Lullaby

She snored like a bullfrog.

He loved bullfrogs.

Of course he had never gotten over the way that they plopped into the water in the dark just before you came upon them lolling in the moonlit grass. And he had never seen her at all until it was too late and she splashed him silly.

That was only an expression.

Of course the way she looked at him with one eye, the other drifting off somewhere else, or maybe that wayward eye was searching for another way into his beating heart.

You could have called the expression on her face a smile if you wanted to.

Then one night he saw her sleeping, truly for the first time, and it turned out to be the last good night of sleep that he ever got.

The baby slipped out like a goldfish through two fingers and wailed into the night. And then she slept like an angel and he could only gaze in wonder.

So they called the baby, Gabriella.

They could only hope.

Her grandfather drank –

Icewater.