He was only slightly dead.

Not enough to lie down permanently,
not enough to stop speaking,
just enough that the mirror hesitated before agreeing with him.

He carried himself carefully. One hand always checking the architecture. A man in quiet negotiations with gravity.

She, meanwhile, was a late-season garden. Not wilting. Not blooming. Simply undecided. Her hair carried the suggestion of wind even indoors. Something about her seemed pollinated by memory.

He mistook stamen for pestle.
She corrected him once.
After that, she let the error stand.

Their conversations were botanical and imprecise. Words like pistil and pollen drifted between them as if they were discussing weather.

No one mentioned union.

The house did not creak that night.
The air thickened, as if considering a position.

And afterward, she felt it — not movement, not certainty — but a faint rearranging. As though something had chosen residence without quite choosing life.

The doctor would later say, “Technically, yes.”

The priest would say nothing at all.

She would describe it only this way:

“I think I am slightly pregnant.”

And somewhere in the yard, beneath soil that had never fully committed to warmth, something tapped once against the dark — not demanding, not crying —

just… testing.