Kathy nodded. “Go see her.”

He moved to her and placed his hands on her cheeks. “Are you okay with this?”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Carlos kissed her softly and then went in search of Madeline.

Chaos enveloped the room where everyone he loved sat watching the greatest football game of the year. But in the corner, the mother of his children rocked his tiny nephew, gazing down upon him. She was beautiful.

The thought hit him hard. He tried to shake it away, but it lodged there. He remembered her holding Eduardo just as she held Tyler. She’d been twenty-one and just had their first child. Most people at that age would have been panicking about everything, but not Madeline. She took it all in stride and had patience he’d never seen in any other woman. Not even his mother had patience like his wife’s. Ex-wife, he had to remind himself.

“Park your butt or go somewhere else,” Alan said to him, and he realized he was standing in plain sight of everyone, gazing at Madeline.

She looked up at him and smiled. He walked toward her and knelt down by the chair.

“He is so precious,” she murmured as Carlos touched Tyler’s soft cheek.

“He really is, isn’t he?”

“I’m so glad I came. I needed this so much. Maybe on my bad days I’ll just go over to Regan’s house.”

“She’d love that.” He looked up at her and caught the love and patience that radiated from her eyes. She looked much better than she had earlier that week.

“Dinner is ready.” Kathy’s voice filled the room, but Carlos heard the tension in it, and when he looked up he saw the pain in her eyes again. But she smiled and stepped aside as his family filtered through the house toward the dining room.

“Good, my team is losing,” Alan protested as Eduardo helped him up from his chair.

Zach reached out his hands to take Tyler from Madeline. “I’ll take him.”

“Would I be horribly out of line if I asked to hold him during dinner? You have no idea how much this is helping me.”

“I think that would be fine,” Zach said, smiling down at her as Regan placed her hand on her husband’s shoulder.

Carlos helped her up and walked with her to the dining room. He kept to her side, a hand on the low of her back to steady her. She wasn’t weak, but it felt necessary to guide her with such a small and wonderful gift sleeping in her arms.

He pulled her chair out, and as she sat, he looked for the next open chair. A sharp pain pierced his chest when he realized his empty chair was across the table, next to his fiancée.

Kathy’s eyes were lowered and the pain increased. He was hurting her, and yet he couldn’t help it.

Dinner around the Keller table was as she always remembered it. It was noisy, full of discussions of work, school, and news of Arianna’s latest adventures in New York. Curtis had been the last to arrive, just as they’d all sat down at the table. Madeline sat between her sons and across from her daughter, who sat next to her father and he next to his fiancée. She knew she should feel out of place, but she didn’t. She wished she’d taken them up on dinner offers sooner.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to take him from you?” Regan asked as Madeline struggled to lift her fork to her mouth without dropping food on Tyler.

“Please, leave him. This has been the very best therapy.”

“I’m glad.”

“How is your recovery going?” Emily asked in her calm, motherly manner.

“I think it’s going well. The doctor gave me some medicine to help my blood count and to keep me from getting sick.” She cut another piece of ham and managed it into her mouth.

“I’m glad you’re getting better.”

“Thank you.”

“Look.” Eduardo smiled at her. “She’s eating.”

Madeline looked down at her plate and realized she’d eaten half the food on it while she cooed over the baby in her arms.

“I guess I am.”

“Good, you’re getting too skinny,” Carlos added.

“Oh, I don’t think there will ever be a day I think that.”

“You never would. You’re too hard on yourself.”

“Maybe.” She managed another fork of food to her mouth.

“You are such a natural,” Zach added his opinion. “Did you always manage to be so calm around babies?”

“She was always good with babies and kids. I don’t think she was sick a day when she was pregnant,” Carlos offered.

“And that wives’ tale about having heartburn if you child had a lot of hair didn’t apply to me. Ed had more hair than most full-grown men.” She gazed at her son, who shook his head as he drank down his milk.

“Oh, he was hairy like a monkey,” Regan reminisced.

“C’mon, that’s gross,” Eduardo piped up and they all laughed.

“Oh, and you were enormous!”

“Dad!”

“You were. You were fat and round. I don’t know how you’re mother managed to carry you for an extra four days.”

“He was nine pounds.” She laughed as she said it. “Talk about being all baby.”

“And you carried him all up front. To look at you from behind, you wouldn’t even have noticed she was pregnant,” Curtis added to the conversation.

Carlos threw his napkin at his brother. “What were you doing looking at her from the back?”

“I was nineteen. I looked at every woman from the back.”

The family laughed. Everyone but Kathy, who looked at her plate as she ate.

After dinner was finished and the men had returned to the football game, Madeline walked into the kitchen, where Emily and Kathy sat at the table with cups of coffee. “Thank you for a wonderful evening.”

Emily stood and kissed her on the cheeks. “I’m so glad you finally came.”

“So am I.” She turned toward Kathy, who had stood too. “Thank you so much for being so kind and letting me join you all. It means the world to me that you’re so kindhearted and let me be such a big part of Carlos’ life. I know I’ve been a real pain lately.”

“Oh, no. You’re very important to him. You’re part of our family,” Kathy said with a smile that reminded Madeline just how kind a person she really was, but also with a tightness to her lips that let Madeline know that as welcome as she’d felt in her presence, it wasn’t more than a one-time deal.