“Meg? Are you all right?”

Michael was peering over the side of the bed.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just waiting for the homicidal urge to pass.”

“Kiki hungry,” Timmy said, in a conversational tone.

“I’ll go start breakfast,” Michael said.

“It’s not even light yet,” I said.

“Kiki hungry,” Michael said. “Come on, Timmy. Let’s let Auntie Meg sleep a little longer.”

I tried, but the spell was broken. I tossed and turned until I finally realized sleep wasn’t happening. So I got up and went over to the window to see what kind of a day it was going to be.

Seth Early was sprawled on the ground behind his hedge, fast asleep, and from the look of it, probably snoring sonorously.

Rob’s Porsche was still parked in the driveway, which was not surprising. Doubtless he’d considered that his baby-sitting services had earned him room and board for the night. Perhaps I could browbeat him into helping with Timmy again today, in return for the scare he’d given us last night.

The thermometer we’d hung outside our bedroom window already showed seventy degrees, and it wasn’t even light yet. Not a good sign.

Down in the backyard, Rose Noire was bottle-feeding something small, cute, and furry that would probably break her vegetarian heart by growing up to be a carnivore. I spotted Dad and Dr. Blake doing something near one of the sheds. Between the snakes in the basement, the birds on the third floor, and now the furry thing in the backyard, the place was starting to look like a zoo again.

I showered—not that the heat wouldn’t undo that the second I walked outdoors—dressed and stumbled downstairs. Michael had fixed his fruit-and-cinnamon-laden oatmeal again, and was feeding it to Timmy and Rob. Better yet, he waited to offer me some until after I’d finished the cup of coffee he’d made me.

“I’m not due at today’s meetings until nine,” he said. “So I’ll keep Timmy out of your hair till I have to leave.”

I smiled my thanks. Yes, Michael was trying. If he hadn’t been in the middle of what we privately called Hell Week, with the back-to-back meetings and training sessions the administration thought necessary to prepare the faculty for the new year, he’d probably do more than his share of Timmy-sitting. He’d be a great father—patient, caring, fully involved. Why was I in such a panic about the idea of having kids?

The responsibility, I decided. Even when someone else was temporarily taking care of Timmy, he was always in the back of my mind. Did it get easier if the kids arrived as helpless infants and gradually grew more mobile? Did you gradually stop worrying that every time you turned your back, your child would do something that could get him killed? Or at least get used to the worrying?

Of course, it was hard to tell how much of my anxiety came from having Timmy around and how much from not knowing when—or if—Karen would come back to claim him.