Brett listened. He was pleased for his friend.
And he’d never felt so incomplete in his life.
* * *
ELLA’S MORNING SICKNESS WORSENED. She texted Brett. Told him she was throwing up a lot, and that the doctor said it was normal.
She went for her regular monthly visit and texted a healthy baby report. She’d passed the first trimester and was well into the second with no sign of fetal distress. He was like her insurance adjuster. She just had to keep him informed of facts.
Nothing more.
She told herself she was happy. And only let herself think about the baby she was carrying, not the man who’d fathered it.
Nora Burbank had filed charges against her husband. And filed for divorce, too. She was working at a computer center owned by The Lemonade Stand. She’d be living at the Stand for a while. Nora had suffered too long without any kind of support.
Ella was thrilled to know that she’d helped give the woman another chance at a happy life.
She wanted the same for her brother, as well.
Jeff was a regular visitor in her home these days. Chloe had asked for weekly visits, clearing it with Ella first, and her brother now slept over every Saturday night and made them all breakfast every Sunday morning.
The second Sunday in February, Ella walked into the kitchen to find her brother there alone.
“Chloe’s packing,” he said, turning potatoes that she’d just seen him drop into the pan. He didn’t look in her direction.
“Where’s she going?” Ella asked, grabbing hold of the small distention of her stomach as she felt a flutter. The sensation had been happening on and off for a couple days.
“Home.”
She’d known, of course. Chloe hadn’t said anything. But she hadn’t looked Ella in the eye for the past few days.
Was she that much of a stick in the mud? So rigid that people were constantly worrying they were going to disappoint her?
“Did she talk to Sara about it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what Sara said?”
“She said that I had to make my own decision,” Chloe said, joining them, fully dressed. She smiled at her husband. “She also said that she thinks I’m ready to make my own decisions.”
Ella felt the words as a jab to her. But knew they weren’t. Ella looked at Jeff. “Did you talk to your therapist?”
She loved them both so much. And they might not get another chance if they screwed this up. Moved too quickly.
“I did.”
“And?”
“I’m going to be okay, sis,” he said. “I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’m not perfect. I can’t handle everything. And that doesn’t make me less of a man. I always thought I could do anything I put my mind to. But when Cody was born, all that wasn’t easy. I didn’t know how to cope.”
“You could have asked for help. I’m a nurse, Jeff. I’d have been there in an instant,” Ella said.
Jeff yanked on a strand of her hair. Kissed the top of her head. “I know that now,” he said, going back to his potatoes. “I’d just never had to ask before. It didn’t occur to me that that was what I was supposed to do. My natural instinct was to believe I could handle it. That I was supposed to be able to handle it.”
Looking at her brother in her kitchen—making breakfast for them, mixing pancake batter for Cody and making lovey eyes at his wife—Ella fully believed he could handle anything.
That was the Jeff she knew.