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Olivia’s nose wrinkles as she stares at the growing stain on my robe. “Mommy is wet.”
“Yes, she is.” Drake swoops her up again before she can dart away. “Let’s go find that night nurse and have the car brought around.”
Theodore Michael Van Koch has the healthiest set of lungs that I’ve ever heard in my damn life. He came out yelling his head off and didn’t stop for a good ten minutes afterward.
Gigi is exhausted, but happier than she’ll ever admit, as she finally lets herself rest with our son tucked comfortably into a plastic crib at the side of her bed. I don’t leave the room until I’m certain they’re both asleep.
I shut the door behind me, just as our nanny, whose name I can’t remember but who I know isn’t Angie, comes racing up from the direction of the waiting area.
“Mr. Van Koch, I am so sorry.”
When a quick glance doesn’t reveal my daughter, I immediately understand what happened. “How long has she been gone?”
“Not long, I swear. I couldn’t have looked away for more than a second and she just vanished.”
“I don’t doubt it.” I let out an impatient sigh, but try to keep the annoyance off my face because of just how stricken she looks. Hide-and-seek is hands down Livi’s favorite game and she never tires of playing it. “Go find the nurse so they can put out an alert. I’ll keep looking.”
The nanny looks like she’s about to burst into tears. “Okay.”
“The doors are always locked on the maternity ward. Livi won’t have gotten far.”
I have to gently push her in the direction of the nurse’s station, but I manage not to roll my eyes until her back is turned.
Gigi thought I was joking when I told her we need to fit our kid with a GPS tag, but I really wasn’t. This isn’t the first time that my daughter has gone temporarily missing and it almost certainly won’t be the last. I’ve got the gray hairs to prove it.
Most of the doors on the unit are locked, and I’m riding on the assumption that a two-year-old couldn’t have opened any of them on her own. The girl is smart enough to run in whatever direction has the fewest people to avoid getting caught. Barely out of diapers and she has the instincts of a seasoned criminal.
God, I don’t want to think of what she’ll be capable of when she’s older.
I catch sight of a tiny shoe covered with pink glitter in the staff break room. Slowing enough that my footsteps are silent, I ease inside and close the door behind me. If I give her a way out, I’ll just have to catch her all over again.
“Now, where could Livi be?” I ask loudly, as if talking to myself. “She is so good at hiding that I don’t think I’ll ever find her.”
A muffled giggle comes from under the table.
“I’m so tired after all that looking that I really just need to sit down.”
Shoes squeak on the linoleum floor as she scrambles away when I pull out a chair. I pretend not to see her as I sit down. “Oh, that’s better.”
Livi is trying so hard not to laugh that she makes a wheezing sound.
I relax back in the chair, surprised at how good it feels to sit down after standing at Gigi’s bedside for the last few hours. My feet kick out and my toe nudes the soft curve of Livi’s belly, hands down the most ticklish spot on her body. “Wait, what’s this?”
She leaps out from under the table. “Surprise!”
“Where did you come from?” I gasp in exaggerated surprise before swooping her up into my lap. “You ready to go meet your little brother?”
She nods emphatically, but then her lips pull down in a frown. “Is Mommy dead?”
That startles me into sudden alertness. “What?”
“Is Mommy dead?”
“Mommy is fine.” The question makes just as little sense the second time. “Why would you ask that, sweetheart?”
“‘Cuz I saw her ghost.”
An icy chill works its way up my spine. “Her ghost?”
