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“I’ve had lots of practice,” I reply, “with Audrey’s and now yours.”
“How about you guys? Getting hitched? Caught the baby bug or not yet?
“Not yet,” I lie.
To be honest, the baby bug has bitten me, pretty badly. It’s a fever, getting worse by the day, burning whenever I look at Dylan’s brothers, or my friends’ babies. While I was away on my last trip, it was all I could think about.
The doorbell rings, and Dakota comes in with baby Emmanuel. He’s such a cutie. I trade Isabella for him, as she starts getting sleepy, and cradle him in my arms.
Awww God. “How is baby boy today?” I croon, and Dakota snickers. I look up at her as she takes a seat across from me. “You okay, girl?”
She nods. “The guys have left to check out the house in Wausau, and Zane…” She swallows hard. “I’m not sure. He’s confused, too, I think. He was starting to believe it had all been in his mind, and if it turns out it wasn’t…”
Her words hang in the air between us, leaving a trail of ice.
“He’ll be fine.” Audrey slings an arm over Dakota’s slim shoulders and hugs her. “You’ll see. Both of you will be fine. Give it time. Whether it was all in his mind or not, these bad times won’t last forever.”
“Not sure how much longer either of us can take it,” Dakota mutters, melting into Audrey’s arms, then pulling away.
“You’re both much stronger than you think. And we’re here.”
“Yes, we are.” I kiss Emmanuel’s silky, soft cheek and coo at him. He gives me a startled look. “And so is this handsome man here.”
He starts rubbing a tiny pink fist in his eyes, so I give him back to her. She holds him and he stares back at her, quiet.
“Zane had some pretty bad nightmares last night,” she says softly. “He was screaming. Woke us both up.” She strokes the baby’s hair. “I had to go and calm him down. He said he was remembering more stuff.”
Audrey shoots me a worried glance.
“Did he say what he remembered?” Megan asks. Baby Zane, or Zay as Dylan and Tyler now call him, is asleep in her arms, a small fist by his head.
So many cute babies…
“There was this boy, Tyrell. He says he’d almost forgotten all about him, as he hadn’t been at the foster house very long when he just vanished one day. The foster father said the boy had gone back to his biological family, but the other kids staying at the house said Tyrell had no family.”
“Asher said something about that,” Audrey says. “About that boy. Seems he was more important to Zane than he originally thought?”
Dakota sucks her lower lip into her mouth, releases it again. “I don’t know. They weren’t friends, from what I gather, but the boy… he was hurt.”
“Hurt, how?”
“His back. Zane says he saw it once, in the bathroom they all shared. Welts, and round burn marks.” Her blue eyes are wide. “And then he vanished, and that’s when… when the guy started to hurt Zane. That’s what he said.” She lifts a hand to her mouth, her eyes shimmering. “Oh God…”
That boy is important, I can feel it. Zane can feel it, if he dreams about him. “Any idea what the boy’s surname was?”
“He tried to remember. I asked him that, too.” Dakota shakes her head. “He wasn’t making much sense, to be honest. He said something about it being weird.”
“Weird?”
“Yeah. That’s what he said.”
“A weird surname. Foreign, maybe? Like, I don’t know… Chinese?”
“He never said this Tyrell was Chinese. Wouldn’t he know?”
“He said he had dark hair, like him,” I say.
I shiver. Goosebumps spread on my skin. What am I missing? And why do I have this stone in the pit of my stomach when I think about this?
