Page 46 of Trusting You
“Sorry I’m late!” a woman calls as I’m stooped over.
I don’t bother turning. I’m too absorbed in tucking the bunny safely away into the diaper bag, but a waft of subtle perfume hits my nostrils, and I sense someone close. I’m forced to look.
Bright eyes—same as Lily’s, same as Locke’s—greet mine. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I respond automatically.
“You made it,” Locke says over my head, and the woman—in a skirt suit, of all things—tears her attention off me and locks onto the little girl in Locke’s arms.
“Holy…” she whispers, and it’s as if I tapped a wand to her forehead and told her to unfreeze. “That’s her?”
Locke laughs. “No, it’s another kid I found in the park and decided to keep instead of my daughter. This one’s cuter.”
The woman barks out a resounding laugh with a tinge of unsureness. “Wouldn’t put it past you. Can I get closer? I don’t mean to…”
She glances at me, and I can finally read the intention behind her expression. She doesn’t know who the fuck I am, but I’m in a seat that could bring her closer to her niece.
“Oh—by all means.” I’m standing, ushering her into my vacated seat.
“Thanks,” she says to me, but she’s too absorbed in Lily to try and figure out my place in all this, and Locke is too into this woman meeting his daughter to introduce us.
Locke doesn’t have to exchange names for us, though. I know who she is by her eye color alone. Astor Hayes. Locke’s sister.
These two have already missed too many crucial months, so I pay deep attention to what’s going on up front, but I can’t help but keep an ear to them, the voyeur part of me wanting to listen to everything they say.
Maybe I shouldn’t have.
“Who is she?” Astor whispers to Locke in a way she thinks I can’t hear. One of her fingers is clasped by Lily, one that contains a very sparkly diamond.
“Her name’s Carter,” he responds in the same tone. He’s hiding his lips in Lily’s hair. “She’s Paige’s best friend, helped raise Lily.”
“Ah.” But Astor isn’t finished. I watch her sleek brunette head dip closer to Locke’s. “So, what’s she still doing here? I thought rights had been established. There’s no reason for her to—”
“Shh. Keep your voice down. And yeah, legally she doesn’t have to be here. She’s here because I asked her to.”
Astor’s navy-clad back stiffens. “Why?”
“Because she loves Lily and I didn’t want to rip her away the way the courts said I could.”
“Locke…”
“My decision, sis. And it’s been fine. Great, actually. So, sit back, enjoy some fish smell and your new niece, and stop questioning my decisions like you always do.”
“You have to admit, you’ve given me plenty of reason.”
“That’s in the past. Here. Hold your niece.”
“I don’t—oh, shit—maybe…”
Lily’s unceremoniously plopped on Astor, and those almond-shaped eyes of hers turn into full circles as she hovers her hands over Lily’s torso, unsure what to make of the creature.
“She’s pretty sturdy,” I say warmly and help position Astor’s hands. “You just need to hold her in a way that can save her from herself.”
Astor’s lashes flutter up, her stare pinning me. “She’s a bowling pin. She’s going to fall as soon as I tap her.”
I laugh because the unadulterated, uncomfortable fear in Astor’s face is exactly how I was when Paige pushed a newborn baby burrito in my arms in the hospital. “Not if you maintain a steady grip. Here.”
I fish through the diaper bag, on the floor at my feet now, and pull out a teething wafer. “Have her gnaw on this, and she’ll be as still as a cat for at least forty-five seconds.”