Second Time's the Charm

“Just show me what you want to show me, Kirk.” Their deal had been phone calls only—one a week—and already here she was, meeting him.

Either the man was diabolical or truly reaching out....

“It’s in the backseat,” he said. “I’m not going to be able to hold it up for you.”

She studied him for a second, searching for any sign of duplicity. She hadn’t been able to detect it when they’d been married, and had no idea why she thought she’d be able to now.

They were talking about something for a grave, she reminded herself. And got out of her car.

She wasn’t getting in his, though. Instead, she leaned over the edge of the back passenger’s side, peeking at the seat.

And stared.

There really was something there.

The stone was marble. And in the center of it was a photograph of her, holding a perfect-looking Braydon dressed in a baby-blue outfit decorated with bears and hearts. It had been taken just hours before he died. She was wearing jeans and a yellow spandex pullover, sitting in a padded rocker, and could remember the moment as if it was happening right then.

She’d never gone home after having him, but had spent every single night of Braydon’s short life in the neonatal intensive care unit, and every day, too, holding her baby. Feeding him. Praying for a miracle that didn’t come.

If, after all the tests they’d done, they’d had hope of any kind of treatment for him, she wouldn’t have been able to feed him. Or hold him. He’d have been kept sterile and inside a bubble.

“There were no tubes in this picture.” Kirk’s voice came softly, beside her. She hadn’t realized he’d joined her outside the car. Tears were streaming down his cheeks.

“Where did you get this?”

“From my dad. He sent it to me years ago. Like a fool I tucked it away and refused to look at it.”

“It was taken that last day.” She’d told herself he wouldn’t get to her. That she wouldn’t feel. And her throat closed with the effort it was taking to hold back tears. “They’d removed all life support.”

And then she saw the inscription on the stone.

Braydon Thomas Henderson

In the arms of angels

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

LILLIE WAS RIGHT on time. Jon heard her knock and answered the door, trying to read her expression.

She wasn’t looking at him.

“Illie! Illie!” Abraham’s screams were a gleeful shrill as he jumped up from his cars and hurled himself in her direction.

Picking the toddler up, she hugged him tightly, as though she hadn’t seen him in weeks. Or years. And she spent the next hour, until Abe’s bedtime, playing with him, singing with him, reading to him—and touching him. Jon had never seen her be so...clingy. A hand on Abe’s arm, running her fingers over the soft hair on his scalp, sitting on the floor with him on her lap.

And he took hope.

Lillie talked to Jon, too. Peripherally. If he spoke, or to ask his permission to give Abe a bath.

And she looked at him a time or two, long looks. Personal looks.

It was those looks that had him cutting brownies and putting them on a plate while she used the bathroom after they’d put Abraham down for the night.

Those looks and the seconds when they’d stood together in his son’s room, taking turns kissing the toddler good-night, and Abraham had looked up at them with his blanket in his hand and his thumb in his mouth and said, “Uv you.”

The first time ever.

His boy knew how to pick his moments.