“God no. I just thought it was too hard for you to come back.”
“I sing songs for a living. It’s not like I’m on a 007 mission. Why does everyone think I can’t come back for the important things?”
Cassidy’s eyes grew wide, and she doubled over with a hand to her abdomen and a moan escaping her.
“Cass?” I jumped up and put an arm around her shoulders.
“Contraction. Fake contraction. I’ve been having them all day,” she said.
“All day? Did you call the doctor?” I asked.
“Oh, shit,” Cass said, looking down, and I was surprised to see water trailing down her legs under her maternity dress.
“Right. Hospital.” I grabbed my phone and dialed Marco. “We need to get to the hospital.”
“Are you okay?” Marco’s deep voice asked.
“I’m fine. It’s Cassidy. She’s having the baby.”
“I’ll be there in five,” he said.
I had no idea what Marco had been up to all day, but I was glad he was here, because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to drive the car straight enough to get it to the hospital with my sister groaning in the passenger seat.
???
It was nearly midnight, and Cass had sent me out of the room while they checked on her progress. She’d literally had to force me out with a threat to my fingers because I hadn’t taken a bathroom break since we’d shown up. I hadn’t wanted her to go through this alone.
Marco had stayed in the waiting room as things progressed, doing what Marco did best, watching everything and everyone silently. But I had a suspicion he was slightly rattled—something unusual for Marco. I’d seen him pace across the doorway a few times, and I wondered if it was the hospital, the act of birthing, or the silent way Cass had been dealing with the pain in the SUV on the way to the hospital that had unnerved him.
Now, he was standing up against a wall, arms crossed, watching the TV, and eyeing the bodies as they drifted by. I sent Mom and Dad another update, even though they wouldn’t be able to respond to this one. I’d been sending them updates all the way until they’d boarded the flight from Dublin to Albany. They’d been two weeks away from coming home for spring break, and Mom was a wreck that she wasn’t going to be here in the room while her baby had a baby.
The ping of the elevator caught my attention, and a nurse and an orderly wheeled a bed out of it. A little girl lay in it, sniffling, a top hat in her hand.
I blinked, trying to make sure I wasn’t losing my damn mind.
But no, it was a top hat.
I blinked again when, out of the doors, behind the bed, cameCari. She had on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and another shirt ten times too big for her. Her blonde hair with its mahogany stripes was up in another hastily constructed bun, and her face was coated with worry.
The bed wheeled past me and down the hall to the pediatric ward.
I couldn’t help myself. I was drawn to her side and startled her when my fingers grazed her arm. “Are you okay?”
She wrapped her arms around her waist, pulling her body away from mine.
“It’s my daughter. She fell down the stairs,” she said.
The young girl in the bed was her daughter, which meant there might be a husband lurking about. And even knowing there might have been someone out there who would care about my reaction to his wife, I couldn’t help the waves of emotion pouring through me from the slight grazing of our skin. It alsodidn’t stop me from tagging along beside her with Marco following me at a distance.
The orderly wheeled the bed into a room, and the nurse started hooking up the girl to monitors.Cariwent to the little girl’s side, grabbing the hand that wasn’t connected to the wires.
“I don’t want to stay, Mommy,” the child said with big watery eyes full of so much begging that, even when I didn’t know her, I was ready to pick her up and carry her out of the room.
“It’s just for the night,Chiquita, and I’ll be right here. They just want to make sure you didn’t bonk that sassy head of yours too hard.”Cari’s tone was soft and sure, but it didn’t match the worry that wafted off of her uptight shoulders.
“It doesn’t even hurt anymore,” the little one said, pulling her hand from her mother’s and reaching for her temple where a bandage sat.
She looked likeCari. She looked like Elana. She looked oddly familiar, just like her mother had, as if I was trying to pull them from a memory that my brain refused to access.
