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A
SHLEY STEPPED BACK
from the door and leaned against Landon.

The sick feeling was worse now than before, but Ashley wasn’t about to turn back. Not when she was sure this was where God wanted her to be. The pieces were too perfectly aligned. First that Landon would happen to be the firefighter who responded to Reagan’s emergency, then Ashley’s seeing Landon and Reagan together.

Ashley had no doubts; God wanted her here. What would happen after that, she couldn’t begin to guess.

“You okay?” Landon leaned his head closer to hers.

“Yeah.” She gave him a quick kiss on his arm. “Thanks for coming.”

He looked at her, and she could almost read his mind. He wanted to be here with her; the talk they needed to have about each other would have to wait until after this meeting.

The door opened and Reagan tried to smile. Her cheeks were tearstained, and her swollen eyes held raw fear. Ashley’s heart quieted immediately. She took the first step and hugged Reagan for a long while. Irvel and her friends at Sunset Hills had taught her the importance of hugs, that sometimes an embrace said more than words ever could.

When she drew back, Ashley looked at Landon and then at Reagan again. “Thanks for letting us come.”

Landon came up alongside her. “I’m sorry about all this.”

“No.” Reagan gave a quick shake of her head. “It happened for a reason. I have to believe that.”

They made their way into the living room. Ashley couldn’t help but admire the place. It was spacious and beautifully decorated. A portrait of Reagan and her family hung over an ornate gas fireplace. Reagan’s father had been tall, with friendly eyes. Ashley tried not to stare at the image as she found a seat next to Landon. Reagan sat across from them.

Ashley and Reagan’s earlier conversation had been brief and to the point. Since then Ashley had thought of a dozen questions she wanted to ask. But she needed to take them slowly.

“I must look like a wreck.” Reagan ran her fingertips beneath her eyes and uttered a sound that fell short of laughter. “Your phone call…well, I wasn’t expecting it.”

Ashley blinked. Had Reagan thought she could raise the baby to adulthood without ever contacting Luke? She swallowed her amazement and glanced through a door into a hallway and then back at Reagan. “Where is he?”

“Sleeping. He should be up any minute.”

Landon slipped his hand in hers, and Ashley squeezed his fingers. She found Reagan’s eyes again. “How’s he doing?”

“Great.” She stared at her hands and twisted her fingers together. Maybe the small talk was making her nervous. All of them knew the issues that lay ahead.

Ashley couldn’t wait another minute. She used her mothering voice, the one she spoke in when her son needed reassuring. “What happened, Reagan? Can you tell me?” She looked from Landon to Reagan again. “You and Luke were so…I never thought…”

Reagan shook her head, her eyes still down. “The whole thing was crazy, something we never meant to happen.” She looked up and fresh tears made her eyes glisten. “It happened September tenth, while we were watching the Giants game.” Reagan hesitated as though she might say something else, but then she brought her lips together.

Pushing the girl would be neither kind nor helpful, so Ashley took her time with the next question. “Okay, now, Reagan, help me here.” Ashley slid forward in her seat and felt Landon tighten the grip he had on her hand. “You came home and probably didn’t find out you were pregnant for several weeks, right?”

“Yes.”

“So why didn’t you talk to Luke? Why didn’t you take his calls?” Ashley kept her tone even, nonthreatening. “He phoned every day, didn’t he?”

A jagged sigh slipped from between Reagan’s clenched teeth. As she looked up, a teardrop rolled down her cheek, and she stopped it with her fingertips. “You, Ashley, of all people—” her gaze was direct, her eyes locked on Ashley’s—“should know why I didn’t want to talk to him.”

Ashley was about to protest, to assure Reagan that she could think of no reasons why the girl would summarily cut Luke out of her life. But a realization took shape in her heart. He’d done the same thing to her, hadn’t he? When she returned from Paris, pregnant and alone. For years he talked to her only out of necessity, and then without so much as a hint of kindness.

Luke hadn’t understood failure, but there were some things he’d known even less about. Grace…forgiveness…mercy.

A rush of sorrow filled Ashley’s heart. She released Landon’s hand and moved to sit next to Reagan. “I’m sorry.” Their eyes still held. “I never thought about that.”

Without any words, Reagan slipped her arms around Ashley’s neck and the two of them hugged. Tears came for both of them then. Hadn’t that been the hardest part of coming home from Paris? Luke’s cold response, the way he’d written Ashley off as unworthy of the Baxter name? He’d refused to treat her as anything but an outcast. Reagan had seen that treatment firsthand.

No wonder she hadn’t taken his calls.

Ashley pulled back and searched Reagan’s eyes. “He’s not like that anymore, Reagan. I don’t think—” she sniffed—“I don’t think he would’ve treated you like that. I really don’t.”

Landon coughed twice and motioned toward a door. “Can I get some water?”

“Sure.” Reagan gave him a quick glance.

Ashley watched him go. He knew his way to the kitchen, but clearly he’d told her the truth. He was Reagan’s friend, nothing more.

Reagan dried her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “Nothing was the same after that night.” She paused and slid back a few inches on her seat. “Within an hour I became like any other girl. Cheap…easy…used.” She sniffed again. “I knew Luke would never think of me the same again. Even if he did call.”

Landon returned with three glasses of water and three coasters. He passed them out and took his seat again.

Ashley barely noticed. “Did Luke tell you that? Did he say anything to make you think his feelings for you had changed?”

“I just knew. Luke wanted everything perfect, and after that night it wasn’t. It never would be again.”

Some of Reagan’s story filled in the missing pieces in Luke’s recent history, the part Ashley hadn’t understood but had somehow known was there. She remembered how quiet Luke had been in the days after September 11. He’d had a reason, of course. Reagan’s father was among the missing, feared dead. But something else had bothered him, and now Ashley understood.

She looked hard at the woman next to her. “September eleventh changed him, Reagan.”

“That’s what your mother said.” Her expression fell, and she focused on a spot near her shoes. “He’s forgotten who he was.”

“His life’s a mess.” Ashley’s heartbeat picked up. This had to be the reason God wanted her to see Reagan, to let her know about the other changes. “But something else is different.” She hesitated. “Remember that afternoon at the bus stop?”

“Yes.” Reagan looked up. “Landon told me you’d taken him.”

“Right.” Landon coughed again and cut into the conversation. “Reagan and I sat by each other on the bus and tried to guess whether you and Luke would see each other in the bus terminal.”

“We did.” Ashley had never told this story to anyone but her parents. Not even to Landon. He hadn’t been home long enough to get those kinds of details last winter. She grabbed a quick breath. “Luke…” She shook her head, overcome with sorrow for her little brother. He’d tried so hard to be good, and that day at the bus station had been proof that his heart of tenderness hadn’t died when she returned from Paris.

And nothing since then could’ve made it die either.

Landon and Reagan were waiting. She swallowed and found her voice. “He cried and hugged me…like a little boy. The way he hugged me a long time ago, when I left for Paris. He told me he was so sorry.” She looked at Reagan. “He’s been broken ever since you left, Reagan. And in that one hug I felt his heart again. Scared and unsure and hanging on because he knew when he let go, your bus would be gone. And nothing would be the same again.”

Tears spilled onto Reagan’s cheeks again. “So…you and Luke are okay?”

“Yes.” Ashley slipped an arm around her shoulders and smiled through her tears. “He’s made a lot of bad choices; I can’t disagree with that. But I watch his eyes when someone mentions you, Reagan. He still loves you.” She blinked back the wetness. “He’s scared and lonely and confused. He’s a lot of things, but he has nothing against you. That much I know.”

In another room a baby’s cry filled the spaces between them. At the sound of it, Ashley’s breath caught. The lusty cries belonged to her brother’s son. A child who was Cole’s cousin, a Baxter. She removed her arm from Reagan’s shoulders and patted her knee. Her voice was a ragged whisper. “May I see him?”

Reagan nodded, and a single, small sob escaped from her throat. She brought her fingers to her lips, stood, and left the room.

When she was gone, Landon took her spot, nestling himself close against Ashley. He kissed the side of her head and whispered in her ear, “I love you.”

Ashley pressed into him and turned so they were facing each other. Somewhere in the back of the apartment, the baby stopped crying, and Ashley’s heart skipped a beat. She would meet her little nephew soon, but right now all she could think about was Landon.

So many feelings vied for her attention. Her brother’s pain…the son he knew nothing of…Landon, so close, so real, his presence filling her senses, but for so short a time. She took his chin in her fingers and leaned up until their lips met. Their kiss was laced with sadness and lasted only a few moments. When she drew back she studied his eyes, willing him to see how she cared for him, how she would freeze this moment and stay here beside him forever if she could.

“I love you, too.” She kissed him again, but the sound of footsteps made her drop her hands and sit back.

Reagan entered through a doorway at the other end of the room. She was carrying the baby, bundled in a blue blanket. The pain and guilt had fallen from her expression. Instead undeniable pride filled her eyes, and the hint of a smile played on her lips. No matter what else had gone wrong for Reagan, one thing was certain.

She loved her baby.

Ashley stood and saw her nephew’s tiny hands stretch above the blanket, his fingers moving in that graceful, angel-boy way, the way Cole’s had moved when he was a newborn. Landon stayed seated as Reagan walked up.

“Here.” She held out her son. “His name is Thomas Luke, but I call him Tommy.”

“Thomas Luke.” Ashley’s voice cracked as the name sounded on her lips. She’d been too shocked to ask about the baby’s name, and now here she was, staring into the face of her brother’s namesake, his firstborn. She reached out and took the baby, cradling him in her arms as her heart melted with the warm, bundled-up weight of him against her chest.

That first look, the first moment when she allowed her eyes to fully take in the sight of him, made her lips part and caused her next breath to come sharp and fast. Photographs of the Baxter kids as babies hung in her parents’ house. And looking at Luke’s son was like watching her brother’s baby picture come to life.

He looked exactly like Luke.

“Oh, Reagan.” Ashley lifted her eyes. “He’s beautiful.”

“I know.” Reagan’s smile filled her face now, and even her swollen eyes couldn’t dim the joy exploding in her heart over this child of hers. This child of Luke’s.

Next to her, Ashley felt Landon give her leg a gentle squeeze, his way of telling her he cared about what she was feeling. But he remained seated, so very Landon, leaving this moment to her. Her eyes found the baby’s face again. As long as she lived this picture would stay with her, his full lips and pale blue eyes, the white blond fuzz of his eyebrows and the shape of his head.

The baby blinked and looked at her, and suddenly she was four years old again, cradling her little brother, whispering to him.

“Hi, Wuke-y. I’m your big sister, Ashwee.”
Ashley grinned at the memory. Back then, all her
L
s sounded like
W
s.
“I’m going to be your bestest sister and you know what? I wuv you so much, Wuke-y.”

The memory was maybe her earliest of all, holding Luke, loving him, promising to be his best sister. And now, as Luke’s son studied her face, she sensed him becoming a part of who she was, her heritage.

“Hi, sweet boy.” She nuzzled her face against him, and thoughts came that she couldn’t bring herself to voice.
I hope I get to see you grow up, little baby. And that this isn’t the last time I’ll ever hold you. I hope you’ll get to know your daddy someday.

She straightened and brushed her knuckles against his tiny hand. As she did, he gripped her little finger. Ashley stared at the spot where they were connected and willed the child never to let go, never forget that he had a family not just here in this Manhattan apartment but also a thousand miles away. She leaned close to him again. He smelled of new life and baby powder. She soaked in his nearness, his breath mingling with hers as she kissed his cheek.

A sudden, sad thought came to her. Her father and Luke weren’t speaking, so even if this baby did meet his father, the chance existed that he might never meet his grandfather. Might never have the chance to run in the fields outside the Baxter house or skip rocks in the stream out back.

Please, God, bring Luke home. Restore our family…please.

A shadow stretched over the moment. Where was Luke now? How would he feel if he knew she had held his son before he did? What pain would it cause him to discover he’d fathered this baby? Most of all, how could she return to Bloomington and not tell him after seeing his son, feeling him in her arms? Thomas Luke couldn’t grow up without a father, without Luke’s ever knowing about him, no matter what Reagan thought.

For much of the next half hour, Ashley held her brother’s baby. Too soon the visit ended and she had to hand him back to Reagan.

Landon led her to the door, and Reagan and the baby followed. They stopped in the foyer to say good-bye.

Ashley came up beside Reagan and took a final look at Thomas Luke. Her eyes met Reagan’s, and Ashley hesitated. “You have to tell him.” She let her gaze fall to the baby once more. “Luke needs to know he has a son.”