“Good job, baby. You want to read it to me again?” She happily agreed and started again from the beginning, and this time she got all the words correct, and her cadence was much smoother. When she got to the words, “Love is what makes a family,” I felt my heart constrict. Axel had said that he loved me and that he wanted Carrie in his life. I knew he would love her if he spent any time at all with her because, honestly, she was just the most lovable and amazing kid in the world.

This parenting shit was hard. Seriously. If only I could predict the future, then I would know the right thing to do. I didn’t want to get Axel mixed up in Carrie’s life only for him to decide that the parenting gig wasn’t for him. But if what he said last night was true…

Dammit, I was so effing confused. I needed to talk to Beau. I kissed the top of Carrie’s head as I stood and said, “I’m going to talk to BaBa for a minute.”

“Okey dokey,” she said, crawling to settle her back against the arm of the couch and flipping through her new book. I walked to Evan’s study at the back of the first floor and stood in the open doorway. He was on the phone but turned in his chair when he sensed my presence. He waved me into a deep-red armchair, and my gaze flitted across the pictures on his desk while he finished up his call. Carrie at her first birthday party with cake all over her grinning face. All three of us at the beach last summer. Carrie and Evan making a silly face for the camera.

“Hey, sweetheart. How was your day?” he asked as soon as he hung up.

“Good. Not too long today,” I said.

“That’s good,” he said, rounding his desk and sitting in the matching armchair next to mine. “What do we want for dinner tonight?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Would you mind feeding Carrie and getting her to bed? I need to go talk to my brother, but don’t tell her where I went, or she’ll be mad I didn’t take her.”

A tiny worry line appeared between Evan’s well-groomed eyebrows. “Is something wrong?” he asked, taking my hand.

I sighed. “I don’t know.” I paused as Evan looked at me with unvoiced concern. He was well aware of my thought processes by now and knew to just let me think through whatever was on my mind. Finally, I said, “It’s about Axel. He said that when I told him about the baby, he panicked, but then after he had a few hours to deal with it, he was actually excited.”

“Whoa! That’s huge,” Evan said.