Yes you did." As Linda held her daughter, tears escaped from her eyes. They watched the rest of the movie together in happy silence.
When Linda turned off the VCR and searched for a television show for them to watch, Hayley suddenly pushed herself off the couch. "Daddy!" she shouted. She could hear the engine of his Chevy Lumina as it pulled around the driveway. With all her might she opened the doorknob of the front door and ran out onto the stoop and then to the driveway. Stephen had parked beside the Jeep and was just beginning to emerge from his car when Hayley ran up to him. He set his briefcase down onto the concrete to lean down and receive the hug from his little girl.