This little baby clearly belonged to Dev.

It explained exactly why his crooning and shushing and swaying had been so effective, earlier today. He’d had practice. Recent practice, and a lot of it.

“You’d better come in,” he said. “I think she’s going to sleep. You’re not catching her at the best time. I wish you could see her smiling, the way she’s been doing the past month.”

“It’s a girl?”

“Yes.”

Dev had just mentioned she’d been smiling for the past month, and Jodie had enough nieces and nephews that she knew when smiling happened—six weeks or so. This baby had to be about ten weeks old.

Do the math, Jodie, do the math. Nine months plus two and a half equals almost a year. When you were busy “getting the old crush out of your system,” last fall, the mother of Dev’s baby must already have been pregnant …

But where was the mother now? Who was the mother?

Dear Reader,

As any writer will tell you, some books are harder to write than others. This was one of those times when it all came together so clearly. I found myself with a gutsy heroine facing enormous challenges and a miracle or two, a hero who does the right thing but hasn’t yet learned what his heart really wants, and a loving family who sometimes make the wrong choices for the best of reasons, and there was the story.

Even so, there were some surprises as I wrote. Jodie’s career as a teacher of riding became more important than I thought it would be. It draws on all the experience I’m gaining from being involved with my daughter’s passion for horses. The night-time scene between Devlin and Jodie on their way back from an evening out wrote itself onto the page in a way I hadn’t planned, but as soon as it was there I knew it was right.

I hope this book makes you laugh and cry, and that you’re as eager for Jodie and Dev to find the path to their own happiness as I was.

Lilian Darcy

About the Author

LILIAN DARCY has written nearly eighty books. Happily married, with four active children and a very patient cat, she enjoys keeping busy and could probably fill several more lifetimes with the things she likes to do—including cooking, gardening, quilting, drawing and travelling. She currently lives in Australia, but travels to the United States as often as possible to visit family. Lilian loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at PO Box 532, Jamison PO, Macquarie ACT 2614, Australia, or e-mail her at lilian@liliandarcy.com.

The Mummy
Miracle

Lilian Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Chapter One

“I don’t think she’s ready yet.” The words floated up through Jodie’s open bedroom window from the back deck.

“Oh, I agree! She’s not!”

No one in the Palmer family ever thought Jodie was ready. She sat on her bed, struggling to raise her left arm high enough to push her hand through the strap on her summery, sparkly, brand-new tank top. The hand wouldn’t go, which meant she couldn’t start the long journey down the stairs to join the Fourth of July family barbecue as the—not her idea—guest of honor.

She pushed again, the feeble muscle refusing to obey the muddy signal from her brain. It was noon; time for everyone to start arriving. “So I guess they’re right. I’m not ready,” she muttered, but she knew this wasn’t what her sister Lisa’s comment had meant.

It had meant Not Ready, capital N, capital R, and during Jodie’s twenty-nine years had covered everything from her learning the shocking truth about the Easter Bunny at the age of seven, to going out on her first date at fifteen. She vaguely remembered from last summer, about a hundred years ago, that Elin had even questioned her readiness to see Orlando Bloom’s wedding photos in a magazine—and, admittedly, she had been a little envious of the bride.

What wasn’t she ready for this time?

It could be anything. Going back to work?

Well, yes, she knew she wouldn’t be doing that for a while, since she managed and taught at a riding barn for a living and spent hours in the saddle every week at Oakbank Stables.

Reading the police report on the accident scene? Might never be ready for that one. Fixing her own coffee? Wrong, sisters. She’d been practicing in rehab and, not to sound arrogant or anything, she was dynamite when it came to spooning the granules out of the jar.

“Guys?” she called out to her sisters. “Can I have some help up here?”

From down on the deck she heard an exclamation, voices, the scrape of chairs. Lisa and Elin both appeared half a minute later, flinging the bedroom door back on its hinges with a slam, wearing frightened looks to complement their red-white-and-blue patriotic earrings.

“It’s okay,” she told them. “You can put the defibrillator down and cancel the 911 call. I just can’t get my arm into this top, that’s all, and I know people will start arriving any second.”

“Maddy and John just drove up,” Lisa confirmed. “And Devlin was right behind them.”

“Devlin’s coming?” Jodie’s heart bumped sideways against her ribs. Dev. Every time she saw Dev …

There was an odd little silence. Possibly there was. It ended so quickly that she wasn’t even sure if it had happened.

“He’s been so great, hasn’t he?” Lisa said brightly. “How many times did he go in to see you, while you were in the hospital?”

“You tell me,” Jodie joked. “I was unconscious for most of them.”

“Do you remember anything from that time?” Elin asked, hesitant. At forty, she was the eldest of the four Palmer girls, and managed to be both the bossiest and the most nurturing at the same time. “The doctors said you might retain some memories, even from when you weren’t responsive.”

She and Lisa both stood there waiting for her reply, each almost holding their breath. Jodie fought a bad-tempered impulse to yell at them to stop the heck worrying about her so much!

Instead she said carefully, “I wouldn’t call them memories….”

“No …?” prompted Lisa.

“But let’s not talk about it now. Help me downstairs. I’m so slow. My brain sends the instructions but bits of my body don’t respond. I’m thrilled I managed to get into the jeans.”

Thirty-eight-year-old Lisa, sister number two, hugged Jodie suddenly with a warm, tight squeeze, and planted a smacking kiss on her cheek. Of the four Palmer girls, she and Jodie were physically the most alike, blonde and athletic, outdoorsy and lean. Lisa liked tennis and the beach and it had started to show in her tanned skin. She didn’t take care of it the way she should. Hugging her back, Jodie decided she’d have to give Lisa a sisterly lecture about that, soon, because Palmer overprotectiveness could cut both ways.

The slight, strange tension in the room seemed to have gone, chased by the hug. “Honey, forget slow, we’re just so happy you’re okay,” Lisa said. “Talking. Walking. Getting better every day. Home.”

“I know.” Jodie blinked back sudden tears as they let each other go. “Me, too.”

Devlin Browne was standing on the deck when she reached it, his dark hair showing reddish glints in the sun, his body tall and strong; there was no evidence of the accident that had injured the two of them in such different ways, nine months ago. He grinned at the sight of her, from behind his sunglasses. “Look at you!” She wished she could see the expression in his blue eyes. He ran his life with such quiet confidence and certainty. She loved that about him, wished right now that some of his qualities would rub off on her.

“Yeah,” she drawled in reply, “all the grace of a ballerina.”

With a walking frame for a dance partner. The doctors and therapists had promised that if she worked hard, she’d be rid of it soon. She planned to astonish them with her progress.

“Don’t knock it,” Dev said. “Compared to how you were even a week ago.”

“I know. I’m not knocking it, believe me.” She felt so self-conscious in his presence, so aware of the strong length of his body. Nine months and more since those three explosive nights of lovemaking, but to her they felt like yesterday. The way their bodies seemed to fit together so perfectly. The smell of him, warm and fresh and male. The words he’d whispered to her in the dark, naked and blunt and charged with sensual heat. Did he ever think about it?

Lisa helped her to sit down and took away the frame, while Elin handed her an ice-cold glass of tropical juice. The deck was dappled with sun and shade, and there was a breeze. It was a perfect day. Dev pulled up an Adirondack chair to sit beside her. He leaned against the wooden seat-back, casually stretched his arms. But his mood wasn’t as casual as he wanted her to think. His gaze seemed intently focused behind those concealing sunglasses, and she didn’t know if his sitting so close was significant.

Were they dating?

Could she ask?

Um, excuse me, Dev, I was in a coma for nearly eight months, and rehab since. Can you just catch me up on the current status of our relationship?

A thought struck her. That Not Ready comment of Lisa’s a few minutes ago …

Not Ready to hear that Dev had moved on to someone else?

But she didn’t have time to examine the cold pit that opened deep in her stomach at this idea. There shouldn’t be a pit! He’d been up front with her nine months ago. “I have nothing to offer, Jodie,” he’d said. “I’m only here until Dad is ready to go back to work. My career is in New York, it’s pretty full-on, no room for commitment, and I’m not looking for it. I really like being with you, but if you’re interested in something long-term, it’s not with me.”

How did a woman respond to something like that? She knew Dev had said it out of innate honesty and goodness of heart. He wasn’t the kind of man who promised what he couldn’t deliver, or tricked a woman into bed with sweet-talking lies. He called it how he saw it, and when he laid his cards on the table, he laid them straight.

Nine months ago he’d been all about the short term, about saying goodbye when it was over, with a big grin, warm wishes and no regrets for either of them, yet now he was sitting beside her, searching her face, examining the set of her shoulders as if he cared that she might not be coping.

Which she wasn’t, fully.

Everything was happening too fast. Dev stood up to greet Lisa’s husband. Mom and Dad came out from the kitchen, Dad in full male barbecue armor, with plastic apron and an impressive weaponry of implements. The front doorbell rang and Elin went to answer it.

And sister number three—Maddy—and her husband, John, were here, having at last managed to negotiate the trip from their car. They’d come around the side of the house and climbed the steps to the deck carrying two bulging diaper bags, some kind of squishy portable baby gym and a baby in a carrier.

Their baby. Their little girl. Tiny. Just a few weeks old. Jodie hadn’t even known Maddy was pregnant. She’d only been told about baby Lucy after she was born—another questionable instance of Not Ready—and hadn’t seen her yet, because Maddy and John lived in Cincinnati, two hours from Leighville, the Palmer family’s Southern Ohio hometown.

“Oh, she’s asleep!” Mom crooned. “Oh, what an angel! She already looks so much bigger than she did two weeks ago.”

“Can we put her somewhere quiet?” Maddy asked.

But it was too late. The baby began to waken, stretching her little body in the cramped space of the car carrier and letting out a keening cry.

“Oh, she needs a feed,” Maddy said. “Where shall I go?”

“Not here,” Dad said. He was a traditional man, with a passion for woodworking and gadgetry. In his world, feeding and diaper changes didn’t belong in the same space as a barbecue.

“You wouldn’t believe how difficult it was just to get here, all the gear we had to bring. John, can you set up some pillows for me in …? Oh, where!”

“My room,” Jodie said quickly. “There’s a heap of pillows, and fresh flowers, and a rocking chair.”

“Oops, I’m going to have to change her first….” But John had already gone to ready the room. Maddy held Lucy with the baby’s legs awkwardly dangling and her little face screwed up as she screamed, and looked around for the diaper bag. “She’s in a mess. Oh, I’m not good at any of this yet! Where’s the monitor? We’ll need it if she naps. I have no idea if she will. And when she cries like this … First baby at thirty-six, people do say it’s harder.”

“Here, don’t worry, it’s fine.” Of all people, it was Dev who stepped forward and took the crying baby. He cradled her against his shoulder and commenced a kind of rocking sway and a rhythmic soothing sound. “Shh-sh, shh-sh, it’s okay, Mommy’s coming in a minute, shh-sh, shh-sh.” Jodie felt a strange, unwanted tingling in her breasts and a familiar yearning in her heart. Why did he do this to her when she tried so hard to stay sensible? How could he possibly look so confident and so good, holding a poop-stained baby? Why was he still in Ohio, and not back in New York?

She had a vivid flashback, suddenly, to the first night they’d made love. Bed on the first date. You weren’t supposed to do that, if you were a female with a warm heart, but of course it hadn’t felt like the first date. She’d known Dev since she was sixteen, and she’d responded to him with half a lifetime of pent-up feeling—to his hands so right on her body, to his voice so familiar in her ear.

“Thank you, Dev!” Maddy unzipped the diaper bag and rummaged around inside. She didn’t seem surprised that Devlin had taken control, but Jodie was.

Not about the control, but about the thing he was in control of. If you were talking legal contracts or high finance or building plans, team sports, political wrangling, then, yes, Devlin Browne could take control in a heartbeat. Would always take control. But when it was a baby?

What did he know about babies?

He doesn’t even want kids.

The thought came out of nowhere, one of the memories from before the accident that her brain threw out apparently at random. “Did I have amnesia?” Jodie had asked at one point.

“Not like in the movies,” they—her doctors and therapists—had said. “But of course there are some gaps. Many of them you’ll eventually fill in. Some you never will.”

“Like the accident itself?”

“Yes, it’s quite probable you’ll never remember that.”

But she remembered that Dev didn’t want kids.

How did she remember that?

She searched her mind, watching him as he gently bounced the baby on his shoulder. He wore jeans and a gray polo shirt with black trim, filling the clothing with a body honed by running and wilderness sports. The fabric of the jeans pulled tightly across his thighs, and the sleeve-band of the polo shirt was tight, too. There was some impressive muscle mass there, and Jodie’s fingers remembered it, even while she was trying to remember the other thing—the thing about him not wanting kids.

If he didn’t want kids, how could he school all that male strength into the tender touch and soft rhythm needed to soothe a newborn baby? When Maddy was ready, he handed Lucy over to her, and casually warned, “Watch the wet patch on her back.”

But he didn’t want any of his own …

Okay, it was over dinner, she remembered. They’d been out together—and slept together, heaven help her—three times since his temporary return to Leighville. As far as Jodie’s family were concerned, she and Dev had only been dipping their toes in the waters of the great big dating lake.

To her, though, it immediately felt deeper. She’d had a major crush on him at sixteen when he’d briefly dated one of her good friends before he—Dev—had left for college in Chicago a couple of months later. Turned out the crush had never really gone away.

She couldn’t track back to how the subject of kids had come up that night. Maybe something to do with his restless lifestyle. He was based in New York these days, but his work in international law took him all over the world—three months in London, a summer in Prague. He’d only come home for a couple of months last fall to take over his father’s small-town legal practice on a temporary basis while Mac Browne had heart surgery.

Okay, so she might possibly have asked Dev, over their meal, if he ever intended to settle down.

He’d probably said no, he didn’t. The I-have-nothing-to-offer thing, again.

And then he’d definitely—twenty seconds or five minutes later—said that he didn’t want kids. Fatherhood didn’t fit with his plans.

Which was fine, she’d thought, because he was only in town for a short while, and she’d only gone into this dating thing so she could finally get a thirteen-year crush well and truly out of her system and then wave him goodbye. A big grin, and no regrets.

Or not.

If I sleep with him, he’ll break my heart when he leaves, she’d thought back then. And if I don’t sleep with him, he’ll still break my heart when he leaves….

But that was last October, and he was still here. The accident would explain part of it. October eighth, the two of them driving home after dark from date number four, a fall hike in Hocking Hills followed by dinner, when a driver in an oncoming car had lost control around a bend. Devlin had broken his leg in three places and had a permanent metal plate in there, but he didn’t even walk with a limp at this point, so shouldn’t he be safely back in New York or in a hotel room in Geneva by now?

Instead he was standing here on her parents’ summer deck sharing a joke with her dad, throwing up his head when he laughed, shirt fabric pulling across his broad shoulders when he raised a beer can to his lips, reminding her far too strongly that she hadn’t remotely gotten the crush out of her system last fall, or during the nine months of coma and rehab since.

He’d come to visit her in the hospital five times since she’d woken up, seen her at her most vulnerable, in tears and struggling to move and speak, fighting her own uncooperative body. He’d been so supportive, but cautious at the same time, never talking about anything too personal, and she had no idea what it all meant. Her brain still felt scrambled, tired, and life was a jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces missing.

“Is she out here? How is she?” This was Jodie’s Aunt Stephanie, following Elin out to the deck. Seemed as if everyone had been invited today. Jodie began to feel overwhelmed and more than a little tired. She’d been discharged from the nearby rehab unit yesterday, and would still be attending day therapy sessions there for a while. She’d spent just one night, so far, in her own precious bed.

“Jodie …!” Aunt Stephanie said, and leaned down to hug her.

Dad put hot dogs and burgers and steaks onto the barbecue grill. Lisa brought out bowls of salad. Lisa’s husband, Chris, took a soccer ball onto the grass beyond the deck and began kicking it back and forth with a handful of kids. Everyone talked and laughed and caught up on family news.

Maddy came down with Lucy wide awake and contentedly milk-filled in her arms, and Jodie asked her on an impulse, “Can I have a hold? If you put a pillow under my left arm, so I don’t have to use any muscle?”

She felt a strange yearning and a rush of emotion that she didn’t remember feeling for her other nieces and nephews when they were newborn. Well, she’d only been in her early twenties then, not ready to think about babies. Lisa’s youngest was seven years old.

“Do you want to, honey?” Mom asked, in a slightly odd voice. “Hold her?”

“Yes, didn’t I just ask?”

“Quick, someone grab a pillow from the couch,” Mom ordered urgently, as if baby Lucy were a grenade with the pin pulled and would explode if Jodie didn’t have her nestled on a pillow in the next five seconds.

“John?” Maddy said, in the same tone.

“Coming right up.” He ran so fast for the pillow Jodie expected him to come back breathless.

Sheesh, she thought, I could probably ask for a metallic gold European sports car convertible with red leather seats right now, and there’d be one in the driveway by the end of the afternoon. You know, I should definitely go for that …

Maddy stuffed the pillow between the arm of the chair and Jodie’s elbow. “Now, just cradle her head here, Jodie. If you’re not sure about this …”

“C’mon, Maddy, lighten up. I’ve held babies before. I’ve been holding them for years.” Elin’s eldest two were in their midteens.

“Yeah, but this is my baby,” Maddy joked, in a slightly wobbly voice.

Okay, so it was a new-mother thing. Fair enough.

But there was that feeling in the air again, everyone seeming to hold their breath, everyone watching Jodie a little too closely. Mom, Lisa, Dev. Dev, especially, his body held so still he could have been made of bronze.

The accident. The coma. That was why.

When she was one hundred percent fit and well, would they finally stop?

“Shouldn’t be such a fuss, should it?” Dad muttered from behind the barrier of the barbecue grill. No one took any notice.

Jodie held the baby, smelled the sweet, milky smell of her breath, the nutty scent of her pink baby scalp covered in a swirl of downy dark hair, and the hint of lavender in her stretchy cotton dress, from the special baby laundry detergent. Oh, she was so sweet, just adorable, and if everyone was staring at the two of them, well, that was fine and normal. It was one of the rightest sights in the world, a person tenderly holding a newborn child.

“Oh, you sweet, precious thing,” she crooned. “Thank you for not crying for your auntie, little darling.”

She bent forward and planted a kiss on the silky hair, and took in those sweet scents again, close to tears. As she straightened again, she could smell onions frying, too, the aroma unusually intense and satisfying, as if she’d never smelled frying onions before. Sometimes her brain reacted this way, since coming out of the coma. It was as if all her senses had been reborn.

And then suddenly they hit overload, like little Lucy hitting overload when she was due for her nap.

“Can you have her, Maddy? My arms are getting tired.”

“You did great,” Maddy said, and too many people echoed the praise. Dev growled it half under his breath.

But maybe they were right. She felt wiped. Dev leaned toward her. “Are you okay?”

“Need some lunch.”

“Just that?”

“Well, tired …”

Baby Lucy yawned on her behalf, and Maddy murmured something about taking her upstairs.

“To Jodie’s room,” Mom said quickly. “Not in—”

“No, I know,” Maddy answered, already halfway inside.

“But I definitely need lunch,” Jodie admitted.

“Sit,” Dev ordered. “I’ll grab whatever you want.” There was a tiny beat of hesitation. “You did great with the baby.”

“So did you.”

“Uh, yeah.” A quick breath. “Hot dog with everything?”

“Please!” She managed the hot dog, covered in bright red ketchup and heaped with those delicious onions, managed replies to various questions from family members, and to a comment on the kids’ soccer game from Dev, managed probably another half hour of sitting there—Maddy had come back downstairs with the baby monitor in her hand—and then she just couldn’t hold it together, couldn’t pretend anymore, guest of honor or not, and Dev said, “You need to rest. Right now.”

Mom didn’t quite get it. “Oh, but Devlin, it’s her party! We’ve barely started!”

“Take a look at her.”

Jodie tried to say, “I’m fine,” but it came out on a croak.

“You’re right, Devlin,” Mom said. “Jodie, let’s take you upstairs.”

“But Lucy’s asleep on her bed,” Maddy said.

“Couch is okay,” Jodie replied. “Nice to hear everyone talking.” She joked, “I mean, it is my party.”

“Here,” said Dev, the way he’d said it to Maddy over an hour ago, about baby Lucy. He helped her up and she leaned on him, and he smelled to her baby-new nose like pine woods and warm grain and sizzling steak. He didn’t pass her the walking frame, just said, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” and she found that he did. He was so much better than the frame, so much more solid and warm, with his chest shoring up her shoulder and his chin grazing her hair. Her heart wanted to stay this close to him for hours, but the rest of her body wouldn’t cooperate.

They reached the couch and he plumped up the silk-covered cushions, grabbed the unfinished hand-stitched quilt top her mother was working on, tucked it around her like a three-hundred thread-count cotton sheet and ordered, “Rest.”

“I will.”

“I’ll leave your frame here within reach, if you need to get up.”

“Thank you, Dev.” She’d already closed her eyes, so she wasn’t sure that he’d touched her. She thought he had, with the brush of his fingertips over her hair, but maybe it was just a drift of air from his movement. She didn’t want to open her eyes to find out, or to discover he’d gone. Touch or air, she could feel it to her bones.

He must have gone. She hadn’t heard his footsteps on the carpet, but now there was that sense of quiet.

Sleepy quiet.

In the kitchen, making coffee and cutting cake, Elin said, in a voice that wasn’t nearly as soft as she thought, “I don’t think she was ready for this many people so soon.”

“It’s just family,” answered Lisa.

“It’s a big family,” Maddy pointed out.

“Mom wanted a celebration for her coming home.” Lisa again.

“We should have waited a week or two for that.” Elin.

“But by then …” Maddy.

“I know. I know.” Elin sighed.

Jodie shut all of it out, the way she’d learned to shut out the noise and the interruptions in the hospital and rehab unit, and drifted into sleep. When she woke up again, her sisters were still in the kitchen.

No, she amended to herself, in the kitchen again.

They were cleaning up this time, and the way they were talking made it clear that most people had gone, including Maddy, Lucy and John. She must have slept for a couple of hours, and the house had grown hotter with windows and deck doors open. Was Dev still here? She could hear the vigorous, metallic sound of Dad cleaning off the barbecue out on the deck, and Elin and Chris’s kids still playing in the yard, but no Dev.

She felt refreshed but stiff-limbed. Here was the walking frame within reach, just as Dev had promised. She twisted to a sitting position, inched forward on the couch and pulled herself up, automatically comparing her strength to yesterday, and a week ago, and a week before that.

Better.

I’m getting better.

Her therapists had told her it would come with work and so far today she hadn’t done any work, just a few range of motion exercises for her hands and arms this morning.

Time for a walk.

She called out to her sisters in the kitchen, to tell them what she was doing, and Elin appeared. “You’re sure?”

“I’m supposed to, now, as much as I feel like. I’ll only go around the block.”

“Need company?”

“No!” It came out a little more sharply than she’d intended.

The Not Ready stuff drove her crazy. It had been driving her crazy for years.

Not ready to go for a walk on her own, in her own street, at three-thirty in the afternoon on the Fourth of July? Come on!

She’d once said to her three big sisters, long ago, “I’m littler ‘n you now, but watch out ‘cause I’m getting bigger!” and somehow she was still insisting on that message, twenty-something years later, even though, thanks to a serious childhood illness at the age of five that had apparently scared the pants off of the entire family permanently, she never had caught up to them size-wise and was the smallest and shortest at size 4 and five foot three. But she didn’t need the level of protectiveness they and her mother gave her. Why couldn’t they see it?

Dad seemed to have an inkling, but he rarely interfered. She remembered just a handful of times. “Let her have horse-riding lessons, Barbara, for heck’s sake!” he’d said to Mom when Jodie was seven. “It’ll make her stronger.” And then ten years later, “If she wants to work with horses as a career, then she should. She should follow her heart.”

“No, thanks,” she repeated to Elin more gently, because anger wasn’t the way to go. “Send out a search party if I’m not back in forty-five minutes or so, okay? And I have my phone. You think anyone in Leighville is going to look the other way if they find someone collapsed on the sidewalk in front of their house?”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure, Elin. You can help me down the front steps, is all.”

It felt so good, once Elin had gone back inside. To be on her own, but not alone in a hospital rehab bed. To be out in the warm, fresh day, with no one watching over her, or telling her, “Yes! You can do it!” with far too much encouragement and enthusiasm, every time she put one step in front of another.

I could walk for miles!

No, okay, not miles, let’s be realistic, here.

But maybe more than just around the block. She had the frame for support. It would be slow going, concentration still required for every step, and the afternoon heat had grown sticky, but she’d never been a quitter. There’d be a garden wall or park bench to sit on if she was tired. There were all those neighbors looking out for her, knowing about the accident and that she had just come home.

She could walk to Dev’s.

Or rather, Dev’s parents’. He’d mentioned today that he was living there for the time being, just a throwaway line that she hadn’t thought about at the time because she’d been fighting the sense of fatigue and overload, but now it came back to her.

And it didn’t make sense.

Why was Dev living at his parents’ place, even as a temporary thing? Jodie was living with hers because of the accident, but that was different. Why was he still here in Leighville at all, when she had such a strong memory from nine months ago, of his insistence that he planned to return to New York as soon as he could?

It had something to do with her, with the accident, she was sure of it, and if her family had somehow roped him into the whole let’s-protect-Jodie-till-she-can’t-breathe-on-her-own scenario, then damn it, he had to be stopped. He had to be told.

I don’t need it, Devlin. I don’t want it. Not from you or from anyone else.

She was definitely walking to Dev’s, and they were going to talk.

Chapter Two

“Shh-sh,” Dev crooned, bouncing the baby gently against his shoulder. “Shh-sh.”

It did no good. His rhythmic sway and soothing sounds had had more success with baby Lucy today than they were having now with his own child, in his own house. He’d heard her screaming as he came up the front path, and the sitter had met him at the door, looking harassed and more than ready to go home.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Browne, she just won’t settle.”

He’d taken the baby, paid the sitter, tried everything he knew in the hour since, but DJ was still crying. He knew from experience—over two months of it, since she’d come home from the hospital—that she would settle eventually, that it wasn’t anything serious or horrible, just colic, but it wasn’t fun to hear her crying and to feel so helpless.

Dev didn’t do helpless.

He’d sent his parents off to their vacation condo in Florida three weeks ago with a sigh of relief. Both the Brownes and the Palmers were acting way too protective of everyone involved, since his and Jodie’s accident nine months ago. He often suspected that the Palmers would take DJ from him completely, if they could. Maybe he should take them up on that, relinquish custody and go back to New York.

But his heart rebelled at this idea, the way it often rebelled at the suffocating level of Palmer helpfulness. Jodie’s mother and her two sisters here in Leighville seized on his need for babysitting too eagerly, he felt, trading on their combined experience of child-raising and his own helplessness. His parents had been taking a hand at it, too, but seemed suspicious that he was somehow being exploited, that Jodie had trapped him into this situation.

Which was ridiculous, since she didn’t even know about it.

Today, despite his misgivings about the attitudes of both Palmers and Brownes, he could have done with some family help, but it wasn’t possible, the way things stood. He was supposed to keep the baby safely away from the Palmer house.

Keep her away until Tuesday, the day after tomorrow, when Jodie had her appointment with doctors and therapists and counselors.

Zero hour.

His stomach kicked.

How did you prepare for something like that? He and the Palmers had been politely fighting about it for several weeks. The Palmers thought she still wasn’t ready, while Dev couldn’t handle the covering up, the distortions, the silence, even though he often dreaded what might happen once Jodie knew.

Doctor-patient ethics had become more of a concern with every step forward in Jodie’s difficult recovery. There was an insistence now that she had the right to be told, and that she was strong enough, so the moment of revelation had been fixed for ten o’clock Tuesday morning.

What would she want? Where would he fit? Would she understand how much he loved this baby girl, this surprise package in both their lives? He felt an increasing need to know how it would all pan out—he hated uncertainty, and not knowing where he stood—but there was a lot to get through first. For a start, how did you say it?

Jodie, you need to know at this point that while you were in the coma state …

DJ wailed and shuddered in his ear, but maybe it was easing now. Was she too hot? Dev preferred open windows and the chance of a breeze to the shut-in feeling of an air-conditioned cocoon, but what would be best for the baby? He rocked her a little harder and she seemed to relax into his shoulder, her sweet, milky breath soft on his neck.

He loved her more than he’d imagined possible, and he had no idea what this was going to mean, once Jodie was told.

“Stop crying, sweetheart. That’s right. Settle down, it’s okay. Is your tummy still hurting? Not so much now, hey? Not so much …”

How did this happen to me?

Nine months ago he’d been enjoying a hot fling, ground rules fully in place, with a warm, funny and surprisingly gutsy woman, who’d turned his temporary return to Southern Ohio from an act of duty into an unexpected pleasure.

Thanks to Jodie, he’d stopped seeing a slow-paced backwater town and started seeing the beauty of the changing landscape in the fall. Instead of feeling the suffocation of routine, he’d felt the sinewy strength of family ties. He’d rediscovered the pleasure of a good laugh, of collecting the morning newspaper from the front yard while the grass was wet with dew, of hearing rain or birdsong outside his window instead of city noise.

But it was just an interlude. They both knew it. He’d said it to her direct, because he didn’t want the risk of her getting hurt.

Even after the accident, he’d at first only planned to stay until his leg was put back together and healed. Jodie had family here. She wouldn’t be on her own, whether she stayed in a coma state or made a full recovery. He didn’t belong at her bedside, keeping vigil, the way her parents and sisters had.

But then …

DJ went through another spasm of pain and stiffened and screamed harder in his arms. “Ah, sweetheart, ah, honey-girl, it’ll stop soon.” He rocked her and massaged her little gut with the pad of his thumb.

How did this happen to me?

And what would change, come Tuesday?

Everything.

“Everything, baby girl,” he murmured. Hell, he was so scared about it!

The knock at his front door startled him a few minutes later, the brass rapper hitting the plate unevenly, a couple of strong, jerky taps and then a weaker one. With DJ still in his arms, her crying beginning to settle to a kind of shuddery grumble, he went to see who was there, and when he saw Jodie standing there, he knew he didn’t have until ten o’clock Tuesday anymore.

Zero hour was now.

The baby wasn’t Lucy.

Jodie worked that out in around forty seconds, as she and Dev both stood frozen on either side of the threshold.

The baby wasn’t Lucy, because Lucy belonged to Maddy and John, and had gone home with them to Cincinnati, and was smaller and newer than this little thing.

This little thing clearly belonged to Dev, and explained exactly why his crooning and shushing and swaying on Mom and Dad’s back deck had been so effective earlier today. He’d had practice. Recent practice, and a lot of it.

“You’d better come in,” he said heavily, after standing there in what appeared to be a frozen moment of shock. Jodie was pretty shocked herself. “I think she’s going to sleep,” he added. “You’re not catching her at the best time. I wish you could see her smiling, the way she’s been doing the past month.”

“It’s a girl?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“I … uh … I call her DJ.”

“DJ,” she echoed blankly. He called her DJ. But it wasn’t her name?

“You look like you need to sit. Shoot, of course you need to sit.”

“Yes. I do.” She hadn’t realized it herself until now, despite her shaky hand on the heavy door knocker, but, yes, her legs had turned pretty shaky, too, and the frame wasn’t giving enough support. She had no idea what was happening, here.

Dev had a baby.

He absolutely, one hundred percent had … a … baby.

He had a cloth thrown over his shoulder to catch the spit-up, and a hand cradling the baby’s little diaper-padded butt as if it grew there, and a puffy rectangle of baby quilt in the middle of the floor, with a baby gym arched over it, like the one Maddy and John had brought to Mom and Dad’s today for Lucy, even though their three-week-old infant could hardly be expected to play with such a thing.

This baby was definitely older. Dev had just mentioned she’d been smiling for the past month, and Jodie had enough nieces and nephews, thanks to all of Elin and Lisa’s kids, that she knew when smiling happened—six weeks or so. This baby, small though she was, had to be getting on for about ten weeks old.

Do the math, Jodie, do the math. Nine months plus two and a half equals almost a year. When you were busy “getting the old crush out of your system,” last fall, the mother of Dev’s baby must already have been pregnant….

But where was the mother now? Who was the mother?

“Here. Sit here,” Dev said, after she’d made her way inside. It was a pretty house, but the décor was too frilly and fussy for a man like Dev, with lace and florals and porcelain knickknacks everywhere. His mother’s taste. “I’ll take the frame. Do you want coffee, or something?”

“No. I—No, I’m fine.”

“Look, it’s obvious we need to talk. Let me get you something.”

“Is—? Who else is around?”

“No one. My parents are in Florida. They have a condo there. I made them go.”

“You made them?”

“Don’t you sometimes feel … haven’t you felt, these past few weeks, as if sometimes there’s just too much family?”

“Ohh, yeah!”

That she could relate to.

But the baby …

DJ had fallen asleep on Dev’s shoulder. “Hang on a sec,” he muttered, and picked up a roomy piece of cloth that turned out to be a baby sling. He draped it across his shoulder, tucked the baby inside and stood there, still swaying gently. “If I put her down now, she’ll just wake up again,” he explained. “She needs to go a little deeper before it’s safe.”

“You’re very good at it.”

“Yeah … not really. I’m getting there. I have a who-o-ole heap of help.”

A heavy silence fell, during which the obvious reference to DJ’s mother wasn’t made.

Dev said nothing about her.

Jodie didn’t want to ask.

“She’s adorable,” she said instead, feeling woolly and wooden about it, wondering if she should be angry. Or hurt. Or just cheerful. Wow, you have a baby, congratulations. You said you didn’t want kids, but whoever the mom is obviously didn’t get the memo.

Unless of course …

Well, accidents happened. Baby-producing accidents, as well as ones that break legs in three places and put people into comas and necessitate the removal of spleens. Dev and some unknown woman had had a contraceptive “oops” roughly eleven months ago, and here was a baby, and her mom had probably just run to the store for diapers and milk. She and Jodie would meet each other any minute now.

“I can’t take this in,” she blurted.

“I don’t blame you. Jodie, this was all set up for Tuesday. Does your family know you’re here? They couldn’t!”

“Oh, my family … Didn’t you just ask me if I felt there was too much family? Well, there is! I said I was going for a walk and I didn’t need company. I just told them around the block, and that if I wasn’t back in forty-five minutes, send a search party. Coming here was an impulse.”

“I’d better call your folks.” He rocked the baby in his arms instinctively.

“It hasn’t been forty-five minutes.”

“You’re going to be here for a while.” He’d already picked up the phone and hit speed dial, as if the matter was urgent.

He has my parents on speed dial, she registered. But she liked his directness, the decisive way he moved. It was reassuring, somehow. Dependable.

He spoke a moment later. “Hi, Barb?” Barb was Mom. “Just letting you know, Jodie’s here…. Nope, not my idea … No choice, at this point … I can’t argue it now, you have to trust me…. Of course I will … No. Just me. Please … Yep, okay, talk soon.”

“What was that about, Dev?” She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. The walk had tired her more than she wanted.

“We’ve both said it. Too much family.”

“Right.”

“First, tell me why you came. I mean, what made you think—? What gave you the idea—?” He broke off and swore beneath his breath. “Just tell me what made you come.”

His difficulty in finding the right words made her flounder a little, and struggle for words herself. “I wanted to ask you … or to thank you, too, for coming to see me in the hospital those times.”

“Just that?” He sounded cautious, looked watchful, as if waiting for a heck of a lot more.

“Well, and for—I don’t know if I’m even the reason for this, or even part of the reason, but … not going back to New York when you planned.”

“Hell, of course I wasn’t going back to New York!”

She looked at him blankly and he understood something—something that she didn’t understand at all, but she could see the dawn of realization in his face, while her body stopped belonging to her and belonged … somewhere else, to someone else.

It was a familiar feeling. Just the accident and her slow recovery? Or something more?

He was muttering under his breath. Curse words, some of them. And coaching. He was coaching himself. He sat down suddenly, in the armchair just across from the couch, with the sling-wrapped baby cradled in his arms, as if his legs had drained of their strength just like Jodie’s had.

“Pretend I’ve just been in a coma for nearly nine months, Devlin,” she said slowly. “Tell me anything you think I might not know. Pretend my family has a habit of shielding me from the most pointless things. And from the serious things, too. And tell me even the things you think I already do know. What did you mean, set up for Tuesday? What did you mean, no choice at this point? And this might be totally off-topic, but how is there a baby? And where is her mom?”

Chapter Three

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand.

The realization kept cycling through Dev’s head, paralyzing him. Hell, he hadn’t wanted it to happen like this! He’d been so scared of the moment, sometimes—scared about what it would mean for his own bond with his baby girl. What if Jodie wanted the baby all to herself? What if he was suddenly shut out? He wasn’t prepared to let that happen, but how tough would he be willing to get about custody and access, when Jodie’s recovery was still so far from complete? What would be best for DJ?

He’d wanted to get the revelation over with, so that at least he would begin to know where he and DJ stood, but the timing had to be right. It had to be done in the right way.

With all the talk, the questions, the arguments back and forth between pretty much every member of the Browne and Palmer families for weeks, the conjectures that maybe at some level she knew, and that some tiny thing might easily jog a memory, no one had considered that Jodie herself might be the one to determine when they broke the news.

Devlin had wanted her told sooner, and his parents had been on his side. The Palmers had wanted to wait, insisting she wasn’t ready for such a massive revelation. The doctors, therapists and counselors wanted to respect the family’s wishes, but had been growing more insistent with each stage in Jodie’s improvement, after the setback of the serious infection she’d had just after DJ was born.

This was part of the problem. It had all happened in stages. It wasn’t as if she’d just opened her eyes one day and said, “I’m back. Catch me up on what I’ve missed!”

All through the coma there had been signs of lightening awareness, giving hope for an eventual return to consciousness, but it had been so gradual. First, she followed movement around the room with her eyes, but couldn’t speak. It seemed so strange that she could have her eyes open without real awareness, but apparently this was quite common, the doctors said.

Then her level of consciousness changed from “coma” to “minimally conscious state.” She began to vocalize vague sounds, but had no words. She started to use words but not sentences. She began to move, but with no strength or control. For several days she cried a lot, asking repeatedly, “Where am I? What happened to me?”

Once she’d understood and accepted the accident and the need for therapy, she’d become utterly determined to make a full recovery and had worked incredibly hard. Every day, over and over, in her hospital room, in the occupational therapy room, or the rehab gym, they all heard, “Don’t bother me with talking now, I’m working!”

Barbara Palmer began to say, about the baby, “Not until she’s home,” and her therapists cautiously agreed that, emotionally, this might be the right way to go. Let her focus on one thing at a time. Don’t risk setting back her physical recovery with such a shock of news.

How did you say it?

How the hell was he going to say it now?

You were five weeks pregnant at the time of the accident, it turns out, although we’re almost certain you didn’t know. You gave birth, a normal delivery, at thirty-three weeks of gestation, when your state was still defined as coma, just a week after you first opened your eyes. This is your beautiful, healthy baby girl.

He said it.

Somehow.

Not anywhere near as fluently as it sounded in his head.

“Sh-she’s yours … Jodie,” he finally said, stumbling over every word. Yours? No! He wasn’t going to sabotage his own involvement. “She’s ours,” he corrected quickly. “I didn’t know what to call her. I thought you’d want to decide. So she’s been DJ till now, because those are our two initials. Is that okay? Are you okay? This was supposed to happen on Tuesday, at your appointment, with your doctors and therapists and people on hand to answer all your questions. To—to help you deal with it.”

The words sounded stupid to his own ears. Deal with it. Doctors and counselors could help someone deal with a cancer diagnosis, but this was in a whole different league.

Her eyes were huge in her face. She couldn’t speak. She was slightly built, which made a stark show of her current shock and vulnerability. He remembered thinking her funny and gawky and oddly impressive when she was sixteen and he was eighteen, and dating her friend. Impressive because she looked as if a breath of wind would blow her away, but, boy, did she get on your case if you treated her that way.

She’d been just the same in the hospital and during rehab, once she could speak and move. She’d insisted on her own strength and her own will, and proved with every step that she was as strong and determined as she claimed. She fought her family on it all the time, because she was seven years younger than her next sister and she’d had a serious brush with meningitis as a child, and the whole clan had babied her ever since.

Well, for once she wasn’t fighting or insisting. She was too shocked. He’d half expected a protest or a denial. You’re messing with my head. It can’t be true. But she didn’t say anything like that. She believed him at once, which made him wonder if there was a tiny, elusive part of her brain, or a lacing of chemicals—hormones—in her body that had known the truth.

Her conscious mind, though, and her sense of self, had been completely in the dark.

“I have a thousand questions,” she blurted out.

“Of course. Ask them. I’ll tell you everything as straight as I can.”

“I can’t.”

“Ask them?”

“Do this.” She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t carry her.

“Sit,” he insisted. “You don’t have to say anything. Or do anything. Let me talk, if you want.”

“Okay.”

So he talked, keeping it a little impersonal because that felt safe, and leaving out a few things, because he couldn’t hit her with all of it at once.

He told her about the signs of labor, the quick delivery they’d all been praying for, to ease the stress on her body. Told her DJ’s length and birth weight and head circumference. Told her proudly that the baby had Jodie’s own strength. Despite her premature birth, DJ had been stepped down from the NICU into the lower-level special-care unit within a couple of days, and had come home from the hospital in less than two weeks.

“Home?” Jodie croaked.

“Here. And your parents’ place. She spends a lot of time there.” More than he was happy with, to be honest, but he hadn’t wanted to fight them on that at a point when Jodie’s full recovery had still been very much in doubt, and when his own future wasn’t fully resolved. Would she ever be able to take care of a child? If she could, did that mean he’d go back to New York?

“Why are you here? In Leighville?”

She was asking the wrong questions, wasn’t she? He took in a breath to suggest this to her, but then changed his mind.

Ah, hell, there was no script for this! She should ask whatever she wanted to, in whatever order it came. And if she didn’t have an instant, overpowering need to hold DJ in her arms, he should be glad of the reprieve. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing his daughter, not even with generous custody and access, when the bond between them had grown so strong.

“I’m still working at Dad’s law practice,” he explained, trying to stay practical and calm. “He’s in no hurry to get back into harness. I expect he’ll decide to retire. I’ll head back to New York … Well, that’s open-ended at the moment. All decisions on hold, I guess. My apartment is rented out. I have a conference coming up in Sweden in early October, followed by a couple of months consulting in London.”

“You were supposed to be back in New York by last Christmas. Was it your dad’s health that changed your plans?”

Shoot, didn’t she understand?

“They found out you were pregnant before I even had the plates put in my leg.”

“How?”

“Blood tests, part of assessing your condition. When they told me …” Again, how to say it?

“You knew you had no other choice,” she supplied for him.

He couldn’t argue. Not the words, anyway. Maybe the edge of—what?—bitterness, or anger, in her tone. He hadn’t had any other choice. Not then. He wasn’t going to abandon his child before it was even born. He wasn’t going to deprive her of a father, when she might never have a mom. But it was different now. “I don’t want another choice,” he said. “This all needs time to work out, and that’s okay.”

“You said you didn’t plan on ever having kids.”

“You remember that?”

“Over dinner. You had steak with pepper sauce. I had strawberry mousse cake for dessert.”

“Shoot, you do remember!”

“Yes. It’s like yesterday, that mousse cake.” The subtext of explain yourself, Dev was very clear. She wasn’t really talking about dessert.

He said slowly, “What was it John Lennon once said? ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’”

“Or while you’re in a coma,” she drawled.

“Yeah, then, too.”

Tentatively, they both smiled, and something kicked inside him. He had a couple of memories that were like yesterday to him, too. Her passion in bed, almost fierce, as if in lovemaking, too, she had to prove her own strength, had to fight against the wrong preconceptions. Her saucy grin when she undressed. And his ambivalence.

He really, seriously, hadn’t known if it was a good idea to take her to bed that first time, even though she said she wanted it, and said she understood there was no long-term, and no promises, and that was fine. He’d told himself a couple of times their first night that he would stop kissing her soon, that he would reach out and still her hands if she went to pull off her clothes.

But then she’d done it. Crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her top to show a hot-pink bra and neat, tight breasts. Shimmied her way out of her skirt. Grinned at him.

And there’d been no question of stopping after that point. He’d used protection, but—not to get technical, or anything—maybe applied it just a little too late.

“But the dates don’t fit,” she said suddenly. “She’s too old. She’s smiling. Lucy isn’t.”

“Because DJ was premature,” he explained again. “Healthy preemies learn to smile at the same age after birth as full-term babies, even if they’re smaller and a little slower in other areas. DJ and Lucy would have been born within a week or two of each other, if DJ had come at the right time. The doctors say it’s good that she didn’t. It was easier on your body that she was little, and early. Would you like to hold her?”

He asked it before he thought. Blame Lucy for that. Jodie had looked so happy and comfortable holding her tiny niece today.

DJ was different. DJ had baggage.

Jodie stiffened and stammered. “No, she’s—she’s—N-not yet, when she’s asleep. If I disturbed her and she cried …”

“It’s fine. We’ll transfer her in the sling. It’ll be easy, I promise.” Listen to him! Five minutes ago, he’d been scared about the strength of her maternal feelings and what they might do to his own connection with his child. Now he was trying to rush her into them. He didn’t know what he wanted anymore.

Which was weird and unpleasant, because he always knew what he wanted.

Her weakened left hand made a claw shape on her thigh. “No. No, I can’t. I just can’t.”

Jodie heard the note of panic in her own voice, but there was nothing she could do about it. The panic was there. She couldn’t explain it to Dev. Couldn’t even explain it to herself. But there was a huge, massive chasm of a difference between holding and clucking over Maddy’s little Lucy and holding this baby.

My baby. Half an hour ago, I didn’t know she existed. But she’s mine.

It was overwhelming.

It should have been wonderful. A miracle.

Dev loves her. I can see it.

But it didn’t feel wonderful, it felt terrifying.

Thank heaven Dev loves her, because I don’t.

No. No! She had to love her own child! She did. Of course she did.

But why couldn’t she feel it? Why wasn’t it kicking in at once, the way it had with Elin and Lisa and Maddy and all the other normal mothers in the world, the very first moment they looked at their babies? Dev clearly expected it to, with his urging that DJ would be safe in her arms. It wasn’t a question of safety. Why could she feel so tender toward Lucy today, and yet so distant and scared about this baby?

Scared? A surge of strength hit her. She wasn’t in the habit of giving in to scared. She took in a breath to tell him that she would hold the baby after all. And she would have reached out her hands before the words came, except they were a little slow to respond to her brain’s signal and she had to make an extra effort.

But before either the movement or the words could happen, Dev accepted her refusal, gave her an easy excuse. “You’re tired,” he said. He let out a breath that might have been partly relief, as if maybe he’d doubted the strength and coordination in her arms more than he’d let on. “We should wait a little.”

She almost argued.

Almost.

But, oh, he was right, she was tired, and she’d tried so hard to stay on top of everything today. She let it go, and watched him tiptoe to the infant car carrier sitting in the corner of the living room and lay the baby down, easing his forearm out from beneath her little head with a movement so practiced and gentle it almost broke her heart.

“Very tired,” she managed to respond. “I’m sorry.” I’m so sorry, DJ.

“Don’t beat yourself up.” The baby stirred a little, but didn’t waken.

“I—I—” Did he know? Did he understand the extent of her panic?

“Let’s take it slow. It’s okay.”

“Thanks. Yes.”

She heard a car in the driveway, and footsteps and the voices of Elin and Mom. Dev lunged for the door before they could knock. He held it open and stood with the width of his body shielding the room from their view.

Mom said, “Is she still here?”

“Yes, but why are you here, Barb? I asked you very clearly to—”

“I’m sorry, we just couldn’t—I’m sorry.” This was Elin, clearly reading his anger. “We have a right to be involved in this, too, don’t we? DJ is ours, too. We all care so much.”

“You’d better come in.”

“Thank you,” said Mom, in a crisp voice.

“I really think it’s best, Devlin.” This was Elin, in a softer tone.

“We are as involved in all of this as you are.” Mom again.

They dropped at once to sit on either side of Jodie on the couch, their voices running over her along with their hands, all of it a jumble that she heard at two steps removed, like recorded voices or lines from a half-remembered play. Honey, are you okay? Obviously you know. Obviously there’s so much to talk through. That’s why we wanted to wait until you were ready. What has Dev said, so far?

“You barely gave me time to say anything,” he said.

“Listen, it’s not as if any of us have had any experience with a situation like this, Devlin,” Elin said.

“Shh … keep your voice down, can you?”

“Sorry … sorry.” Elin glanced over at the baby and looked surprised. “You have her in the car carrier?”

“She seems to sleep better in there, during the day.”

“Well, then, I guess …” But I never did that with my babies, was the implication.

“She’s fine. She wouldn’t sleep so peacefully if she was uncomfortable there.”

“If you say so.”

Both Devlin and Elin were holding it together with difficulty, and Mom looked trapped and unhappy, her mouth open as if she wanted to speak, although no words came.

Jodie slumped against the back of the couch. She’d started to shake. Could they feel it? She felt more tired than she’d ever felt in her life, and her lips had gone dry. She closed her eyes, willing this chaos of family and tension and questioning to … just … stop.

“Should we take her? Jodie, are you ready to go home?”

She opened her eyes. “Yes, take her.”

I mean, who is she? How can she even exist?

“I—I don’t know what I want to do,” she blurted. “I think I need some space. Another nap.” Her own bed seemed like the safest haven in the world.

There was a small silence, while Elin and Mom and Devlin all looked at each other, shrugged and raised eyebrows and gestured—body language that was beyond Jodie’s ability to interpret right now.

“I guess that’s an option,” Dev said slowly to Elin and Mom. “For you to take her and Jodie to stay here.”

“That’s not—” What I meant. But the rest of it wouldn’t come, and the first bit had come almost on a whisper, and they were too busy making plans to hear her.

“She should transfer to the car without waking,” Dev said. “I have a couple of bottles made up in the fridge.”

“We have bottles. We have diapers, clothes, everything. You know that. She’s due for her bath.”

“I’ll drop Jodie home when she’s ready. She’s right. We need to talk. Have some space.”

They’d worked it all out between the three of them, while Jodie was still struggling to lift an arm to brush a strand of damp hair from her eyes. She was staying here with Dev to talk. The baby was going back with Mom and Elin. Going back before she, the mother, had even touched her.

She wanted to argue the plan, but the words wouldn’t come, so in the end she let it happen, and when the baby carrier was buckled into the car and Mom and Elin had driven away, she felt so relieved, and so ashamed of the relief, and so horribly, horribly tired. “I can’t—” she said to Dev.

“I know you can’t talk yet. Sleep first.”

“Two naps a day. I’m like—” She stopped.

A baby.

My baby.

“Just rest.”

“Why aren’t you in New York? Tell me why. In simple words. Because it seems to me that you didn’t have to still be here. Obviously DJ is being taken care of. Obviously she’s loved. Obviously I have the support. So why?”

He looked at her steadily, with some of the anger he’d clearly felt toward Elin and Mom still simmering below the surface. He seemed to be thinking hard before he chose his words.

“Because she’s my daughter.” The last two words came out with a simmering intensity. “Because we’re a family. You and me and DJ. Three of us. That’s not negotiable. Three of us, not two.”

“A family …” Jodie echoed foolishly, tasting the word and not feeling sure of how it felt in her mouth.

“Not a regular family, for sure.”

“No …”

“But DJ needs a family of some kind….” He paused for a moment, and she filled in the words he didn’t say, in her head. And not necessarily a whole cluster of over-involved grandparents and aunts. “I’m right here in the picture and I’m not going to go away. And we have a heck of a lot to do and talk and think about, to decide how that’s going to work.”

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