“All the more reason to tell me!”
“You would have left the conference early!”
“Yes!” I insisted. “Because you’re in thehospital!”
“All you’re doing is validating my decision to wait until you got home.”
I turned to Harper, who was typing on a laptop in a nearby chair. “I’m just as angry at you.”
“No matter what I did, I was going to piss off one of you,” he replied. “I’ll choose to placate my extremely pregnant wife every time.”
He made a good point, but I didn’t want to admit it. I still felt like I had been left out of the loop.
“Do you know who’s watching Bran right now?” I asked.
Sara frowned. “Jordan should be. Right?”
I shook my head. “Lucas is with him. He picked me up from the airport.”
Sara’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know that!”
We both turned to Harper.
“Jordan said he would rope in Lucas if he needed additional help,” he explained.
Sara gasped. “Why would you allow that?”
Harper put down his laptop. “Whywouldn’tI? You said you’ve been on good terms with Lucas, Haley. Did something happen?”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, giving Sara a pointed look. It wasn’t his fault for not knowing that Lucas was Bran’s biological father. And this wasn’t exactly the right time to reveal that information to him.
“More importantly, let’s talk about why you’re in here,” I said.
Sara rolled her eyes. “Because everyone is overreacting. I had some more shooting pains yesterday, just like when I had Round Ligament Pain. Except it didn’t go away. I’m feeling better now, yet they’re insisting on holding me hostage until tomorrow morning.” She shot a glare in her husband’s direction.
“My wife was in crippling pain, so I drove her to the hospital against her will,” Harper said dryly. “You’d think I’m Bin Laden the way Sara has been talking about me for the past twenty-four hours.”
“I didn’t say you were Bin Laden,” Sara said. Then, under her breath, she added, “You’re more like Ted Bundy.”
“Love you too, babe.”
I spent a little while keeping Sara company, telling her about my trip to Vegas and all the things I had learned. Then I said goodbye and drove home so I could catch the end of Bran’s baseball practice. Unfortunately, there was a wreck on the way home causing traffic.
“It’s basically a parking lot on the bridge,” I said over the phone to Lucas. “I hate to ask anything else of you, but can you watch him after practice?”
“I don’t mind at all,” he replied.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m actually thrilled you asked me instead of Jordan,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m going to gloat about this later.”
Once again, I was struck by howcomfortablethis all felt. Like I wasn’t a single mother anymore. I had other people in my life besides Sara helping me.
It was nice.
When I got home, I parked on the street behind Lucas’s car. I walked around back and went up to my apartment, quietly opening the door and shutting it behind me.
I gave a start. My apartment had been cleaned while I was gone—all the toys and coloring books were put away, and the kitchen was spotless. One of my cook pots had been used and cleaned too; there was an empty box of Kraft Mac & Cheese in the recycling bin.