Gingerly, skittishly, Jack let Gia place the baby into his arms.

“Careful, now,” he said. Why was she making him do this? “Careful. Jeez, don’t let me drop her.”

Gia laughed softly, and the sound made him relax. “She’s fragile, but not that fragile.”

Finally he had her, with her head nestled in the crook of his right arm. She skooched and squirmed, and so Jack held her tighter, snuggling his arms around her so she’d know she was secure, with no place to fall. Gia put a pacifier into her mouth and Felicity began to suck. That seemed to work. She closed her eyes and lay quiet.

“How’s it feel?” Gia said.

Jack looked up at her. “It feels… okay.”

Gia smiled. “Coming from you, that’s the equivalent of ‘fabulous,’ I guess.”

Jack stared back down at Felicity’s innocent little face, thinking about what this kid had been through already in her life. And the worst was most likely yet to come. He felt taken by a furious urge to protect her… from everything.

“It is fabulous, Gia.”

And he meant it. That something as simple as being held by another human could be so important to an infant was almost… overwhelming.

“Nice little gifts your folks passed on to you, Felicity: an addiction and a killer virus. Where do you go from here?”

“A foster home eventually,” Gia said.

He looked up again and saw tears in her eyes. “They need so much, Jack. I wish I could take in every one of them.”

“I know you do,” he said softly.

Darlene Love’s “Christmas” segued into the news, and the new big local story in the Catskills was the fire raging on a mountaintop west of New Paltz.

Jack repressed a groan. “Gia, can you get that little truck from my jacket?”

“You brought that here?”

“I’ll get it, Mom,” Vicky said, jumping up and handing her baby to Gia.

She’d been playing with the truck all afternoon, laughing at the way it always ran into the same wall. She pulled it from Jack’s jacket pocket and clicked the power button.

“Hey, Jack,” she said, frowning. “It doesn’t work.” She clicked the button back and forth a few times. “The batteries must be dead.”

“Make sure the aerial is tight,” he said.

He watched her jiggle it in its socket, then try the button again.

“Nope,” she said. “Dead.”

“We have some batteries at home,” Gia said. “What kind does it take?”

“They don’t make them anymore.”

As Gia returned Vicky’s baby to her, and went to get another for herself, Jack sat with Felicity, rocking and thinking.