SHE LEFT EARLY the next morning. The night before had been hot and sticky—so muggy he’d had to keep the windows shut and the air conditioner running. After making love, they’d lain together in bed, listening to the chilly hiss of the ventilation system. The sex had been hot and powerful—but he’d sensed a certain desperation about it, something he couldn’t define or explain.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she’d whispered when he asked if she was okay. Her eyes had been glassy, her skin unnervingly cool against his. “I’m sorry, Levi—I wish I understood it, but I don’t.”
Now she was gone, and he didn’t understand anything, either. She hadn’t even let him drive her to the station. She’d arisen at dawn, told him she had to go home, and phoned for a cab. He’d choked down a cup of coffee with her, remained downstairs while she tiptoed into D.J.’s room to bid him good-bye, and then walked her out to the cab. Warm mist hovered above the grass. Today would be even hotter than yesterday, the sort of day that left one waiting for a thunderstorm to sweep through—praying for it.
She’d apologized again, promised to phone him, touched his lips with hers, and then disappeared into the shadows of the cab’s interior. He watched as the car drove away and the mist settled back down along the ground, a dense gray blur.
D.J. was chanting in his crib when Levi trudged back into the house. The cheerful babble wafted down the stairs to him, alerting him that the baby wanted to escape from his crib. But Levi needed more coffee, more time—more air. He needed to think. And one thing he didn’t need, right this minute, was an energetic little boy with an empty stomach and a full diaper.
He poured a fresh cup of coffee for himself and carried it out to the porch. The morning air pressed against the screens with its smothering heat and dampness, but it was better than the processed air inside. Five minutes he’d give himself, and then he’d go back in and check on D.J.
In the not too distant future, he’d be able to sit out on the porch sipping coffee for as long as he wished. He wouldn’t have to time himself, wouldn’t have to live his life in incremental moments, always wondering if D.J. was all right, if D.J. needed him, if there was something he ought to be doing for D.J. at that exact moment. He’d be the one freed from the crib—his own invisible cage of responsibility and obligation.
He’d miss D.J., of course. As the kid’s uncle—and only true tie to his mother—Levi would always be a part of D.J.’s life. But the day-to-day job of raising him would belong to Travis.
The prospect saddened him, but fighting Travis for custody wouldn’t be fair, either to Travis or to D.J. A boy deserved his father. And no child deserved to be split in two by bickering adults. Levi knew his Bible. He knew about Solomon’s decision to cut a child in half, and about the love that motivated the true mother to cede her child to her rival in order to save her baby’s life. Levi would cede the child because it would do D.J. no good to be split between a West Coast father and a New England surrogate father.
He would have explained all this to Corinne if she’d let him. He’d tried last night, but she’d shut down. She hadn’t wanted to hear.
This had been the weekend he’d planned to discuss marriage with Corinne. He cursed at his timing, his lousy luck. He never would have expected that she’d react to the custody situation the way she had. He’d thought she would sympathize with him, assure him he could remain in D.J.’s life—long-distance but still central to the boy, the way he’d been close to Ruth even though they’d been three thousand miles apart. He’d figured Corinne would comfort and support him through a difficult decision. He hadn’t imagined her weeping after they’d made love, insisting she wasn’t angry but was unable to name the cause of her distress, lying rigidly next to him throughout a long, troubled night and departing before the stars had completely faded from the sky.
If he wanted to exert himself, he might come up with some explanations for her behavior. But he’d already come up with the most obvious explanation: if he didn’t have D.J., Corinne didn’t want him.
He never would have guessed she’d turn out to be a woman like the ones he’d been warned about, the sort who became attracted to men because they had children. The first few times they’d met, she’d seemed annoyed by the baby. It wasn’t until that weekend she’d come to Arlington uninvited, as if driven by some need to know Levi better—and D.J. She’d fallen for D.J. gradually, just as she’d fallen for Levi.
And now she’d fallen away. Without D.J., Levi no longer mattered to her.
He cursed again. His coffee was too hot and his five minutes were up—and he no longer trusted his judgment. He’d been so wrong about Corinne, so crazily, painfully wrong. And as a result, he was going to lose both her and D.J., just months after he’d lost his sister.
A weak man would be demolished by all that loss. Levi wasn’t sure how strong he could be. He supposed he was going to have the opportunity to find out.
*
“THIS WOMAN is—what? A father school teacher?”
“Daddy School,” Levi corrected Travis. They were in his car, D.J. strapped into his child seat behind them, traveling through Arlington to Jamie McCoy’s house.
Travis was worried about his parenting skills. “I’m twenty-five years old,” he’d told Levi while they sat in the air-conditioned kitchen drinking coffee while D.J. spun circles around them in his walker. “I’ve never changed a diaper in my life.”
“Neither had I, before I got D.J.,” Levi had assured him. “Whatever you can’t figure out on your own you can read up on. Or you can take a class.”
“What kind of class?”
That was when Levi had gotten the idea of phoning Jamie McCoy and seeing if his wife, Allison, the brilliant Daddy School teacher who’d taught Levi so much, would be willing to meet Travis for a private tutorial. “We’re just hanging out today,” Jamie had informed him. “It’s too muggy to do anything. So come on over and we’ll all do nothing together.”
“Allison teaches classes on fathering skills in a program called the Daddy School,” Levi explained as they drove through the swampy afternoon heat. “She and a friend of hers started this Daddy School. I heard about it from a friend of mine, a divorced father with custody of his kids. Allison’s a neonatal nurse at Arlington Memorial Hospital. She knows her stuff, particularly when it comes to babies.”
“Okay.” Travis looked only slightly mollified. He was wearing another silk shirt, and Levi considered warning him that silk was an impractical fabric to wear in the presence of young children. If Allison didn’t mention it, Levi would give Travis a lesson on machine-washable clothing.
“I mean, I just feel way over my head,” Travis muttered.
“No kidding.” Levi smiled wryly. “That’s how I felt when I came home with D.J., too.”
“What happened to your lady?” Travis asked, apparently done discussing D.J. for now. “I thought she was going to be here for the weekend.”
“She had to go home,” Levi said, trying to ignore the pain and anger that sliced through him when he thought of Corinne, of how he’d counted on her, how she’d let him down. Before his mood could turn from blue to black, he reached Jamie’s driveway and steered up it to the house. He nodded for Travis to get D.J. out of his seat, then winced as Travis struggled to reach over the folded front seat and wrestle D.J. out of the straps that secured him. D.J. fussed a bit, swatting at Travis and poking him with his foot. What Levi could have done in ten seconds took Travis two whole minutes.
But he had to learn. Levi had learned by doing; Travis might as well learn by doing, too.
They knocked on the door and Jamie answered, dressed in a navy-blue cotton T-shirt that had seen better days and a pair of green athletic shorts. “Come on in,” he welcomed them.
Once the cool air of the foyer enveloped them, Levi performed the introductions. “Jamie, this is Travis Justice, D.J.’s father. Travis, this is Jamie McCoy. You might have heard of him. He writes a syndicated newspaper column about men. It’s called ‘Guy Stuff.’ Your column is carried in one of the Los Angeles papers, isn’t it?”
“‘Guy Stuff’?” Travis exclaimed. “Hey, I used to read that column.”
Jamie laughed, refusing to take offense. “Used to? Why’d you stop?”
Travis smiled sheepishly. “Well, it was really funny until you started writing about babies and fatherhood and all that.”
“Oh.” Jamie exchanged a quick look with Levi. “I’ll tell you, Travis, it would be a good idea for you to develop a sense of humor about babies and fatherhood if you’re planning to take that little guy home with you.” He scruffed a hand through D.J.’s fine hair. “No way a man can survive the fatherhood gig without a sense of humor.” He led them into the house, calling out, “Allison? Your tutee has arrived.”
Allison greeted them in the brightly lit kitchen. She held several sheets of paper stapled together, and she waited until Levi had introduced them and Travis lowered D.J. to the floor before handing the papers to her student. “Here are some reading suggestions, books about early childhood development. Also a check-list of items you’re going to need to have on hand for your baby. The most important item on that list is a pediatrician,” she said, pointing it out.
The two of them settled at the kitchen table, and Jamie ushered Levi into the den. “You want a drink? I’ve got beer, iced tea, lemonade, water—”
“No, thanks.” If he were a heavy drinker, he’d want to be chugging whisky straight from the bottle right now, but hard liquor had never appealed to him.
Jamie’s daughter appeared in the doorway. “There’s a baby in the kitchen,” she announced, hands on hips and head tilted as if she deeply resented having not been informed of this visit.
“That’s Levi’s little boy,” Jamie said, then caught Levi’s eye and corrected himself. “His nephew, actually. You can play with him if you want.”
“I don’t want to play with a boy.”
“At his age, his being a boy hardly matters,” Jamie informed her.
“I’d rather have a baby girl. Can I have a baby?”
“Maybe when you’re thirty,” Jamie answered, “and only after I’ve fully vetted the guy you want to have it with.”
“Daddy, you’re so silly,” she scolded him. “I don’t want a guy. I just want a baby.” With a sigh, she turned and stomped out of the den.
“She reminds me of my sister,” Levi muttered. “She didn’t want a guy, either. Just a baby.”
“And that’s the guy she didn’t want?” Jamie motioned in the direction of the kitchen with his head.
“That’s the guy.”
“Do you think he’s got what it takes? Not to father a child—I mean, we know he’s got what it takes to do that. But to be a father.”
“He’s got what I had when I took custody of D.J.: the desire to do the right thing.”
“You think that’s enough?”
“It was enough for me.”
“I think maybe it takes more than just desire to be a good father,” Jamie argued. “It even takes more than top-level instruction from a Daddy School teacher.”
“All right—a sense of humor,” Levi added.
“And patience. And a healthy ego. The ability not to care if you’re making an ass of yourself.” He glanced toward the kitchen and snorted. “A lack of regard for good grooming.”
Levi chuckled. “The silk shirt worried me a little, too.”
“And the fancy hair, and the pricey sandals. A guy who cares that much about looking cool had either better have a wife on hand to deal with the baby, or a full-time nanny. He’s got a job, right?”
“He works for a production company in Hollywood.”
“So he’s going to have to hire a nanny.”
“I don’t know. That’ll be his problem,” Levi said, although his heart seized at the possibility that Travis might not be as good at hiring a nanny as Levi had been. What if he hired someone who wasn’t up to the task? What if D.J. didn’t like her? What if he missed Levi and cried non-stop? What would Travis do?
How would Levi stand knowing that D.J. might be crying on the other side of the country, and he could do nothing to console him?
He’d thought he would have Corinne to help him through this. He’d been trying to put a positive spin on it, knowing he was doing what he had to do. But he’d counted on Corinne to back him, to help him through the sadness of losing a baby he’d grown to love.
She’d abandoned him.
And that hurt even more than losing D.J.
*
GERALD SWUNG into Corinne’s office, carrying two lidded plastic trays of take-out food. “One chicken quesadilla with rice,” he said, placing one of the trays onto her blotter with a flourish. “One cheese enchilada special, extra mild,” he continued, settling into the visitor’s chair across the desk from her and putting down his meal. He dug into the deep pockets of his cargo pants and removed two cans: “Diet ginger ale for you, and Orange Crush for me.”
“Thanks.” Corinne would have found it odd that her boss was the one racing out for dinner when they had to work late—but he had more energy than she, and was more easily distracted. While he’d been out of the building procuring their food, she’d finished proofreading the new contract the Bell Tech people had agreed to. It was a good contract. It had an especially lovely payment schedule.
But unlike Gerald, she wasn’t feeling triumphant. A huge payday couldn’t cheer her up. Nothing could.
“I had the worst date of my life this past weekend,” Gerald reported as he snapped off the lid of his tray.
“Really?” She forced herself to care. She’d much rather discuss Gerald’s social life than think about her own.
“This woman was gorgeous. Blond, short, a little plump in the right places. Mensa-smart. We went to the Planetarium and decided the show was too commercial. Then we went out for espresso and pastries and she didn’t once say, ‘I really shouldn’t’ before digging into her cheese cake.”
Corinne picked at her rice and attempted an interested smile.
“I took her back to her apartment. We made out for a while, and then we stopped because we both sort of felt we should go out a few more times before we got carried away.”
“I’m waiting to hear what was so bad about this date,” she goaded him.
“It was awful, Corey. I enjoyed every damned minute of it. I didn’t feel superior to her. I didn’t feel intimidated by her. She scraped the cheesecake from her fork with these beautiful white teeth… It was absolutely awful.”
“One of us is not making sense,” Corinne muttered. “Why was it absolutely awful?”
“I’m in love.”
She sighed and twirled the tines of her plastic fork in the melted cheese of her quesadilla. “Why is that awful?” she asked, even though she could come up with plenty of answers herself.
“It’s easier not being in love, Corey. It’s risk-free. I used to love it when I assumed you and I would wind up together. It would have been so easy, you know? We could work together, we could eat take-out together, we could spend weekends at the house in Arlington together, and we’d never have to get carried away or out of control or…I don’t know, whatever happens when you fall in love. I’m scared.”
“You could get hurt,” she suggested.
“Exactly.”
“Or you might hurt her.”
“Which I really don’t want to do, because I’m in love with her.”
“She could do something that disappointed you so deeply, you couldn’t stand the pain.” Corinne heard the scratchy emotion in her voice. She hoped Gerald didn’t notice.
He did. Lowering his fork, he leaned forward, angling his face so he could peer into her eyes. “What happened? Did something go wrong between you and Levi this weekend?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t lie to Gerald. She didn’t want to lie. He was her best friend, and she’d been feeling so wretched since she’d left Levi’s house Saturday morning. Now it was Monday night and she only felt worse.
“What, Corey?” Gerald reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “What happened?”
“He did something that disappointed me that deeply. It hurt. So I hurt him.”
“Ah.” He kept his hand folded around hers, warm and soothing. “What did he do?”
“He gave up custody of the baby.”
“You’re kidding! Who’d he give it to?”
“The baby’s a he, not an it. And he gave him to the birth father, who only just found out he had a son and wanted custody of him.”
Gerald mulled that over. “Sounds like Levi did the right thing.”
“I know.” She quit trying to hide her tears. A few slid down her cheeks, and she wiped them with a napkin that said “Paco Rico” in bright orange letters. “That’s the worst part of it, Gerald—he did the right thing. I should have praised him for his courage. I should have admired him for his sacrifice. But all I could think of was that he was giving away D.J. I love D.J.”
“More than you love Levi?”
“No.” She let out a damp, shaky sigh. “But when Levi told me he was giving up the baby, I felt as if I was falling out of love with him. I thought, he should have fought to keep D.J. He should have refused to give him up.”
“Would that have been the best thing for the baby?”
“Probably not.” She sighed again, so deeply her lungs ached. “It would have been selfish. But it was what I wanted him to do.”
Releasing her hand, Gerald leaned back and forked a bite of enchilada into his mouth. “You know what I think?”
“What?” She had never imagined she’d be asking Gerald for advice on romance, but she was desperate.
“I think you’ve got a problem with that biological clock thingy. I think you want a baby.”
So much for expecting any useful advice from him. “It’s not that at all,” she snapped impatiently. “Maybe I can imagine myself having a baby someday, but no—this was specifically about D.J. There was just something about that one special baby.”
“I didn’t see it.” Gerald shook his head. “I met the kid, and sorry, but I just didn’t see anything special about him.”
“Don’t apologize. It was something between D.J. and me. Something magical. I never felt about other babies the way I felt about him. He made me sing.”
“Wow. I’m glad I missed that.”
“I happen to have a very nice voice. But I’m not often inspired to sing. D.J. inspired me.” She let out another deep breath and nudged her plate away, sorrow sabotaging her appetite. “I still can’t believe Levi gave him up to that—that skinny hot-shot twerp from California.”
“Well, if he’s the baby’s father—”
“I know. But I love the baby. That hot-shot twerp doesn’t even know the baby. How can he love him?”
“You women drive me crazy,” Gerald griped. “You complain when fathers don’t take responsibility for the babies they create, and now here’s a father who is taking responsibility, and you’re putting him down. Do you think he’d be a better man if he hadn’t showed up and taken responsibility?”
“No,” she conceded. “But I’d be a happier woman.”
“Well, maybe your happiness isn’t the most important thing here.”
She jerked her head up. She and Gerald were always honest with each other—but rarely so honest that the words stung. His statement was like a slap on the cheek. She felt her skin tingling with heat from it.
“And I’ll tell you something else, Corey,” he continued, pulling Corinne’s barely touched dinner toward himself and scooping up some rice with his fork. “You’re only making yourself more miserable by turning your back on Levi. You lost the baby—even though he was never really yours to lose. So what’s to be gained by losing Levi, too? What’s the point of making yourself feel even worse?”
She sipped her ginger ale and sank back in her chair, wishing the upholstery were softer, wishing it would swallow her up. “One of the things I loved about Levi was how devoted he was to D.J., how hard he worked to make a good life for him. The first time I met him—met them both…” Her voice cracked as she recalled that morning at his office. “He cancelled a meeting with me because D.J. was teething. He wanted to give his full attention to making D.J. feel better. At first I was ticked off, because he was screwing up my schedule. But then I realized how wonderful he was, putting a baby’s comfort ahead of everything else. Taking that baby’s pain away. Trying to make up for the tragic loss that baby had suffered. Accepting a complete upheaval in his own life to accommodate this tiny little invader. That kind of selflessness and dedication… That’s why I fell in love with him.”
“And—what? This past weekend, you discovered he wasn’t so selfless and dedicated?”
“I thought he would fight for the baby. He was D.J.’s champion, and I thought he’d stick by that baby through thick and thin. Everything always changes in my life,” she lamented. “My parents used to come and go, my step-parents, my addresses, even my cat.”
“You had a cat?” Gerald’s eyes grew almost as round as the frames of his eyeglasses.
She ignored the question. “All I ever wanted was a stable home, something that wouldn’t change. It would be just what I wanted it to be, and it would stay that way. Levi, D.J. and me. A real home. And Levi threw that all away.”
“So your complaint is, he wasn’t selfless when it came to what you wanted. Only when it came to what he wanted, or D.J. wanted, or D.J.’s father wanted.”
A fresh spate of tears filled her eyes, and a few leaked out. “Oh, God. Levi was selfless, wasn’t he. He wasn’t thinking about me, but he wasn’t thinking about himself, either. He was thinking only about what would be best for D.J.”
Gerald devoured a chunk of Corinne’s quesadilla. “Of course, it’s always possible he was secretly glad to give up the baby. Maybe he wanted his bachelor life back.”
She dismissed that possibility with a shake of her head. “Levi wanted D.J. to grow up knowing his father. If anyone should understand that, I should. I had all those fathers—more fathers than I wanted, but I couldn’t even depend on my own real father. Levi wanted D.J. to have his own real father. Not a step-father. Not a surrogate. Not a substitute. The real thing. For God’s sake, I should understand that.”
“Okay. So now you understand it. What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to let you eat my dinner,” she mumbled, dabbing her cheeks with her soggy napkin. “I should go throw myself at Levi’s feet and beg him to forgive me for being so thoughtless,” she admitted. “He probably won’t want to see me, though.”
“He’s not an idiot,” Gerald pointed out, his eyes brimming with affection, the sort of love best friends had for each other. “He’ll want to see you.”
She glanced at her watch. “It’s seven-thirty. I don’t know how late the trains run to Arlington—”
“I’ll drive you,” he offered. “I’m paying a fortune to park that damned Range Rover in the garage of my building. I might as well get some use out of it.”
“You’d really want to drive all the way up to Arlington at this hour?”
“Corey. You always fix everyone else’s mistakes, but this time you’re the one who made a huge mistake. You never make mistakes. This is probably the first mistake you ever made in your life. I feel privileged to witness it.”
She threw a wadded-up napkin at him, then managed a limp smile. “If you’re serious about driving me, I’m not going to say no. That would be an even bigger mistake.”
“Then let’s hit the road.” Gerald rose, grabbed Corinne’s hand and hauled her out of her chair. “Let’s go and see if there’s still a home waiting for you in Arlington.”
*
LEVI HEARD the rumble of an engine and the crunch of large tires on driveway. He wasn’t expecting anyone, but he couldn’t get up and peek through the window while he was in the middle of changing D.J.’s diaper. D.J. squawked and squealed and attempted risky maneuvers with his feet while Levi scrubbed his bottom clean with a clutch of Wet-Wipes. He heard the doorbell ring and slid a clean diaper into place between D.J.’s legs. His thighs were losing their fat, he noticed, and his legs were getting straighter. All that exercise—the walker, the crawling, the new trick he’d demonstrated just an hour ago, when he’d positioned himself at the bottom of the stairs and then moved his hands up to the second step, pulling himself to his feet—were turning his legs from baby legs to real legs, legs that would someday run, kick, jump, climb and carry him through the world.
The doorbell rang again, and Levi pulled D.J.’s pajama bottoms onto him. D.J. giggled and tried to kick the pj’s off. Not a great time to play that game, Levi thought.
He wrestled D.J. into the pj’s, snapping the bottoms to the tops so D.J. couldn’t push them off. He heard the rumble of an engine again. Whoever had come by was leaving.
Probably someone trying to sell something, he figured. Or someone trying to get him to sign a petition. It was nine o’clock, too late for a delivery.
He hoisted D.J. into his arms and descended the stairs. D.J. made a gobbling sound like a turkey. That morning, Martina had brought him a toy that created animal noises when he pointed an arrow to a picture and pulled a string. At least they were supposed to be animal noises. As far as Levi was concerned, the noise that emerged when the arrow was pointed at the duck sounded more like a bicycle horn than a quack. The sound that accompanied the dog sounded like a truck backfiring. But D.J. had fallen in love with the gobbling turkey.
Levi opened the door, just in case someone had left a package or a flyer.
Corinne was standing on the doorstep.
He stared at her, holding his face immobile while a series of emotions washed through him in waves: joy, fury, resentment, self-protective caution. Love. Relief. Fear.
She’d left him because she’d only loved him for D.J. Now, everything she wanted had come true, and he didn’t know whether he could forgive her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and forgiveness began to trickle into his soul.
D.J. shrieked and reached for her, but she didn’t acknowledge him. Her gaze locked onto Levi’s. “I’m so sorry, Levi. I love you. Can I come in?”
The trickle increased to a gentle flow, but he resisted it. She’d left him. She’d broken his heart. He had to be careful.
D.J. continued to reach for her, but she looked only at Levi. “Sure. Come in. How did you get here?”
“Gerald drove me,” she said, entering the house.
Levi glanced down the empty driveway before shutting the door. “He just dumped you on the doorstep and left?”
“If you weren’t home—or you refused to let me in, I was going to call him to come and get me. But I thought it would be best if I saw you alone. He drove across town to look at his house.”
“It’s dark. I hope he doesn’t do something stupid like walk around the construction site. He could get hurt.”
“He’s too smart to do anything stupid,” she said, moving past Levi toward the living room, where a lamp filled the air with golden light. D.J. snagged a fistful of her hair as she walked past, and she yelped. “Ouch! Let go!”
D.J. laughed. Levi fought to unfurl his tight little fingers and free her. “I guess you aren’t happy to see him,” he said thoughtfully. He would have expected her to snatch D.J. out of his arms and crush him in a hug, and then to question Levi about how much longer he would have D.J. staying with him, how much longer she could spend with him before Travis took him away.
But she didn’t. In the light from the lamp he noticed that her cheeks were tear-stained, her lashes spiky with moisture. She was dressed in a well-tailored navy blue wool suit, stockings and pumps. Had she come here on business?
No. She’d just apologized and said she loved him. That didn’t sound like business.
“I was wrong,” she said. “I was wrong to leave you. I thought you were giving D.J. up. It never occurred to me that you were trying to do what was best for him, that you loved him as much as I did.”
His stores of forgiveness increased, but he only watched her and let her continue.
“I loved the way we all were when we were together. The way you and I seemed to think alike when we were doing things for D.J., the way we just knew intuitively where we were and who we were and what we were all doing. Like we belonged together.”
“Yes,” he finally said. Her eyes were filling with tears, shining with them. He had to offer her something, some encouragement so she could get through this.
“I’ve never had the kind of family I had with you, Levi. I know it wasn’t that long, but it felt so right. Just the three of us. It felt so true.”
“Yes.”
“And I was furious with you for letting it slip away. I’m sorry. Because even after D.J. is gone, you’re still the best thing that ever happened to me, and I want you in my life.”
“D.J. isn’t going to be gone,” he finally told her.
“I mean it, Levi. I want to be together with you. We can make our own two-person family, can’t we? And maybe, in time, we could have a baby of our own, and no one would ever take our baby away—”
“No one is taking D.J. away. He’s staying here.”
At last his words registered on her. “What?”
“Travis left for California yesterday. Alone.”
“Why?”
“He was scared to death. I made him sit down for a couple of hours with Allison Winslow—my Daddy School teacher—and she told him exactly what to expect when he became a full-time single parent. And he panicked. He said he didn’t think he could handle it. He broke down and cried.”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head, appearing genuinely sorry for him. “The poor man. He’d come here with the best of intentions.”
“And he left with the best of intentions. He left knowing D.J. would be better off here than in California with him.” The shimmer in her eyes was breaking down his resistance. Her nearness, her sincerity, the tremulous softness of her lips as she bared her heart to him… Forgiveness was flooding him now. She was back. She’d said she loved him.
But she still hadn’t acknowledged D.J., other than to yell at him for pulling her hair. Evidently, she’d come to Arlington prepared to love Levi alone, without the baggage of a baby. And now the baby had become a part of the deal again, just when she’d accepted that the baby was not a part of the deal.
Not only had the baby become a part of the deal, but he’d yanked her hair.
“Travis knows he’ll always be a part of D.J.’s life. He can come and visit whenever he wants, as long as he gives me a little warning. And maybe, when D.J.’s older, he can fly out to California to visit his dad. But Travis gave me full custody. He said he’d have his lawyer handle whatever paperwork is necessary.”
“He must have been disappointed.”
“Disappointed and relieved, both.”
“And you?”
“Mostly relieved,” Levi admitted.
Her face blossomed into a smile, the first real smile he’d seen on her face since she’d arrived—in fact, the first real smile since her last visit, when she’d been tense and worried about Travis’s presence in Arlington.
She was smiling because Levi had D.J. Which meant she had D.J., too.
“I love you,” she murmured, her eyes overflowing. She’d already told him that, but he would gladly listen to her tell him again and again. She opened her arms, wrapped one around him and one around D.J., and rested her head against Levi’s shoulder. “I love you both.”
He touched his lips to her soft, silky hair. “Welcome home, Corinne,” he whispered.
*
SHE WAS BACK. She was hugging them, and he knew from the way her arms felt, the way her body pressed close, that she wasn’t going to leave anymore.
He wasn’t sure exactly what “home” meant, but he believed it had something to do with being held, being safe and being loved. He felt safe right now. He felt loved. He was surrounded by the man and the woman, by strength and softness, and neither of them seemed likely to let go.
This must be home, D.J. thought with a happy sigh.
***