He looked at her form, placing her pregnancy at six or seven months, from personal knowledge. “No-good husband, huh? If you want, I have friends who can make him go away.” He mimed a gun.

She smiled wanly. “Thank you”—she glanced at the driver’s ID on the dash—“Mr. Kistorian.”

Five minutes later, Kate gave him the thumbs-up from inside her living room. He waved back and started up the cab.

She made the offer and Mary-Sue jumped for it. Kate had feared conflict, and even worse, mixed signals, but her mother had jumped at the chance to move back to Santa Claus Lane, at least until after the baby was born.

“I’ll be out of your hair as soon as you can manage on your own,” Mary-Sue had said, instantly assuming her old self-sacrificing bossiness even as she hopped along on crutches. Kate found this comical and poignant. Both were new reactions—she’d previously felt only guilt at her mother’s frequent gestures of martyrdom.

Her job now was to get the house shipshape ahead of Mary-Sue’s arrival in two weeks. The empty Scotch bottles had to go. The floors swept, carpets vacuumed. The ironing board taken out of her mother’s old bedroom, along with the piles of clothes she’d been meaning to take to Goodwill for three years.

She began with the bottles—out into the recycling bin. When she reentered the house, she was alight with the euphoria of someone who was finally in control of her life.

“Boo.” It was Bluto.

She shrieked and backed violently into the fridge, bumping her elbow.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He was laughing. His big arms straddled the kitchen doorway and he gazed at her belly with a strident possessiveness. “Your front door was unlocked.”

She snatched a bunch of bananas and hurled it at his face, still hyperventilating.

He—great reflexes—caught the bunch. “Aren’t you even going to say hello?”

“You creep!” Her eyes darted to the counter—the butcher’s block was there, but where were all the knives?

“I put those away.” He gave her a wounded smile and stepped in closer. “Kate, for God’s sake, it’s only me. Me. The only person who ever got you, ever.”

She remembered the delicate high school Bluto, not this corrupted copy, with the crow’s feet and the new facial muscles that gave his dimples a hard edge.

He moved toward her, then passed her altogether to shut and lock the back door behind them. “I’m never going to hurt you. Or our baby.” He watched for her reaction. “I’m not sure how it could have happened, but nothing’s a hundred percent, I guess.”

“Nobody said it was yours.” She heard the lack of conviction in her own voice.

He stretched out his hand, edging closer. “Can I feel it anyway?”