“I want you to ride me like a forklift,” she says.

Carrie likes aerospace and factory sex talk, for some goddamn reason.

“Spread your wings,” I tell her without the slightest embarrassment. “I’m coming in for a landing.”

She murmurs some expression of utter delight but my mind is elsewhere. Carrie LaCroix is a lousy lay. A crummy distraction. It comes to me just then that making like a plane going into a hangar is only a little better than nothing. I feel like telling Carrie that, but she seems so happy right now.

When I get home, Katrina is packed up and ready to go. She’s twenty-three and from Romania. Her English is perfect, and she’s great with Aubrey. She’s attractive, no doubt. But as stupid as I am for sleeping with Carrie, I’m not about to put any moves on Katrina. I need her as a nanny.

“Sorry,” I say, “had to work late.”

“Business is important,” she says. “But so is family.”

I give her a disarming smile. “Thank you for everything,” I say. “I’m a little lost right now. Not sure how I’m going to get through all of this.”

“You are a smart man,” she tells me. “You’ll find a way. Aubrey is asleep. She thinks her mother is an angel, you know.”

“She doesn’t understand the finality of death,” I say, pulling off my jacket and laying it over the back of a chair.

“She will learn,” Katrina says. “Good night, Mr. Warner.”

I almost tell her to call me Adam, but I don’t.

“Good night, Katrina. See you in the morning.”

I pour some Maker’s into a glass and head down the hall to check on Aubrey. She’s curled up like a kitten in her bed. I adjust the covers a little and sit on the rocker that Sophie bought to nurse her in. I want to cry, but I can’t. I just can’t make the tears come.

I get up and fix another drink. And then another.