————
"This calls for a celebration. Bring wine." Nonna's face broke into myriad lines of joy and laughter.
Sofie shared the smile. The baby in her arms was warm and soft, and now he had a name. Their limbo was past, the cushion of wordless comfort, their knowing without knowing. She needed to prepare herself to part with him, to restore him to his mother. It was right, and she wanted it. But there was no denying her heart ached.
Lance returned to the kitchen from the cellar with a bottle of the family vintage. Star took down glasses, filled two with sparkling water for herself and Elaine, who murmured, "Glad, very glad."
When everyone had been served, Nonna inspected the hue and clarity of the aged wine. "A vintage worthy of the event."
Lance raised his glass with a broad smile. "To Diego Manuel Espinoza, long life, happiness, and grace." He pressed Rese to his side, and they stood together in repose, upholding each other with joy and satisfaction.
Sofie drank to the baby. God willing, he had suffered no trauma from this separation. God willing, Maria would love him as well when he was returned to her—if. Matt still had his doubts.
Her chest tightened at the thought of him. He was only a man doing his job. He would resolve things for Maria and Diego, then move on to another case and other caregivers. They came from different worlds, held opposing views. He didn't know God existed; she needed to trust God every day. He didn't believe in heaven and hell; she had experienced both.
With a sigh, she passed the baby to Nonna and slipped out to the garden. She had prayed for him, for Maria, and those prayers were being answered. She raised her face in gratitude, and still the pang lingered.
The door opened and Star joined her. "So much happiness cloys."
The bitter edge in her voice came from the place Sofie didn't want to go. "Whose happiness do you mean, Star?"
"Rese."
"Because of Lance?"
"Selfish and embittered, I know. But she's always been there, my sister Looney Tune, my strong and capable friend. I don't know who I am without her."
Her chest constricted. She knew how it was to be so identified with someone that her own self crumbled at the loss. "Your friendship won't change."
Star twisted her arms. "It has. She's changed. We've changed."
And change was hard. She'd found hope in an old woman's words and a new start, but it took work every day to maintain it when habits and thoughts clung like spider webs.
Star sighed. " 'These sorrows make me old.' "
"And yet, we carry on."
"With what?"
"With whatever it is that won't let go."
Star stared up into the night sky. "And what, pray, is that?"
————
Matt waited with Cassinia outside Maria's room the next morning. Lance joined them, and though there was no reason for Sofie to be there, Matt couldn't help a momentary disappointment that her brother had come alone. The stuffed bear holding fresh blooms that Lance carried only slightly softened the antiseptic smell as they entered. Maria's cheeks warmed as Lance drew near, but it looked less like a crush than awe.
"¿Què tal, Maria?"
He let her smell the flowers, then set the bear on the stand beside her.
"Estás bien?"
"So-so," she replied in Spanish.
Matt glanced at Cassinia. They could both follow the basic conversation.
"Worse than yesterday?" Lance cocked his head.
"Better." She raised her eyes. "Yesterday, I lied."
Matt raised his brows, understanding the words, yet surprised when they laughed. From the hospital and police he'd been told no one had made much headway with the girl—no one, it seemed, but this miracle man.
Lance half turned. "This is Matt Hammond, the one I told you about. He's making sure Diego is safe and well. And this is Cassinia. She's going to do the same for you.
¿Comprendes?"
"Si."
She sent a hesitant glance their way, then fixed her attention once more on Lance.
"¿Cómo está mi hijo?"
"Bien."
"When can I see him?"
Lance looked to see that he and Cassinia had understood, then answered, "Soon."
Her desire was a good sign, but Matt had told Lance not to force the issue. Right now they needed answers. Detective Brazelton slipped into the room. He was being pressured to release Maria's companions to ICE detention for deportation instead of trying to prosecute. They couldn't be placed at the scene of the theft, and there was no proof they'd known the goods they'd been hired to transport were stolen. Charges of rape or kidnapping would change that, but Maria had yet to admit the kind of treatment Michelle Farrar had described. Maybe the miracle man would get her to tell what they needed to know.
Lance said, "Maria, tell me what happened. Why did you leave Diego?"
She shrank into the bed, dropping her focus to her hands.
"Everyone here wants to help you, but we need to know about the men you were with before you came to us."
"No one can help me. Only me."
Matt raised his brows.
Well, well
.
Cassinia moved toward the bed. "You speak English, Maria?"
The girl looked up with a faint defiance and answered with excellent pronunciation. "I want to see my baby. I want Diego."
Lance seemed as surprised as the rest of them—and not a little amused. But then she'd lived with them a week and not given up her secret.
Cassinia's face showed what she thought of Maria's request. She'd made it clear on the drive over that she thought Maria should not be saddled with the result of the crimes against her. She couldn't say that to Maria, but she'd held nothing back with him. She crossed her arms. "I'm in court in half an hour. I can't be here to supervise."
Matt looked from her to Maria to Lance. "I can."
————
Lance's call had come as no surprise. Sofie had already packed the baby's bag, anticipating the request a full hour before it came. She brushed Diego's face with her finger as she strapped him into the infant seat in the back of her Neon. Lance had said it was only a visit, that Maria might not even be able to hold the baby. But it was the beginning, she knew. Once Maria had her son in her arms again, how could she ever let go?
Sofie followed the directions he'd given and reached the hospital. With Diego bundled up against her, she headed to the room where mother and son would reunite. Her heart ached, not with envy, but with empathy so deep it became physical. She wanted to reconnect what had been severed, wanted to heal the rift.
She expected Lance, but it was Matt who met her in the hall. His cheeks creased as his smile warmed her. His "hi" seemed to mean so much more. Her pulse skittered. "Hi."
He reached over and cupped the baby's head. "You've got a name now, huh? No more Baby Boy Doe." He seemed truly happy for the baby who hadn't realized what he was missing. A big man with a big heart. Even small things pleased him, and it was having an effect on her she hadn't anticipated.
"Maria's sleeping," he told her. "She tried to resist, but the pain meds knocked her out a few minutes ago."
"Oh." She stroked the baby's back, torn between a few more stolen moments and the satisfaction of returning him to Maria. "How is she?"
"Pulling it together. Gutsy kid."
"Do you still want Diego?"
He looked toward the room. "Lance promised he'd be there when she woke up."
Sofie shifted the baby's weight. "So . . ."
"So go ahead and take him in."
She carried the baby to Lance beside Maria's bed and passed him over without disturbing his sleep or his mother's. For close to half of the baby's life, she had cared for him, letting him into the empty place inside her. But as Nonna said,
"Non c'è rosa senza
spine
." Every rose had its thorn.
"You okay?" Lance searched her face.
"Yes." This time she had kept a healthy boundary. "Call when you need me to get him." She fixed him with a pointed look. "Do not bring him home on the Harley."
"You think?" He cracked a grin. "Matt can transport him if you need to go."
"That might be best." She kissed the baby's head and drew back. "Need anything? A magazine?"
He shook his head. "I'm working a song."
He had no paper, no pen, no instrument. But she didn't doubt that inside his mind melody, harmony, and lyrics were taking shape. He made music from life.
"Okay." She smiled. "See you at home." She lingered a moment on the baby, then went out to the hall, where Matt waited. "Lance wondered if you might be able bring Diego home."
He looked at his watch. "I have meetings in two hours, something tonight."
"That's all right. I'll come back."
"Or you could stay. There's a coffee stand down the hall, some chairs."
She looked where he pointed. There was nothing pressing she had to do, if her dissertation was irrelevant, and the direction she'd taken the last five years no longer valid.
"Lance will page me when Maria wakes up. I was going to make some calls, but I'd rather talk to you."
Again she felt a current pass between them. Without a child in need, his watchfulness diminished, but there was something solid and certain about him, so different from Eric's ambiguity; Matt's warm, measured gaze nothing like Eric's first arrested glance outside the theater where she'd performed; their double takes coinciding, and the electricity that followed.
"So . . ." Matt spread his hands. "Could you go for some lousy coffee or a cafeteria snack?"
She smiled. "Okay. Coffee."
They walked down the hall and approached the cart that held two stainless carafes and a short stack of Styrofoam cups. In the corner stood two padded chairs on one side of a window, two on the other. The window looked out on a gravel-covered roof with metal caps like mushrooms sprouting.
Matt poured two cups. "Creamer? Sugar?"
"Both." She looked out the window. Matt assessed people for a living. What did he see in her?
"Do you want to sit?" he asked as he handed her a cup.
She took the chair nearest the window.
He angled the other so they weren't side by side against the wall. "You doing okay? I know the brunt of the baby care has landed on you."
"Not really. Only the nights."
"Nights can last forever with a crying baby."
Her heart clenched. "How do you know?"
He hesitated then said, "My brother. Acute anxiety."
She sipped and grimaced, set the cup on the windowsill.
"I could have Starbucks delivered."
She laughed. "That's all right." She folded her hands and saw his gaze drop once more to her wrists.
She turned them over and looked at the scars. "It's not an original story."
He moved his inspection to her face, not pressing for more, yet he deserved to know, if he thought anything could come of this.
"I fell in love with a man and his baby. We were together four years before he left."
"Who was he?"
"His name is Eric." Her throat worked. "His daughter, Carly, was six months old when we met, four and a half when he took her away."
"How old is she now?"
"Ten. Eleven in March." She looked out the window, her soul as bleak as the pale gravel. "I'd like to send her something, but I don't know where she is. He said I'd never see her again, and I haven't."
"What did you do that was so bad?"
She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I came between them."
"You weren't married?"
"No. I accepted a live-in position as Carly's nanny." She moistened her lips. "I was twenty years old and believed there was only good in the world—my world. Eric was . . . golden. Carly like an angel. I checked her shoulders once for wings." She smiled. Eric had laughed and asked if she'd found them.
"They must grow in later,"
she'd told him, and he hadn't doubted it. They both knew Carly was special.
"It progressed past employment?"
She nodded. The first year they had maintained a comfortable but defined vocational limit. She realized later that he'd been not only training but studying her, and when he applied what he'd learned of her likes and hopes, she fell as deeply as anyone could for another.
"What happened to her mother?"
"Eric said only that she'd died. He didn't tell me how." She had learned early not to ask more than he wanted to tell. And yet he'd gleaned every detail of her life. His probing had felt like caring.
"When he took Carly and left, I . . ." Wanted them so badly it hurt in every part of her body. Even her bones had ached. "Waited and hoped they'd come back. After a while it seemed too hard to go on." She stared out the window. "Not going on took hardly any effort. And I had so little energy left."
Matt's voice was low. "It can feel that way."
"My family found me." She could never forgive the pain she'd caused them. But she made up for it every day, just being there. "It's much harder to live."
"But you are."
She turned back to him. "You needed to know before you thought something might come of this."
"I still think it." His brow had creased but his focus never shifted.
She smiled grimly. "You're a glutton for punishment?"
"I know a good thing when I see it."
She laughed softly. "Your story must be as bleak as mine."
"What makes you think I've got one?"
"You quit law for social work and have no story?"
He stared into his cup, drained and crumpled it. "My dad was a bully. If you stood up to him, he beat you up in fun. You had his respect, which meant he didn't pull his punches."
Hard to imagine Matt being bullied, but he'd been small once, and he'd gotten his size from someone.
"If you didn't—couldn't—stand up to him, he beat you up in anger." He raised his eyes. "Which still meant he didn't pull his punches."
"Which one were you?" she asked softly.
"Dad's pride and joy." He ran his tongue inside his teeth. "My little brother died at nine."
Her breath made a hard escape. "He killed him?"
"We were outside when Dad started hollering from the house for us to get in there. Didn't know what we'd done this time, but it was certain someone would catch it. I looked at my brother, saw he'd wet himself. That right there marked him as the one."