“Where are we going?” Haley asked in her scratchy little sleepy voice.

Anne had awakened her before they left the hospital room, not wanting her to wake up in a panic in a strange place. They had forgotten about needing a child safety seat. Anne held the little girl on her lap and buckled them both in together for the short drive home.

Haley rubbed her eyes now and looked around as they drove out of the parking garage.

“We’re going to the house where Vince and I live,” Anne said. “Remember? You’re going to stay with us for a while.”

“How will my mommy find me?”

The question made Anne flinch inwardly. It wasn’t in her to lie, but neither was it time to tell Haley the full terrible truth.

“Your mommy got hurt really badly at the same time you did, sweetheart,” Anne said carefully. “Do you remember I told you that?”

Haley didn’t answer. She looked out the window at the tree-lined street and changed her line of questioning. “Do you have aminals at your house?”

“No, we don’t,” Anne said.

“I have kitties and chickens at my house.” She twisted around on Anne’s lap and looked up at Vince. “Can my kitties come and live in your house?”

“Hmmm ... we’ll have to see about that,” Vince said.

“Uh-oh.”

“We’ve already had this conversation,” Anne said. “Haley told me when her mommy says ‘we’ll see’ that means no.”

“What about your daddy?” Vince asked. “What does he say?”

Anne glared at her husband over the top of the little girl’s head and mouthed, Don’t push.

“The daddies say lots of things,” Haley answered cryptically.

The daddies, plural. Her quick burst of anger pushed aside, she thought about what she had been told of Marissa Fordham’s life: single mother, free spirit, dated casually. Had Haley—fatherless—attached the label of “Daddy” to all of her mother’s male friends in the hopes that it might stick to one?

Vince was thinking the same thing.

“How many daddies do you know, Haley?” he asked, one eye on the road, one on the child.

Haley shrugged and made a little face, unhappy with the question.

In the hospital she had asked Vince if he was the daddy. She had asked Franny the same thing.

“Do you have a special daddy?” Anne asked.

No answer, but the somber expression on her face made Anne think she was looking back on a memory she wasn’t ready to share.

“Is that your house?” Haley asked as Vince turned in the driveway.

“Yep.”

Anne smiled, looking up at the old white stucco Mediterranean she and Vince had chosen to make their home. It was a solid, substantial house that had commanded its spot on that street since the late twenties. A tasteful renovation had brought the house up to modern standards without compromising its character.