The slow unfolding of herself after she had escaped home had been a whole process.

And that had hurt. For a while she...

She had quiet rebellions from the time she was far too young. Mostly with boys at school. And she had confused being touched with being cared for and had found a way to make some of the ache of loneliness go away.

Then she had moved to Hope Springs and she had found a kind of safety. And as she felt safer and safer, she’d been like a butterfly who’d come out of a chrysalis. Her wings had been wrinkled and wet, and it had taken time for her to be able to spread them completely. But gradually she had begun to do it. And for a little bit of time afterward she had been...manic.

Giddy with freedom and unsure of what to do with that half the time. Some of it had been self-destructive, though she hadn’t meant for it to be.

Time had mellowed her. Though Ryder might disagree with that. Especially at the moment.

“I made a list of everything I need to get in order before I go having a baby,” she said, taking the bacon out of the fridge and moving over to the stove.

“Okay,” he said, his tone grim.

Obviously, this was not a subject he wanted to be in the middle of. Too bad for him.

“Health insurance is the one I’m not sure what to do with at the moment.” She got a pan out and turned the burner on, letting the bacon settle in the pan.

“And you think that you have to leave to take care of the baby?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It all feels like it goes hand in hand with growing up.”

“You are grown-up,” he said. “You can trust me on that one.”

“I’m not independent.”

“Take it from me,” he said. “Independence is overrated. As somebody who had my security pulled out from under me at a very young age, I can tell you there is no shame in banding together. Or did you forget that? Did you forget that it’s how we got through all of this?”

“I didn’t forget,” she said. “It’s just that I want...change.”

“Change is terrible,” he said, getting out his own pan and putting it on the burner next to hers. He cracked a couple of eggs into it and grabbed the spatula.

“Not always,” she said. “A certain amount of change is a normal part of life.” She picked up the tongs out of a canister next to the stove and flipped the bacon. “And I’ve been stagnant for too long.”

“What part of this thing is nonnegotiable for you? Leaving or the baby?”

She had no real idea what leaving would give her apart from change, in the broadest sense. There wasn’t a particular place she wanted to go. It was more that she was reacting to fear. The fear of being her mother. The baby was something else. A desire for love. For a sense of family. Completion.