Page 157

I close the book.

Her eyes narrow. “Silence makes it worse.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Emma crosses the kitchen and reaches for the book before I can move it. She opens to the marked pages and stares at the highlighted section. “Preeclampsia?”

“It’s worth understanding.” I reach for my coffee, but Emma keeps the book open between us.

“My blood pressure is normal, and the doctor said I’m doing well.”

“I heard her.” I wrap both hands around the mug without drinking from it because none of what I’ve read has made me feel better.

Emma studies me before closing the book and pushing it aside. Whatever argument she was preparing disappears as she comes around the island and stops between my knees. “You’re scared.”

I could give her half a dozen reasons why reading ahead is practical, particularly with twins, but she already knows how my mind works well enough to hear the excuse before I make it. “Yeah.”

Her hands come to my chest, and I cover one of them with mine.

“Losing Celeste taught me exactly how little control anybody has when life decides to change,” I tell her. “Knowing that doesn’t stop me from wanting to find every risk before it gets near you.”

Her thumb moves across my shirt. “Finding risks is what you know how to do, but this isn’t a security problem you can get ahead of.”

“I’m figuring that out.”

“I know.” She reaches behind me and closes the pregnancy book. “You can come to every appointment, read the sensible parts of these, and remove whichever rugs offend you, but you can’t spend every night waiting for a disaster.”

“I’ll work on it.”

“Good, because you’re starting tonight.” Emma takes my hand and pulls me off the stool before I can argue.

I reach back for my coffee, but she catches my wrist and redirects me toward the bedroom. “You’re leaving that here.”

“That feels excessive.”

“So does reading about placentas at three in the morning.”

I let her drag me down the hall because there’s very little available to me in the way of a counterargument.

By the following weekend, Emma is beside me at the dining table with Celeste’s notebook open between us when she finds the connection we’ve missed.

The girls are on the living room rug building a house for their stuffed animals, and Mom keeps Sprout occupied with a chew so he doesn’t destroy it before construction finishes.

Emma turns back through several pages. “We followed Haven House, the housing program, and the legal project.”

“Yeah.”

Her finger stops beside the scholarship entry. “Michael told us Nora finished nursing school.”

I pull Celeste’s notebook closer and read the entry again. We’ve gone over these pages enough times that I know half of them without looking, but this time the scholarship doesn’t disappear among the organizations that helped Nora escape.

Emma reaches for her laptop. “We never checked what happened after she graduated.”

I’m already gathering the older shelter records. “Then we check now.”

Emma opens the state registry as I drag the older Haven House records across the table and find Nora’s full name in Celeste’s notes. Emma reads out the licenses one by one until I stop her at the matching middle initial.

“Nora Elizabeth Bell.”