The disarming shock of seeing a small human being cradled in someone’s arms and understanding, for the first time, what that meant.
Mary looked up. Her eyes moved from Evander to Richard, and the warmth left her face. Her arms tightened around Tommy, pulling the baby closer against her chest, a reflex so immediate it preceded thought.
Evander saw it: the instinct to shield. The mother’s instinct, though Tommy was not hers by blood and the title was not hers by right.
“Mary,” Evander said. “Let Richard see him.”
Mary’s jaw set. She sent a deathly glare towards Richard. “He is welcome to look. Though by his own account, he is not even Tommy’s father. Allegedly.”
Richard flinched. The word landed where she intended it to, and his face crumpled. He seemingly recovered, but the recovery was slow, and Evander watched his brother absorb the blow.
“I deserve that,” Richard conceded.
“You deserve considerably more than that,” Mary snapped back.
“Mary.” Evander kept his voice even. “Please.”
Mary held his gaze for a long moment. Then she looked down at Tommy, adjusted the blanket across his chest, and sat very still in the rocking chair. She did not release the baby, but she did not turn away.
Evander nodded to Richard. “Go to him.”
Richard crossed the nursery. His steps were cautious, as though the floor might give way, and he stopped beside the rocking chair and looked down at Tommy. The baby stared up at the new face with curiosity.
“Hello, Tommy.” Richard’s voice cracked. He crouched beside the chair, bringing himself to the baby’s level. “You’ve grown. Last time I held you, you fit in my palm.” His hand hovered near Tommy’s cheek, trembling, and he pulled it back. “You’re a handsome lad. Charlotte would be proud.”
The words were gentle and warm. But Evander heard what was missing. Richard spoke to Tommy with tenderness, withgenuine affection, but not with the raw, consuming gravity of a father meeting his child.
Evander filed that away.
“Hold him,” Evander said.
Mary’s head snapped up. “No.”
“Mary.”
“He does not know how to hold a baby. He will drop him.”
“He will not drop him. I am right here. And I am asking you to trust me.”
The nursery went quiet. Tommy made a soft sound, his fist tightening on Mary’s thumb, oblivious to the negotiation happening above his head.
Mary looked at Evander, and the resistance in her eyes warred with something else. Trust, fragile and hard-won, built over fox stories and bandaged wounds and a corridor kiss that still hung between them.
She exhaled. Slowly, with the care of a woman surrendering something precious, she shifted Tommy toward Richard.
“Support his head,” she said. The instruction came out sharp. “Both hands. No, not like that. Under his neck. Richard, his head.”
Richard took the baby and immediately got it wrong. His arms were stiff. His grip was too loose. Tommy’s head lolled backward, and Mary lunged forward, but Evander was already there.
“Here.” Evander stepped beside his brother and adjusted Richard’s arm, tilting the elbow up, shifting Tommy’s weight into the crook. “His head goes here. Support the neck. No, not with your wrist, with your forearm. Like this.”
He repositioned Richard’s hands, one beneath Tommy’s back, the other cradling the base of his skull. The same hold Mary had taught him without knowing she was teaching it, through all those nursery doorways and corridor observations.
“Good God, Richard, you are holding him like a sack of potatoes.” Evander moved his brother’s elbow another inch. “Closer to your chest. He needs to feel your heartbeat. Babies settle when they can hear one.”
Mary stared at Evander. He felt her gaze on the side of his face, sharp with surprise, and he realized what he had just done. He had corrected his brother’s hold on a baby with the confident specificity of a man who knew exactly how to hold one.
Six weeks ago, he could not have done this. Six weeks ago, he had stood over a screaming infant in a dark corridor and tried patting a blanket.
