When Elias let go, Daff knew she hadn't done a good job of pretending to be more excited. She was excited, she thought, deep down. There was just this overwhelming feeling that maybe she wasn't ready.

She felt unmoored with nothing to hold onto anymore and so she drifted to the edge of the counter to fiddle with the tin of treats. She couldn't quite look at him and so instead looked out the kitchen window at the gardens bursting with color in the morning sun. "Of course," she managed, with a quick glance his way and an uncertain smile. It was good news, she was happy on some level, but there was no good way to articulate what she was thinking. Daff didn't even know really what exactly to pinpoint as the reason for her uncertainty.

It wasn't easy to tell him she still felt a little out of place in this house; that she still had a collection of things at the bottom of her wardrobe that she had no idea where to put them or if she should even try to find a place. How could she tell him that she was still adjusting to being married and now they were going to have a baby and she was going to be a mother, when she'd barely learned how to be a wife? It was impossible now that she could feel the excitement practically vibrating off of him. In anticipation of his reaction and distracting herself by trying to prepare for his birthday, she supposed she hadn't actually stopped to think about her own. Now that their reactions were so mismatched, she didn't want to dampen his enthusiasm with her worries, but she couldn't lie to him either. They had promised to share everything, but she just couldn't find the words.

Daff worried her bottom lip, fingers tapping gently on the top of the tin as she wavered on what to say. She cast him another helpless glance, "But what if," she started, stopped, voice small. "What if I don't feel ready?"