the 'brook action threads

Stacey couldn't sleep.  Sam had passed out an hour ago, but she was still lying on her side in the dark.  They'd had another great weekend in Stoneybrook for Mother's Day, but once the celebration was over and they were back in New York City, Stacey couldn't help but feel a little...sad, she guessed.  She did her best to hide how she was feeling from Sam by telling him that she was tired.  So they had gone to bed, he'd gone to sleep, and she was trying not to move around too much so that she wouldn't wake him up.

Mother's Day.  Maybe it was silly of her, but Stacey couldn't help but think about how she could be a mother right now.  Little Elizabeth would be turning three right about now if not for the miscarriage and Stacey wondered what she would have been like.  She and Sam had talked about that before, but, as time went on, their baby came up less and less often in conversation.  She came up less often in Stacey's thoughts, too, but every once in a while it would really hit her and make her a little blue.

In her mind she was a Lizzie--happy, laughing, squealing even.  There would be toys and dolls and thick cardboard books scattered around their apartment--not this one, though.  They would have a two-bedroom if they had Lizzie with them.  Sam would have to keep Stacey from spending too much money on clothing for the little girl and she'd probably have to keep him from buying her too much candy--Stacey was sure that their daughter would have him wrapped around her little finger, after all.  And she was sure that her baby would have been beautiful, too.  She didn't see how she and Sam could produce anything less than perfect.

But none of that had happened.  Elizabeth hadn't made it and Stacey had never really become a mother.  She knew that she probably wouldn't be finishing up her Masters degree right now if she had a child, but she didn't know if that made her better off.  She also knew that having a kid right now wouldn't be great for them--even if she wasn't terrified of another pregnancy--but she wasn't sure how Sam felt about all of that.

It was perfectly okay that he hadn't proposed to her last month--really it was.  Stacey knew that they were still young and didn't need to get married yet, but that didn't stop her from wishing that Sam would bring up the subject.  They talked about the future sometimes, but he had never specifically said that they'd be husband and wife while they did any of the things they talked about.  She had never even noticed that until last month's non-proposal, but now it was on her mind.  She wanted to say something to him, to ask what he saw for them, but she couldn't make herself do it.  No matter how many times she told herself that of course he wanted to marry her one day, she wasn't completely certain.  And even though not knowing how life would be with Elizabeth made her sad, not knowing what Sam wanted with her seemed like the better option right now.