“I’m not going anywhere. Don’t worry.”

They arrived home to an empty house. The kids were with Ned and Francine for the afternoon. Mac trudged up the stairs to the deck behind Maddie, feeling exhausted and drained after seeing the boys. He ought to go back to work at the marina, and he needed to start getting his shit together on the addition he’d promised to oversee for Seamus. But right now, he couldn’t seem to summon the desire to do anything other than be with his wife.

She made sandwiches that they took out to the deck to eat.

“It’s such a beautiful day for something this sad to happen,” Maddie said.

The day was so clear, they could see all the way to Newport from the deck, a view that was often obstructed in the summer by fog and the humidity that hung like a drape over the island. “Sure is.”

“I’ve been thinking…”

“About?”

“Trying again.”

Mac sat up a little straighter in his chair. He’d avoided the subject of trying for another baby in the weeks since they’d lost a child in utero. To hear her say she’d been thinking about trying again had his full attention. “Really?”

She bit her lip, which made her look madly vulnerable as she nodded.

“Not because you think I want to, right? Because you do?”

“Hopefully because we both do. Do we?”

“Hell, yes, I want to. I want as many kids as you’d like to have. But I’m also perfectly satisfied with the two perfect babies we already have.”

“You’ve certainly changed your tune by saying as many babies as I want. Have you forgotten your moratorium after Hailey was born?”

Mac shrugged. “Everything is different after losing one. Now the only thing that matters is that they—and their mother—are healthy. But…” He hesitated, unsure of how to say the one thing he felt he had to say before this went any further.

“What?”

“You scared me with the way you checked out after we lost Connor,” he said of the baby they had decided to name out of respect to his memory. “You scared me bad.”

“It took me a while to bounce back, but I did.”

“It wasn’t that so much as the way you punched out of this.” He moved his hand between them. “Us. That scared me more than anything. If that happened again… I don’t know, Maddie, it kinda made me crazy to feel like you’d left me even though you were right next to me. I never want to feel like that again.”

She got up from her chair and came over to his, making herself at home on his lap.

He put his arms around her and held her close.

“I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I didn’t mean to. I was just a mess after losing him.”