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Emily straightened and her eyes widened. “Thank you, Carly. I’ll do my best.”
Carly had elevated the warmth between them, and she prayed her sisters were beginning to thaw.
Nineteen
He was getting good at this baby stuff.
Lucas hadn’t let Noah’s head slip even a little bit. He patted the tiny bottom on his chest, and the baby’s head bobbed up off his shoulder to look around. Noah started making those noises again that Carly called coos. There was no denying the kid was cute.
He glanced around the room, which was neat and orderly. Carly had put everything away. Had she realized he’d given her the best room up here? He and Ryan had identical masters on the first floor, and the second floor held another five suites. Each had its own bathroom, but this room was the upstairs master with its spacious bedroom and luxurious bathroom.
Once her sisters saw it, the bickering would probably begin.
He carried the baby out into the hall and down the staircase. Carly exited the music room, and he jerked his head for her to follow him into the kitchen. He’d like to stay away from her sisters as much as possible, though Isabelle wasn’t like the others. She seemed to have lost her initial hostility and teenage angst. Maybe the extreme circumstances with her father had brought it all out.
“Hello, sweet thing,” Carly said.
“You talking to me or Noah?” He regretted the joke as soon as he said it. Stupid thing to say.
Red flared in her cheeks, but she managed an uncertain smile. “Um, has anyone ever called you a sweet thing?”
“No, as a matter of fact, they haven’t. I was joking, of course.” Like it could have been anything else.
“Anything new on the investigation?”
Good idea of hers to change the subject. “The doctors don’t think Kostin will make it.”
She winced, and tears filled her eyes. “I was afraid of that.”
“Ryan just hired him. Honestly, Carly, I suspect he might have been part of the group trying to find the egg.”
“I’ve wondered if I should call the media and release the news about the egg and that it’s in a safe place. It might stop the attacks.”
“Or intensify them. What if someone kidnapped a family member—even Noah here—and demanded you give them the egg in order to have them returned unharmed? I don’t think releasing the full information would work. You’re safe here.”
“Unless they decide to up the ante and do what you just described anyway.”
That was Lucas’s worst fear, and it could happen. He had to track down the culprits and get them in jail before they could harm Carly or her family. “I have some news. I talked to the family of the nurse who is mentioned in the letter from the orphanage. Her diary indicates the mom was from Russia and gave both girls something to help them find each other—an egg and a pendant. Sound familiar? The great-granddaughter copied some pages from Nurse Adams’s diary as well as a picture just like the one in the attic. I’ll get them for you.”
Carly held her hand to her mouth, and her eyes went wide. “That’s amazing. So the items were intentionally split up as we thought. We need to find out what happened to Gram’s twin. I about forgot to tell you what happened today. One of Ryan’s workers found a family tree hidden in a wall they tore down. It was an illustration of the Padgett family tree, and it mentioned Gram’s twin. And it gave her adopted name: Elizabeth Durham!”
His pulse kicked. “That’s huge news! We might be able to track her down.”
“I hoped it would be the key.” She moved closer and stroked her son’s cheek. “I’m still sorry about Charlie Kostin. I’ve been praying for him. Maybe he’ll make it yet.”
“You prayed for him?”
She nodded. “It’s so hard to discern God’s will, isn’t it? When Eric died, I thought it was punishment for all the ways I’d failed as a wife. I thought maybe God took him to glory to save him decades of being married to me.”
Lucas frowned. “That’s crazy talk. You couldn’t have been such a terrible wife.”
“I don’t know.” She broke eye contact with him and lifted Noah from his shoulder. “We’d started fighting all the time. It was like living with a stranger toward the end. I know he wasn’t happy.”
With Carly so close, her scent wafted to him—something flowery and light. He missed the weight of the baby on his chest almost instantly.
Noah nestled against her, and she kissed the top of his downy head. “I think we humans are constantly searching for unconditional love, and I’m beginning to think it’s a fool’s hope. Everything is conditional. We only keep our jobs if weperform them well. If we fail at marriage, we get divorced. It’s the same kind of thing. We’re never going to make someone happy all the time.”
He realized he’d done a 180-degree turn on his initial view of her. “Maybe it was a part of learning to live together and compromise with each other. It’s impossible to think there’s never conflict in a marriage. You learn to work through it.”
