“You’re flexible, Seth. You look at what’s in front of you and find a plan to make it work.”

  He did like plans. She had that much right.

  “So...you seeing anyone?” He returned her question.

  “Absolutely not. A relationship is the last kind of complication I need right now.”

  She said she had to go.

  And as he told her good-night, the knife was back in his gut. Sad that “complication” was what partnership had come to mean to her.

  Though he didn’t necessarily disagree with her assessment.

  Still, the world was filled with happy marriages and successful partnerships. So maybe those were just for some people. A certain kind.

  Maybe neither he nor Annie fit the bill. Maybe they’d been doomed from the start and neither of them had had a chance...

  Beer inspired thought.

  And he was completely, stone-cold sober.

  Chapter Eight

  Annie didn’t speak to Seth again after that Wednesday-night conversation for almost two months. Fall had come and was slowly melding into winter—though, for California, the change wasn’t all that drastic. She’d gained a pound or two, but nothing overtly noticeable yet, and woke every single morning with a rush of excitement, feeling like a new woman. She was no longer a one-person family. She and her baby were joined and had started their lives together. And while she worried sometimes about all that could go wrong, about being a good enough mother, especially since she would be a single parent, she also felt the most incredible sense of peace. She’d done the right thing.

  She’d heard that Seth and Ben Kinder had held a successful one-day basketball tournament at the San Diego Community Center.

  She’d cried when she’d read the family history information he’d sent. Randy’s notes—they’d sounded like the talker he was. The tone rambled a bit, but he always had a valid point. And Seth’s more acerbic but also to-the-point additions had clearly given her every intimate mental and physical health detail they knew.

  Still, that night—well, in the early morning hours—she’d emailed Seth back, confirming that she’d received the document and had been able to open it, and added a thank-you.

  He hadn’t responded. She’d checked her email more often for a few days, waiting to hear from him, but hadn’t. The disappointment had been crushing.

  And then she’d seen the blessing in his stopping whatever it was that had been starting up between them. Had been thankful. Because they had nowhere to go together. Not as two people. They couldn’t be friends...not after all they’d been to each other. Even in the few interactions they’d had recently, it had become clear that they had too much intimate knowledge in a heart sense, knew each other far too well to ever just be friends.

  But she was holding on to hope for them as parents of a third person, as opposed to two people. Holding on maybe more than she should be, with her imaginings of different possible ways Seth could play a role in the baby’s life in the future. Somehow those little scenarios she played out for herself had become her go-to anytime she got scared or worried, anytime she felt a hint of a cramp and feared she might be losing the baby.

  Anytime she started to wonder what she’d do if she didn’t carry the baby to term.

  And every time, those daydreams calmed her enough to gather her resources and go on.

  A couple of weeks after that last conversation, Seth had texted her. Just checking in, he’d said. Wanting to know that everything was good.

  That she was still pregnant, she’d translated.

  She’d told him she’d let him know if things weren’t status quo. Hadn’t he believed her?

  He didn’t trust her. The knowledge became fact to her with a clarity that had her texting him right back.

  Status quo. And I will keep my word to you. I will let you know if anything changes.

  She hadn’t told him she had no morning sickness so far, something that was good news to her, but also had her worried that she wasn’t having a normal pregnancy.

  And she’d spent that night alternating between smiling that her welfare, or that of the baby, mattered to him in the here and now, not just the past, and crying for the here and now and the past they’d lost. Never, in a billion years, would she have figured, when they’d gone with hearts full of hope and determination to create those embryos, that they’d be birthing one separately.

  And yet, what a miracle every moment was that she had her baby growing inside her.

  After that first text, Seth texted every couple of weeks, just to ask if everything was good.

  And she answered back that all was fine.

  She didn’t know what they were doing there. Touching each other while pretending that they weren’t?

  Because it seemed as though they were keeping in touch.

  And with no real purpose attached.

  The one-month check had been quick and done. There’d been a blood test. Other things, too, because with implantation they watched carefully. But during that second-month check, after Dr. Miller examined her, she told Annie she wanted to have an ultrasound done and then they’d meet up in her office.

  Fear took a hold of Annie the second she heard the words. No good could come of “I’m calling for a test right now, to see more clearly what is or isn’t happening inside you, and then we have to talk.”

  “Tell me what’s going on,” she said, maybe a little too much like a police lieutenant used to giving orders than a pregnant patient. She had another ultrasound scheduled, but not for another couple of weeks.

  “I just want to get a look,” Dr. Miller said as she turned with her hand on the doorknob.

  Still sitting on the examining table, the paper sheet wrapped around her lower body, Annie shook her head. “Do you think something’s wrong? Is the baby...”

  Alive?

  She couldn’t ask.

  The doctor dropped her hand from the door, walked over to Annie and squeezed her wrist. “The baby is growing,” she said. “I want to get a look at positioning.”

  Okay. Positioning. She knew, vaguely, what that could mean. Not in detail. Not really. But enough to know that if it was wrong, it could be fixed.

  Positioning, she could deal with. She got dressed to walk down the hall and climb onto another exam table and bare her not-quite-flat belly. As she lay there, feeling the cold gel being smeared across her belly, she could feel the tension building in her. What if something was still wrong? The moment was at hand... They were going to know if there was really a baby growing inside her.

  Would they find a heartbeat?

  And if not, then...

  A vision of Seth’s face came to mind, the way he’d looked when he’d first opened the door to her at the grungy office all those weeks ago. His blue eyes had seemed to devour her. The gaze seemed to pull her into the room toward him. And because she’d had such an important purpose for being there, she’d let herself be reeled in.

  His shoulders had seemed huge to her, filling out the white short-sleeved shirt of his uniform in a way she’d never seen. As though he worked out a lot more than he had when they’d been together—though they’d both done their three hours a week in the gym. And the bars on his chest, the colors were different, and more plentiful. He’d made lieutenant commander. He hadn’t said so, but she’d seen the rank designation.

  And...oh, God...

  “Here we are...” the technician, a young Black woman named Shanice, with a gentle touch and sweet smile, said as she moved the handheld camera device across Annie’s stomach. She pointed with her other hand to a screen right in front of both of them. Annie saw masses of gray shadows. Light and dark. “Here’s the head...”

  She didn’t see a head. She saw waves moving.

  “Here’s the spine...”

  Oh. There. Those shadows that looked like notches? Shanice was measuring and clicking and noting as she worked, while Annie stared at the masses in front of her.

  If there was great cause for alarm in what was on that screen, the technician wouldn’t be calmly measuring, would she?

  Of course, she wouldn’t.

  But...that meant... Annie swallowed back tears. She wasn’t going to be weak.

  A foot was pointed out. Annie latched onto it.

  And thought of Seth. Thinking he’d be interested in deciphering every one of those shadows. In the olden days, that was. He’d have been interested. The two of them, they’d created that foot.

  Her baby had a foot.

  She had a baby.

  The technician clicked, touched a computer screen off to her right, typed.

  The pregnancy...it was real.

  It was real!

  Oh my God! It’s real!

  “And here we go... Let’s see if we can get a heartbeat...”

  She held her breath. From what she’d read, twelve weeks was far enough along...she was only eight...

  And there it was.

  Rapid. But steady. Louder than she’d have thought.

  Tears sprang to her eyes as relief made her weak. She didn’t give a hoot about that, either.

  “Wait,” she said, reaching in her side pants pocket for the tiny, handheld recorder she’d purchased for this purpose and pulled out of her purse as she’d entered the room, she pushed the little button and recorded that blessed heartbeat sound.

  A dream from long ago.

  She and Seth had been so certain about their plans when they’d created those embryos.

  And there she was, more than a decade later, making the dream come true.

  She was finally going to have her baby.

  But she was doing it without him.

  The tears that clouded Annie’s vision weren’t all happy ones.

  * * *

  Seth was just finishing lunch with James and Donovan, two of the other attorneys in his office, when the ringtone sounded. Annie.

  Throwing some money on the table, he excused himself, said he’d make his own way back to base, exited the restaurant—a favorite of naval officers along the pier—and strode along the sidewalk parallel to the ocean until he reached a bench. Sitting, he pulled out his phone.

  If she’d lost the baby, he needed to be able to talk to her in private.

  Turn the volume all the way up.

  She’d sent a video.

  Thumb to the volume button on his phone, he did as she’d instructed and hit Play.

  Then he felt himself starting to shake.

  He couldn’t make out much on what was obviously an ultrasound, something she’d obviously gotten from the tech, but he heard what she’d shared with him loud and clear. The baby’s heartbeat.

  She’d managed to grow a live fetus with a beating heart.

  From their embryos.

  Her child, though.

  The video ended and he hit Play again. And again. Just kept watching. Listening. Elated. And grieving for all that wasn’t to be.

  Unsure what to do with himself. How did you feel such contrasting emotions at the same time? He didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or howl in pain. Just sat there, excited and grieving at the same time. Fired up and burning out.

  He couldn’t put the phone away. Couldn’t get up and resume his life. He had no idea who he was anymore, other than a lieutenant commander and lawyer with the US navy.

  The child he’d helped create with such surety was coming to life. A decade after he’d thought all possibility destroyed.

  He’d helped make that embryo. It couldn’t have happened without him. He’d been vital to the process. And he’d done it because he’d believed that he wanted that child more than anything else on earth. That he wouldn’t be complete without it.

  And there it was, heart beating strong and sure, without him.

  But when he thought about being the man he’d been...he shuddered in a new way. No happiness as an accompaniment. He couldn’t be the guy who hurt those he loved.

  Couldn’t go back when he already knew his shortcomings. He was great at loving when it all was going in such a way that he was comfortable. But the second things got uncomfortable—when they didn’t go as planned and he couldn’t find a way to fix it—he bailed. Emotionally, if not physically.

  He was forty years old. Was beyond the point in his life where he thought sleepless nights with a crying baby would be an adventure.

  And had long ago reinvented his life plan to focus on a career that could require long-term travel with little notice. He wanted to be that guy. Was comfortable with him. More important, he slept well at night in that man’s skin.

  Time passed. He didn’t know how much. At some point he quit hitting Play. Went back to the text message box and typed, Congratulations, but didn’t hit Send. Wasn’t ready to move forward. To take a step in any direction.

  Congratulations was far too distant. Too uninvolved.

  And anything more was too much.

  And yet...he wasn’t just a sperm donor. Everything about him stilled as understanding came to him. He hadn’t donated his biological component; he’d helped create his own child.

  He’d never contemplated donating his sperm for someone unknown to him to use. Or for anyone to use outside of him building his own family. He thought it was great that other guys did that, for such great purpose, but it wasn’t his calling.

  He was a man who felt biological attachment. Responsibility. Hence, the family history packet he’d sent to Annie weeks ago. The guardianship he’d offered to help her set up.

  He was also a man who’d created embryos with the woman he loved for the sole purpose of them raising a family together.

  They’d failed together. They weren’t going to be a family. But he was still going to have a biological child in the world.

  The dichotomy within him wasn’t just going to disappear. Those embryos had been made out of love.

  He’d connected to them as he would to the fetus they eventually brought forth. And the child that came into the world from there.

  That heartbeat came from him, too.

  He’d grieved for those embryos when the marriage ended. When he’d thought they’d been destroyed.

  And now, in the midst of joy for Annie, for the child, there was a completely different kind of grief. The loss of his part in the child’s life.

  He had no role.

  Back at the text, he hit Call instead of Send.

  * * *

  Annie got up from her desk and shut the door of her office when she saw Seth’s call coming through. She’d come straight from the clinic to the office and had been hit with a burglary case the second she’d walked in. By the time she’d sent two detectives out to investigate, an assault call had come in and her third detective was on that. She hadn’t even seen Christa, to tell her about the ultrasound.

  “Hello?” Seth, what’s up? Just wouldn’t come out.

  “Hi.”

  Emotion thickened the space around her.

  His and hers. Always there. Neither of them knowing what to do with it. Or about it.

  It had been that way at the end of their marriage, too. They’d had to get out or suffocate from it.

  “You got the text?” Clearly, he had. He wouldn’t be calling out of the blue. Not with that kind of timing.

  “We did it.” His tone was warm. And odd. She didn’t recognize it. Or know what to make of it. Didn’t know how to proceed.

  Tearing up, she turned away from the window in the wall that also housed her door, making her visible to the office beyond. Turned her back on the view of the office she supervised.

  “Yes.”

  “I...want you to know... I couldn’t be happier, Annie. I...this is good. I’m glad for you.”

  His obvious sincerity, the thickness of his voice, the difficulty with which he’d evidently said the words, swept through her with a swift wave of tingles. Alerting her to what she already knew.

  Seth was deeply affected by the use of the embryos. She hadn’t thought the whole thing through—not where he was concerned. Herself and the baby, having a baby alone, their future—she had all of those covered. In triplicate. But Seth?

  She hadn’t ever let herself think about him. The coping mechanism that had seen her through their divorce, the lonely years afterward while she was making a career for herself all alone without his support, when he’d remarried, when her mother died...the way she got through was to not think about Seth.

  And even if she’d known that Seth’s life would be upended by her use of their embryos...she’d have made the same choice. He’d chosen to leave her rather than try to live with her as she was. Maybe he’d have been proven right. Maybe his fear for her safety would have ended their marriage anyway. But he hadn’t even tried.

  When she’d chosen to go into law enforcement rather than social work, their dream had ended for him. It hadn’t ended for her. She still wanted to raise a family. Those embryos were her only chance to have a child of her own. And it wasn’t as though he’d wanted them for himself.

  So...she’d gotten what she wanted. And now she had to be accountable to the fallout—Seth’s discomfort. She owed him a debt of gratitude. She wanted to do what she could to ease his way, as she forged her own.

  Chapter Nine

  “I’m still struggling to believe it’s real,” Annie told Seth. He’d been hanging silently on the line since his proclamation of joy on her behalf. And then she added that the ultrasound hadn’t been planned, that she’d had one scheduled at thirteen weeks, not eight.

  Figuring out how to include Seth’s emotions on the fly wasn’t easy. But he liked facts. Those things he could grasp. Decipher. Plan around.

  “The test was unplanned? Did the doctor suspect something was wrong?” Leave it to him to home in on the part that had left her feeling most vulnerable. Unsure.