My niece and nephew laugh, and my sister’s husband snorts.
“Doug!” My mother shoots him a scolding look as if he’s twelve.
“Doug!” his wife simultaneously exclaims, elbowing him.
“Sorry. Just trying for a little comic relief,” he mumbles.
My sister frowns at her chortling husband.
“Excuse me,” I say, grabbing my phone and heading out of the room.
“How are things going?” Zack asks when I answer it.
“Well, I’m at my parents’ house.” I head up the stairs toward myold bedroom. “I just faced the family for the first time since telling them about your kids.”
“Oh, yeah? How did they take it?”
“They’re upset.” I step into my bedroom and close the door. “Mom looks like someone’s died. It’s a complete shock.”
He’s silent for a moment. “They didn’t know I was a donor?”
“No.” I wonder if he’s going to ask why I didn’t tell them before we married. I feel defensive about that.
“So the news hit them out of the clear blue,” Zack says.
“Yeah.” I hear traffic noises in the background of his phone. “It sounds like you’re driving. Where are you headed?”
“Home.”
I glance at my watch. It’s nearly eight here, which means it’s nearly ten in Louisiana. “From where?”
He pauses, and I get a sinking feeling before he even says it. “I went by Quinn’s.”
The mattress dips as I sit on it. So does my stomach. “Why?”
“Lily was sick last night, and I wanted to see how she was.”
“Did you see her last night, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, Zack. Are you seeing them every freakin’day?”
He blows out a breath. “I’m trying to sort things out. I talked with Quinn yesterday, and then she got a call that Lily was sick just as we were finishing dinner, and...”
“You had dinner with her?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
He sighs. My I-can-read-Zack-like-a-book radar tells me he’s about to name a place I won’t like. “Jacques-Imo’s.”
“Jesus!”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.”
“I wish you’d stop giving me reason to.” The thought of my husband at a trendy restaurant with an attractive woman—thewoman who’s carrying his baby!—makes my throat constrict with jealousy. I try to hide the ugly emotion. “Is Lily okay?”
