The road stayed open, but no one came.
The power company never showed. The county never sent another soul. It was as if the mountain itself had drawn a quiet circle around the little Harper house and declared it sacred ground.
Spring slid into summer without ceremony.
The snow melted into wildflowers that climbed right up to the porch. The windows stayed open day and night, letting in warm breezes that smelled of pine and sun-warmed earth. Inside, time still belonged only to them.
Elena's belly grew round and low, skin stretched tight and shining. Her breasts were heavier than ever, constantly leaking, nipples dark and endlessly tender. Caleb had become an expert at catching every drop (mouth, hands, the slow drag of his cock between them when she wanted to watch him painted in her milk).
They made a new ritual of the hottest afternoons: she would lie back on the wide porch swing, legs open to the breeze, while Caleb knelt between her thighs and loved her with his tongue until she was shaking. Then he would rise up, slide into her in one smooth motion, and rock them both to quiet, sun-soaked climaxes while dragonflies hovered overhead and the mountains looked on in lazy approval.
One golden evening in late July, Elena stood at the kitchen counter making lemonade (barefoot, naked, belly so big now she had to stand sideways to reach the sink). Caleb came up behind her, arms circling under the weight of her stomach, lips brushing the nape of her neck.
"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he whispered, the same words he said every single day, and still meant more each time.
She turned in his arms, pressed lemon-sweet fingers to his lips, and kissed him slow and deep.
"Take me to bed, baby," she murmured. "Mommy needs her boy inside her."
He carried her (carefully, reverently) to their mattress, now permanently in the middle of the living room so every window could watch them love. Laid her down among the sunbeams and pillows, kissed every inch of her stretched belly, licked the milk that trailed from her breasts in thin rivers.
When he finally entered her, they both cried out at how perfectly she still took him (tight and wet and fluttering, even eight months heavy with his child).
"Look at me," she whispered, cradling his face. "Look where you put our baby."
Caleb's eyes dropped to the place they joined: her swollen folds stretched around him, belly rising and falling with each gentle thrust, faint kicks rippling under the skin as if their child already knew its father's rhythm.
"I love you," he said, voice breaking. "God, Mommy, I love you so much."
"I know, darling," she breathed, pulling him down until their foreheads touched. "Love me slow. Love me until the stars come out."
They moved together for hours (lazy, endless, sunlight turning to dusk around them). When she came it was with soft, rolling contractions that milked him gently, perfectly. Caleb followed with a low, reverent groan, spilling deep, staying deep, hands cradling the life he'd made inside her.
Afterward they lay tangled and sweating, the summer night wrapping warm arms around their open windows.
Elena traced lazy circles over his heart.
"Tomorrow," she said softly, "I want to feel you in the meadow. I want the grass under my back and the sky above us and our baby kicking while its daddy loves its mommy under the open sun."
Caleb kissed her slow and promising.
"Every tomorrow," he answered. "Every single one."
Outside, crickets began their evening song.
Inside, mother and son drifted toward sleep still connected, her belly pressed to his, milk drying in slow trails across both their skins.
The world had tried to come back once.
It had looked, shrugged, and walked away.
And the summer (their endless, perfect summer) stretched on forever.
The meadow behind the house is golden in late August, knee-high with timothy and clover.
A little girl with her mother's dark hair and her father's shy smile runs barefoot through the grass, chasing butterflies. Another child (barely walking) toddles after her, chubby arms outstretched, laughing at nothing and everything.
Elena sits on the wide porch swing, belly round again with their fifth. She wears nothing but sunlight and the faint sheen of milk at her nipples. Ten years have softened her hips, silvered a few strands at her temples, but her eyes are the same clear blue that once watched a blizzard bury the world and decided that was exactly enough.
Caleb steps out of the house carrying two glasses of lemonade. He is twenty-eight now (broad-shouldered, sun-browned, the quiet boy long gone). Only the way he still calls her "Mommy" in private, the way he still blushes when she smiles at him, betrays who he was the winter everything changed.
He sets the glasses down, kneels in front of her, and rests his cheek against the warm swell of her stomach. The baby inside gives a hearty kick against his face.
"Strong one," he murmurs, lips brushing her skin.
"Like his daddy," Elena answers, threading fingers through his hair.
The children's laughter drifts back to them on the breeze. Their eldest (the girl who was once only a flutter beneath Elena's heart) waves wildly.
"Mommy! Daddy! Come see the butterfly house!"
Caleb looks up at Elena, eyes shining with the same helpless, adoring love they have held every single day for a decade.
"Go on," Elena says softly, guiding his mouth to her breast for one slow, familiar drink before he stands. Milk beads, then flows; he swallows once, twice, then kisses the wetness from her nipple. "I'll be right here."
He joins the children in the meadow (their children, made the old-fashioned way, night after night, year after year, always slow, always face-to-face, always with whispered I love yous and the soft creak of the same mattress by the fire).
Elena watches them (her whole world barefoot in the grass) and feels the baby roll again, content.
The road down the mountain is paved now. People drive past sometimes. They see the pretty house with the wildflower yard, the naked, laughing family, the way the tall man still carries his wife everywhere even when her belly is huge, the way she still cradles his head to her breast without a shred of shame.
They slow down, stare, sometimes smile, and keep driving.
No one ever stops.
The storm that never ended taught the mountain a secret, and the mountain has kept it faithfully.
Inside the house, the mattress still waits by the hearth (worn soft from ten years of slow, reverent lovemaking). Tonight, when the children are asleep in their sunny rooms, Caleb will carry Elena there, lay her down, slide into her the way he has every night since the world went white, and whisper the same words against her lips:
"I'm home, Mommy."
And Elena (milk on her breasts, their newest child kicking between them, the taste of lemonade and forever on her tongue) will answer the only way she ever has:
"Welcome home, baby.
Stay inside me forever."
And he will.
They always do.
The End