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My heart squeezes painfully.
“Then they’ll be strong and brave,” I answer truthfully.
“Will the babies have blonde hair like us?” she asks.
“I don’t know.” I glance up as Jay comes into the room. He walks up behind the sofa Holly’s sitting on and leans over the back of it, wrapping his arms around her neck and kissing her cheek.
“Okay, Berry?” he asks her.
She strokes his arm, and I look away before the pang of missing Drew and the way he would call meBossorMamabecomes too great.
“These babies actually have different fathers, so they might look a little different to one another,” I explain to Summer and Sydney as they listen raptly. “But they have the same Daddy, who loves them more than anything else. You remember Drew, who you spoke to on the phone before? He’s their daddy.”
“Drew’s funny.” Summer grins, probably thinking about how Drew used silly voices on our last call to make them laugh.
“Drew not here,” Sydney says with a serious expression.
“No.” I stroke her soft curls by her neck, my mouth going dry. “No, he stayed at home so I could come and visit you by myself.”
Sydney pats my hand under hers. “It okay,” she says, her lower lip poking out.
The gesture is enough to make me blink rapidly to fight back a surge of emotion.
“Do you think we can hear them?” Summer’s blonde hair scatters over my stomach as she presses an ear to my stomach. Sydney copies her and the two of them sit in silence for a few seconds.
“I have a recording of their heartbeats, if you want to hear? Drew took it on his phone and sent it to me after their ultrasound.”
“Yay.” They both sit upright and Summer jumps down from the sofa, fetches my phone from the floor next to us and then hops back up and hands it to me.
I bring up the recording and both girls clasp their hands over their mouths, their eyes wide with joy as they listen to the firstthum-dum, followed by the second, slightly faster one.
“The first one’s the girl, it’s faster,” Holly says.
“Yeah. That’s what the doctor said.”
I let the recording play again, before turning it off.
“Can we listen again?” Summer asks.
“Later.” Jay grins, walking over and scooping both girls up so one is dangling beneath each sun-kissed arm. “You two have a playdate to get to.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Holly looks at me with concern.
“I’m fine honestly. You don’t need to worry about me. My colleagues are prepping Councilor Jenkins’ case for trial now, and there’s still lots of work to do around the handling of the missing statements.”
“Yeah, I know.” Holly frowns. “I guess they’ve got a better chance with you helping them.”
I give her a small smile, but there’s still tension pulling at her shoulders as she stands. I know she doesn’t agree with my reasons for still working on the case. She doesn’t agree with a lot of things that I’ve told her since I arrived on her doorstep, but I know she trusts my judgment.
“I’ll be fine here alone,” I add, trying to reassure her.
“We’ll only be a couple of hours, and you’ve got our numbers.” She looks at my bump, even though I’m still more than a few weeks away from my due date.
“I’ll be fine,” I repeat. “But I love that you worry.”
She lifts her matching green eyes to mine and smiles. “Okay, fine. We’ll bring you back ice-cream.”
“Sounds amazing.”
