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Asher squealed again, clearly excited to see his true mama. AJ tickled him and said, “Look at you in that T-shirt, buddy. It’s got a great big crab on it. Are you crabby?” She took him from Jean, his little legs still going.
The T-shirt did have a big cartoon crab on the front of it, and Jean had applied that with sure stitches. The saying she’d stitched on saidI’m not crabby. I’m teething.
And he was. His fist went in his mouth, and Jean turned to the fridge, where she’d put his teething ring. “Here you go, baby.” She handed him the toy, taking an extra couple of moments for Asher to get his chubby fingers around it.
That too went straight into his mouth, and AJ smiled at Jean. “Thank you, Jean.”
“Anytime.” She followed AJ all the way up two flights of stairs to the exit, and she held the door with her foot as the other woman left. She went outside and waved to Matt and Lisa, who’d stayed in the car.
Lisa actually got out and cooed at Asher too. “Look at your shirt, you lucky baby.” She took him from AJ to put him in the car seat in the back, and Jean stood strong against the wind and watched them until they left.
Then she went back downstairs to the computer. Reuben had started to make coffee, and he put a mug on the desk as she finished the last question. “Coconut cream in that, my love,” he said softly.
She stood and indicated that he should take the chair. “Read them.”
He sat, and Jean perched herself in his lap. He held her around the waist, and she read over the questions and answers again.
“It’s good, Jean,” he said. “We are who we are.”
“Do you want me to change the last one?”
“No,” he said. His arms around her tightened, and she loved how completely he held her. How much he loved her. “I want to see all the dresses and shirts and tops you make for our daughter.”
Happiness filled her, and Jean leaned her head against Reuben’s shoulder. “All right. I’ll send them back then.” She got off his lap.
He stood and took his coffee with him. “I’m going back up.”
She didn’t say anything, because she was already back at the monitor. She sipped her coffee, read through the answers again, and waited in pure silence for someone or something to tell her to change one of them.
She heard nothing, so she saved the file, attached it to the email, and sent it back to Miranda. All she could do now was what she’d been doing all along.
Pray.
“That goes in the den,”Robin said as Jean went by with a bright green tote. “It’s labeled!”
Jean wouldn’t expect anything less from Robin, and she found the den easily. The bright blue sticky note with the three letters in a very wide-tipped marker helped a lot.
Robin’s diligence didn’t stop there. She’d actually taped off places on the floor for the furniture, so Jean didn’t set the tote there. She put it with a few identical bins and turned to go get more.
The weather had cooperated beautifully for today’s double-move. Of course, it was barely eight in the morning, and in a few hours, when they moved over to Kristen’s to get Clara and Scott’s stuff out of the condo and over to their new house, Jean might be saying something different.
Jean loved the dawn of a new day, and she smiled into the still slightly chilled sky. It had been a week since she’d sent in the additional questions, and she’d labored over pictures of the lighthouse and its surroundings that night. Those hadn’t been sent until the next day, but Miranda had confirmed it all. She said she’d pass it all along to the birth mother, and she hoped to have more news soon.
With every day that passed without any communication, Jean wanted to know what else she could do. Send more pictures? Give better details? Their profile had already been quite detailed as it was, and Jean would be overwhelmed looking through it.
Of course, if she was considering giving up her baby, she’d want to know every little detail about the people taking her.
She turned with another box in her hands, her thoughts far away. Therefore, she didn’t see Alice until she’d knocked into her, and then Jean blinked her way back to the present. Alice stood in front of her, doubled-over.
“Alice.” She dropped the box, and the clunking, then shattering, noise inside didn’t soothe her. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m okay,” Alice said, but it was almost a wheeze. She held her midsection, her eyes rimmed in pain. “It just knocked the wind out of me.”
Jean kept her hand on Alice’s elbow until she straightened. Her son came up behind her and asked, “Mom?”
“I’m fine.” Alice moved out of the way as boxes and items kept getting placed on the lip of the truck for someone to take. Duke had loaded the truck last night with the help of some of his and Robin’s friends, and they wanted this morning to go quickly.
Robin had ordered breakfast for everyone, and another round of guilt hit Jean that she’d slowed things down.
