Tom’s face looks very tired. His eyes are only half open and puffy. Like he slept for an hour or less.

Malorie feels a cramping so incredible that at first she thinks it isn’t real. It feels like a bear trap has clamped down on her waist.

Voices come from behind her. Down the attic stairs. It’s Cheryl. Jules. She’s hardly aware of who’s up here and who isn’t.

“Oh God!” Olympia calls out.

Tom is with her. Felix is by Malorie’s side again.

“You’re going to make it,” Malorie calls to Olympia.

As she does, thunder booms outside. Rain falls hard against the roof. Somehow the rain is the exact sound she was looking for. The world outside sounds like how she feels inside. Stormy. Menacing. Foul. The housemates emerge from the shadows, then vanish. Tom looks worried. Olympia is breathing hard, panting. The stairs creak. Someone new is here. It’s Jules, again. Tom is telling him Olympia is farther along than Malorie is. Thunder cracks outside. As lightning strikes, she sees Don in relief, his features sullen, his eyes set deep above dark circles.

There is an unbearable pressing tightness at Malorie’s waist. Her body, it seems, is acting on its own, refuting her mind’s desire for peace. She screams and Cheryl leaves Olympia’s side and comes to her. Malorie didn’t even know Cheryl was still up here.

“This is awful,” Olympia hisses.

Malorie thinks of women sharing cycles, women in tune with one another’s bodies. For all their talk about who would go first, neither she nor Olympia ever even joked that both of them might be in labor at the same time.

Oh, how Malorie longed for a traditional birth!

More thunder.

It is darker up here now. Tom brings a second candle, lights it, and sets it on the floor to Malorie’s left. In the flickering flame she sees Felix and Cheryl but Olympia is difficult to make out. Her torso and face are obscured by flickering shadows.

Someone descends the stairs behind her. Is it Don? She doesn’t want to crane her neck. Tom steps through the candlelight and then out of its range. Then Felix, she thinks, then Cheryl. Silhouettes are moving from her to Olympia like phantoms.

The rain comes down harder against the roof.

There is a loud, abrupt commotion downstairs. Malorie can’t be sure but she thinks someone is yelling. Is her tired mind mistaking sounds? Who’s arguing?

It does sound like an argument below.

She can’t think about this right now. She won’t.

“Malorie?” Malorie screams as Cheryl’s face suddenly appears beside her. “Squeeze my hand. Break it if you need to.”

Malorie wants to say, Get some light in here. Get me a doctor. Deliver this thing for me.

Instead she responds with a grunt.

She is having her baby. There is no longer when.

Will I see things differently now? I’ve seen everything through the prism of this baby. It’s how I saw the house. The housemates. The world. It’s how I saw the news when it first started and how I saw the news when it ended. I’ve been horrified, paranoid, angry, more. When my body returns to the shape it was when I walked the streets freely, will I see things differently again?

What will Tom look like? How will his ideas sound?

“Malorie!” Olympia calls in the darkness. “I don’t think I can do it!”

Cheryl is telling Olympia she can, she’s almost there.

“What’s going on downstairs?” Malorie suddenly asks.

Don is below. She can hear him arguing. Jules, too. Yes, Don and Jules are arguing in the hall beneath the attic. Is Tom with them? Is Felix? No. Felix emerges from the dark and takes her hand.

“Are you okay, Malorie?”

“No,” she says. “What’s going on downstairs?”

He pauses, then says, “I’m not sure. But you have bigger things to worry about than people getting in each other’s faces.”

“Is it Don?” she asks.

“Don’t worry about it, Malorie.”

It rains harder. It’s as if each drop has its own audible weight.

Malorie lifts her head to see Olympia’s eyes in the shadows, staring at her.

Beyond the rain, the arguing, the commotion downstairs, Malorie hears something. Sweeter than violins.

What is it?

“Oh fuck!” Olympia screams. “Make it stop!”

It’s becoming harder for Malorie to breathe. It feels like the baby is cutting off her air supply. Like it’s crawling up her throat instead.

Tom is here. He is at her side.

“I’m sorry, Malorie.”

She turns to him. The face she sees, the look on his face, is something she will remember years after this morning.

“Sorry for what, Tom? Sorry this is how it’s happened?”

Tom’s eyes look sad. He nods yes. They both know he has no reason to apologize but they both know no woman should have to endure her delivery in the stuffy attic of a house she calls home only because she cannot leave.

“You know what I think?” he says softly, reaching down to grab her hand. “I think you’re going to be a wonderful mother. I think you’re going to raise this child so well it won’t matter if the world continues this way or not.”

To Malorie, it feels like a rusty steel clamp is trying to pull the baby from her now. A tow truck chain from the shadows ahead.

“Tom,” she manages to say. “What’s wrong down there?”

“Don’s upset. That’s all.”

She wants to talk more about it. She’s not angry at Don anymore. She’s worried about him. Of all the housemates, he’s stricken worst by the new world. He’s lost in it. There is something emptier than hopelessness in his eyes. Malorie wants to tell Tom that she loves Don, that they all do, that he just needs help. But the pain is absolutely all she can process. And words are momentarily impossible. The argument below now sounds like a joke. Like someone’s kidding her. Like the house is telling her, You see? Have a sense of humor despite the unholy pain going on in my attic.

Malorie has known exhaustion and hunger. Physical pain and severe mental fatigue. But she has never known the state she is in now. She not only has the right to be unbothered by a squabble among housemates, but she also very nearly deserves that they all leave the house entirely and stand out in the yard with their eyes closed for as long as it takes her and Olympia to do what their bodies need to do.

Tom stands up.

“I’ll be right back,” he says. “Do you need some more water?”

Malorie shakes her head no and returns her eyes to the shadows and sheet that is Olympia’s struggle before her.

“We’re doing it!” Olympia says, suddenly, maniacally. “It’s happening!”

So many sounds. The voices below, the voices in the attic (coming from the shadows and coming from faces emerging from those shadows), the ladder stairs, creaking every time a housemate ascends or descends, assessing the situation up here and then the one (she knows there is a problem downstairs, she just can’t care right now) going on a floor below. The rain falls but there is something else. Another sound. An instrument maybe. The highest keys of the dining room’s piano.

Suddenly, strangely, Malorie feels another wave of peace. Despite the thousand blades that pierce her lungs, neck, and chest, she understands that no matter what she does, no matter what happens, the baby is coming out. What does it matter what kind of world she is bringing this baby into now? Olympia is right. It’s happening. The child is coming, the child is almost out. And he has always been a part of the new world.

He knows anxiety, fear, paranoia. He was worried when Tom and Jules went to find dogs. He was painfully relieved when they returned. He was frightened of the change in Don. The change in the house. As it went from a hopeful haven to a bitter, anxious place. His heart was heavy when I read the ad that led me here, just like it was when I read the notebook in the cellar.