Page 59 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

“I did not⁠—”

“You absolutely did.” Robin’s face lit up. “You have a tuft of wool in your hair from the rug in the front room.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, then closed it again because there was no version of this she was going to win. Robin had dusted Garrick’s rooms every Tuesday for eleven months. She knew that rug.

“It’s all very new,” she said. “And I have no idea what it is yet, and if you tell Sylvie I will salt your garden.”

“You wouldn’t. You love my garden.”

“I’d do it grieving.”

Robin laughed, and then she softened, which was worse. She reached out and picked the offending tuft of wool out of Maris’s hair with gentle fingers.

“He’s a good one,” she said quietly. “Eric’s known him thirty years, and there aren’t many people he’d trust more.”

Her eyes went involuntarily to the open gate.

“I know,” she said quietly, and Robin smiled at her. “Yeah. I think you do.”

The door banged. Toby had washed his hands, which she could tell because his sleeves were soaked to the elbow. He had also used the interval to go on thinking, because he arrived with the momentum of a decision reached.

“Mama, I want a baby sister.”

Robin choked.

“Do you?” Maris asked, frantically trying to come up with an acceptable response.

“Birdie is a baby and she’s so good, and she laughs when you make the face.” He demonstrated the face. It was alarming. “Dot has a baby sister and now I don’t have one and I would like one, please.”

“That isn’t really something you order, bug.”

“Where do you get them?”

Robin had turned away entirely and was looking at the flowerbed with her shoulders shaking.

“We’ll talk about it later,” she said, which was what her own mother had always said to her when she meant no, and Toby accepted it with the trust of a child who didn’t yet know the history of that phrase. He nodded, satisfied to have lodged the request with the proper authority, and made the face at Birdie. Birdie laughed.

Robin wiped her eyes. “You are so doomed.”

“I know.”

“I won’t tell Sylvie, but I’m definitely going to tell Eric.” She hoisted the baby and headed for her car, still grinning. “For what it’s worth, it’s about time. This town has been holding its breath since that first newsletter.”

“The town really needs a hobby.”

“You’re the hobby, hon. Have you met Flora?”

Garrick came through the gate forty minutes later, showered and shaved, with the usual two coffees. Toby got to the door first and launched the baby-sister proposal at him before she could make it out of the kitchen.

“—and Dot has one and I don’t and I would like one, please,” Toby finished hopefully, looking up at Garrick with a totally serious face.

Garrick nodded equally seriously.

“That’s a decision for your mother.”

“She said we’ll talk about it.”

“Then you should talk about it.”