The morning began softly enough, settling over their quiet suburban street with the kind of gentle, pale sunlight that usually promised a perfectly ordinary Thursday.

Inside the kitchen, the sunlight spilled across the quartz counters, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air and warming the scent of the untouched toast sitting on a ceramic plate between them.

Neither of them had taken a single bite.

The butter had melted into the bread, pooling in the center, a silent testament to the nervous energy that had hijacked their morning routine.

From where she stood by the kitchen island, Erin Krakow looked out into their living room.

It didn’t look like their home anymore.

Over the past few weeks, it had slowly transformed into a waiting room for a brand-new life.

A meticulously packed, olive-green diaper bag sat squarely by the front door, its pockets bulging with wipes, travel-sized rash creams, and tiny, impossibly soft changes of clothes.

Draped over the arm of their worn leather couch were three tiny, neutral-colored blankets—soft creams and pale grays—washed in special, unscented detergent and folded with military precision.

And then there was the car seat.

The infant car seat had already been installed in the back of Ben’s SUV three days ago.

He had checked the level indicators, tugged at the base, and adjusted the anchor straps so many times that Erin had started joking the baby would probably come home with a full, mandatory safety presentation, complete with a PowerPoint and emergency exit row instructions.

Ben usually laughed every time she teased him about it.

He had a great laugh—warm, booming, the kind that crinkled the corners of his dark eyes and made her feel entirely grounded.

But that morning, when she made a lighthearted comment about him checking the tire pressure for the third time this week, even his smile seemed distracted.

It flashed across his face and vanished just as quickly, leaving behind a tight, unreadable expression.

He moved through the house with a restless, humming energy that made the air feel thin.

He wasn’t just pacing; he was vibrating.

He was gathering paperwork, aggressively double-checking the clinic’s appointment reminders on the refrigerator door, and lining up insulated water bottles on the counter as if they were heading into a desert wasteland.

He buzzed around her, making sure Erin had her heavy knit sweater, her phone charger coiled perfectly, her favorite cherry lip balm, her physical insurance card, the specific brand of organic granola bar she liked to eat after her appointments, and the lucky 1998 quarter she’d kept buried in the bottom of her purse since the terrifying, bleeding scare at the very beginning of her first trimester.

He was doing entirely too much, even for him.

Ben was a planner by nature, a man who found comfort in logistics, but this bordered on frantic.