“You’re right. I didn’t know anything. My first call was to Judy to ask her to come stay with me. My second was to a guy I worked with. He was married with a couple of little kids. They let me come over, and his wife showed me the basics. By the time I picked up Judy at the airport, I could fix a bottle and change a diaper. But I still didn’t know how I was going to survive. Who was going to take care of Harrison while I worked?”

“The dilemma of single parents everywhere.”

“It is. Judy was willing to stay for a few weeks, but then she had to get home to my dad.”

She heard the edge in his voice and knew better than to ask about his father. She wanted to hear more about his early years with Harrison, and talking about Toby’s father would send them spiraling to a place neither of them wanted to go.

She still couldn’t believe how Anne had acted. If she hadn’t wanted the kid, why have the child in the first place? Or if she wasn’t willing to have an abortion, then arrange for an adoption from birth. There were thousands of wonderful couples eager to adopt a baby. But to keep him and then change her mind? That wasn’t right.

“We brainstormed ways for me to make money from home,” he said. “It’s harder than you’d think. None of the ideas worked for me. I didn’t have any work-from-home skills that I could use, and trying to work as a handyman didn’t solve the day care situation. Then she suggested selling hand pies.”

His mouth twisted. “There were plenty of times when I was a kid that the money from those was all we had. Remember how she would sell to friends and neighbors?”

“I do,” Reggie said, her voice soft. “My mom always wanted to know when Judy was making them. We loved having them for dinner.”

“I took a couple of days off work. We baked all weekend. Made as many as we could. Then Monday, I sold them at the construction site. They were gone in minutes. Tuesday, I brought in even more and took them to another construction site. The same thing happened. By the time she was ready to go back home, word had spread about the hand pies, and guys were showing up at the two construction sites, buying me out in less than an hour. I had my home business.”

“How did you make it work with Harrison?” she asked, trying to absorb everything he told her.