Anna let the phone drop into her lap. And four days ago? Why hadn’t anyone called her? Why hadn’t anyone let her know?

She picked her phone up again and stared at the picture of the baby.

Spencer. They’d called him Spencer.

A lump rose in her throat and she began to cry big, fat, gluey tears. She wiped them away, desperate to focus on the picture, desperate to see a likeness, but this baby’s face was so fresh, so new, that it hardly had a hint of its own identity, let alone a similarity to someone else’s.

What was she going to do about this? It was obvious that, in the mad rush of labour, delivery, and sleepless nights, Scott and Teresa hadn’t got around to letting people know. Or they hadn’t got around to letting her know.

She sat with the feeling that suspicion produced for a few seconds, a low drag in the pit of her stomach, then told herself to stop being silly. They were busy and sleep-deprived, that was all. They probably thought they had told her.

But that meant they might be wondering why she hadn’t made contact to congratulate them. Anna frowned. She wasn’t sure how to handle that. Leaving a comment that hinted at their omission might seem like a dig, but she also didn’t want to say nothing. That would be rude. They might think she was jealous.

Oh… Maybe that’s why they hadn’t told her.

It got awkward sometimes with Scott and Teresa when something was said or done to highlight the fact that they still had what she’d lost, but she wouldn’t have thought that would mean they wouldn’t tell her about the baby being born, especially with the name they’d given him. She hoped they didn’t think she was jealous, even though she was, just a little bit.

She closed her eyes and hugged the phone to her chest. More than just a little bit, Anna. Stop kidding yourself. She wanted what they had so much that sometimes it became an actual physical pain, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t celebrate their happiness too.

Wiping another stray tear away, she woke her phone up. She wouldn’t leave a comment on the Facebook post, that seemed too casual, too impersonal. Phoning in the middle of the night was also not a good idea. She’d text. Hopefully that would hit the right note.

She typed quickly, congratulating her sister-in-law on the birth of her lovely baby son, and letting her know that she’d love to come and see him for herself over the weekend. If they felt up to visitors, of course.

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘THANK YOU SO much! They’re gorgeous.’ Teresa lifted the pair of dungarees Anna had bought from the wrapping paper, letting them dangle. ‘They’re impossibly huge, though!’

Anna thought they looked impossibly small, but she nodded in agreement anyway. All her attention was taken up with the warm bundle of pinkness in her arms. The baby was looking at her, his greyish-blue eyes intently staring at her face and his little mouth making different shapes. She wasn’t sure if he was testing it out, finding out what it could do, or whether it was purely involuntary. It was fascinating.