A/N: If you got two alerts about this chapter, it's because I deleted and reposted after some people said they couldn't see it. It might just be a glitch on the website's end.

But baby I've been here before

I've seen this room and I've walked this floor

You know, I used to live alone before I knew you.

~Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah

When we crossed the state line into Ohio around eleven that night, my mother insisted we stop for a meal. I pulled into the parking lot of the only restaurant open, an IHOP, which was surprisingly full for Thanksgiving night.

"Black Friday shoppers," my mother said, seeming to read my mind as we were seated at a table near the back of the restaurant. "These stores get their sales going by dinner on Thanksgiving night. It's ridiculous."

I perused the menu, looking for something that came in under a thousand calories. I wasn't really hungry, but my stomach had been less knotted after speaking to Katie. She had called around nine-thirty as we had traveled through central Pennsylvania to report that Stephanie had come through surgery. Her head trauma, while still serious, hadn't been quite as bad as initially feared. She had a broken left hip, several broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and a lacerated liver. The surgeons reported no complications during surgery, but that she was being placed into a medically-induced coma to allow her brain and body to rest. The neurosurgeon hoped the coma would only be necessary for a couple of days. They couldn't provide any sort of recovery information at the time because there would need to be further brain scans once swelling had gone down to determine if there would be any lingering brain damage. The general surgeon stated that the liver repair had gone well and the liver's natural regenerative properties would take care of the rest over the next few weeks and months. Her spleen had been removed, which she could live without, but it put her at increased risk of infection. Her broken ribs had been treated with something called plating, which the surgeon reported would mean much less time on a ventilator and lowered risk of pneumonia. Katie had spent enough time around doctors to know when they were being cautiously optimistic and when they were just trying to avoid panicked loved ones, and her assessment had been that they were cautiously optimistic about Stephanie's recovery. She had taken Stella home after speaking with the surgeons and had been trying to get her settled for bed. Knowing that imminent danger was past had given me some relief, though I knew there was still chance for complications. And there was plenty of uncertainty as to her mental status.

"I'm sorry about earlier," my mother said after the server took our orders. "I know you did what you felt was best for Julie, and that I have no right to question it. I just hate that we don't get to be a bigger part of her life."

I shrugged. "I know. I wish things could have been different, but nothing good would have come of me trying to be a father to her at that point in my life. I was young and in the Army, and Rachel resented me. The reality is that Ron was the one who insisted I remain in Julie's life to some extent. I think Rachel would have been happy to never see me again."

"That surprises me. You two seem to get along so well," my mother said as the server poured us both coffee and brought waters.

"We do now. But back then she barely tolerated me. I ruined her plans of going off to college and made her a mother instead. I was older, more experienced, and knew better."

A group of women behind us seemed to be drawing up battle plans for the nearby mall. Each had been given a list of items to purchase at certain stores because of limited quantities. I was pretty sure I'd put less thought and planning into missions in enemy territory.

"It's different with Stephanie and Stella," I continued after listening to the women for another minute. "I'm older, in a much less dangerous position in my life, and Stephanie wasn't a one-night stand. We've been in a relationship. I've loved her for years. We've been through a lot." I shook my head and ran fingers through my hair. "I should have married her. I was an idiot for not assuming that she would eventually want that, especially when she broke off an engagement two weeks before the wedding to be with me. I wanted to marry her. I just didn't think I had what it takes. I've seen you and Dad making things work through forty-three years and six kids, and I have no clue how you managed it."

"It hasn't been easy," she replied. "There were plenty of years where we weren't exactly happy. When you kids were little and we both worked so much that we almost never saw each other, it was more like living with a roommate. We blamed each other when Silvia got pregnant and ran away, and then you stole a car and ended up in juvenile detention. We almost got divorced. But we realized that we had been in survival mode and had done the best we could. The only thing we could do moving forward was actually living rather than just surviving."

Stephanie had accused me once of simply surviving and not really living. It had been part of the reason I had caved to the desire to have a relationship with her. I wanted to live something resembling a normal life. I didn't like to admit it, but as confident as I was in just about every other area of life, the one area of insecurity that still plagued me from childhood was the belief that I wasn't good enough for the people I loved. I had overcompensated in my professional life to make up for it and had distanced myself from people in my personal life in an attempt to not feel connected enough to care. But the truth of the matter was that I had never felt good enough for my parents or Julie. Or for Stephanie. And now I was worried about not being good enough for Stella.

"Do you think there's a chance you two might get back together?" my mother asked once we were back in the car after a hasty meal.

"I haven't seen her in nearly four years, and she kept the fact that I had a child from me until now. I'm not sure how I'm feeling right now. Besides, we don't even know what might happen." I felt the contents of my stomach churn. "She may have brain damage. If so, who knows what kind of life she may have."

I suppressed the urge to vomit as I pulled onto I-80 West. My mother laid a hand on my arm.

"You can't think like that, Carlos," she said quietly. "The doctors said things weren't as bad as they initially thought. That's good. She's going to have a long recovery no matter what, but it doesn't sound as though hope is lost."

"She wouldn't want a life that left her dependent on other people," I said after a few minutes. "And I'm going to be even more pissed off than I am now if she can't explain to me why she did this."

My mother didn't say anything else and fell asleep a few minutes later. I was grateful for it, because I wanted time to think without her constant scrutinizing. I was pissed off and terrified. I didn't want to see a Stephanie who was unable to take care of herself. But if that were to be the case, I'd take care of her. I'd bring her and Stella back to Trenton and when I wasn't with them, I'd see to it that someone reliable was. Because no matter how angry I was with her now and how much she had hurt me when she left, she was the mother of my child and I still loved her. Katie hadn't mentioned any boyfriends, but it would be arrogant to assume she wasn't dating anyone. Katie had been instructed to call me specifically because of Stella, not necessarily because of Stephanie. That had been one of the reasons I hadn't looked for her. It had been bad enough to see her with Morelli, but I hadn't actually allowed myself to be in a real relationship with her before that. It would have killed me to find her in love and happy with someone else after what we'd had together. After the way she had made me feel.

I sent Katie a text message once the GPS said we were thirty minutes away. We had crossed the state line into Indiana and had to head south in the city towards Stephanie's. Katie replied within minutes to say she would watch for us. My mother woke up as we pulled into the neighborhood. Stephanie's house was on a dead-end street near the back of the addition. I had recalled seeing a park at the end of her road when I'd checked it out on Google Maps and could see glimpses of playground equipment as my headlights shined down the road. I pulled into the driveway and could see a light on behind closed curtains in the large front window. I had just closed my car door when the front door opened. My mother and I retrieved our luggage from the cargo area and headed to the door.

Katie greeted us and held the door as we came through. She was around my age with blonde hair and blue eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses, wearing a cream sweater and black sweat pants. She was around Stephanie's height, but with a leaner frame. She had probably been a dancer growing up. She was attractive in the same sort of way Stephanie was attractive. Men didn't forget how to talk when she walked into a room, but they would appreciate her as she walked by.

"It's nice to finally meet you," she told me as she closed the front door behind us. "Though I wish it were happening under better circumstances."

A quick glance around the room showed me that a woman and a little girl lived here. There was a brown, overstuffed sofa, a matching loveseat, and a recliner situated around the rectangular living room with dark wooden tables next to each. Hardwood flooring was covered in the center of the room by a large area rug that coordinated with the muted wall colors. A flat-screen television sat on an entertainment center at one end of the room. The walls contained some focal pieces, a large clock, and pictures. A child's table was situated in a corner with two small chairs and boxes of crayons and stacks of coloring books. I could see a dining room and kitchen through a large opening opposite the front door. A hallway leading to the other end of the house extended from the left side of the living room.

A large frame with multiple pictures divided into sections hung over the sofa. I spotted a picture of myself and Stephanie from when we had been in Hawaii together several years ago, pictures of her mother, father, and grandmother, one of Valerie and her kids, and in the middle of the frame was a picture of Stephanie with a little girl that was unmistakably our child. The child Stephanie held had her blue eyes and curly hair in a shade darker than her mother's, but my nose and smile. Her skin tone was somewhere on the spectrum between the two of us. I was probably biased, but she was the most beautiful child I had even seen. I tore my eyes from Stella to look at Stephanie, who was beaming and holding Stella close. She looked the same as she had when she'd left Trenton with the exception of a slightly fuller face and small lines that had started to appear at the corners of her mouth. Neither change detracted from her looks, but in my opinion made her more beautiful.

"I've been trying to keep myself occupied, so I made a bunch of lists for you," Katie said as we all took seats in the living room. I could see a notebook and pen sitting on an end table next to the sofa and several pages that had already been torn out. "Things like Stella's routine, her likes and dislikes, passwords and codes for stuff around the house, important numbers, yada, yada, yada." She picked up a glass of red wine and finished the last dregs. "It has been a hell of a day."

"What exactly happened?" I asked.

"We were going to have Thanksgiving dinner together here around six," Katie began. "I'm a pediatric nurse-practitioner and was on-call today for the whole practice. We have privileges at all three hospitals in the city, so I was going to be spending all day doing rounds. Stephanie was preparing most of the meal, but Stella's daycare had to suddenly shut down this week so she had been busy and had forgotten to pick up a few things. She had called to see if I had everything, but I knew I didn't. There is a convenience store near the hospital that is well-stocked and never closes, so she said she would run up there to grab what she could and then come back to get started on dinner." Katie pulled her legs onto the sofa and wrapped her arms around them. "Apparently there was a man who had been on his way to his daughter's house who had started feeling bad and had called her to say he was going to stop in at the emergency room to get checked out. The police think he had a massive heart attack and slumped at the wheel. He ran a red light and hit Stephanie's car so hard it flipped over. Thank God for car seats. It protected Stella from getting hurt even worse. And the impact was directly on Stephanie's door. They had to use the jaws of life to get her out. The man was dead on arrival." Katie and my mother both made the sign of the cross at mention of the man's death.

"How's Stella doing?" I asked, glancing down the dark hallway that I assumed lead to the bedrooms. I could see two doors on the right side of the hall that were open to rooms and a closed door on the left looked like it was probably a closet, but the hall made sharp left towards the front of the house and my view around the corner was obscured.

"She's okay. She was freaked out when they brought her into the emergency room, but she calmed down a little once I got there. She hates the brace on her arm, and she has to go to an orthopedic center tomorrow to have a cast put on. But she hasn't had any issues from the concussion. She keeps asking where Stephanie is and when she'll come home. I told her that her mom got hurt and the doctors are going to help her, but that we don't know when she'll come home. I don't specialize in head trauma, but I know enough that even if Stephanie is capable of making a full recovery, she is going to be in the hospital and then in-patient rehabilitation for months before she can come home. Then she's going to have months, if not years, of outpatient rehab." Katie shook her head like she couldn't believe it all. "I don't know what to expect."

A gray and white kitten startled my mother when it appeared at her feet meowing. She bent down to pick it up. "Hi, kitty," she said, stroking its head.

"That's Boston, Stella's new kitten," Katie said. "She got her for her birthday last month. He's named after the donut, not the city."

I stifled a laugh. "What day was she born?" I asked.

"October 12, 2015," Katie replied with a smile. "Stephanie's thirty-third birthday. She wasn't happy to be giving birth on her own birthday, but now she enjoys sharing the day with Stella."

I had spent the evening of Stephanie's thirty-third birthday drinking bourbon in my apartment and confessing to Tank just how miserable I was without her. And six-hundred miles away she had been bringing our child into the world.

I watched my mother pet the kitten for a few minutes while Katie refilled her wine and asked if either of us wanted a glass. My mother declined, but I accepted one. I was going to need some sleep soon anyway.

"How long have you known Stephanie?" I asked after taking a drink. It was a cheap red wine that was a little too sweet for my taste, but I didn't particularly care.

"Since she got here. She hadn't intended to stay in Fort Wayne, but she had been really sick and ended up in the ER at Lutheran because she was dehydrated. I was her nurse and when she learned she was pregnant, she fell apart. I was telling her that it would be okay and she'd figure it out. That's when she told me about you two breaking up the week before, about her ending her engagement to that Joe guy to be with you, and how she was trying to figure out where to go next because she hadn't spoken to her family in nearly a year since she ended her engagement. She had thought about heading to Chicago to see if she liked it, but had stopped here because she thought she had food poisoning. There was a huge snow storm coming in, so after she was released I invited her back to my house until everything cleared up enough for her to leave town. She was there a couple of days and we got to know each other better. I really liked her, and told her she should consider staying. There was a job opening at the hospital for a quality assurance specialist, and she had just been telling me about her time as a bounty hunter and all the trips to hospital she had taken. I figured if anyone knew what a hospital needed and could help manage disgruntled people, it would be her. She thought about it and decided to apply for the job. She said she would take it as a sign that she should stay if she got it. Otherwise, she was headed to Chicago." Katie took a long drink of wine before continuing. "She was freaked out about being pregnant. She'd considered going back to Trenton, but decided against it. She said you hadn't wanted to marry her and if you didn't want her, you really wouldn't want her and a baby. She considered an abortion for about thirty seconds, but even though she isn't really Catholic anymore she didn't feel like she could go through with it. She considered adoption for about a minute, but felt like she couldn't go through with that either, plus she figured if you found out that she had given a baby of yours up for adoption that you'd kill her."

"So she thought the best idea was to never tell me that I had a child?" I asked, my irritation coming out more obviously than I had intended.

Katie rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Ugh. That has been a rollercoaster of its own. When she was pregnant she assumed you'd find her and then she would have to tell you. When you didn't show up after a while, she decided it was because you didn't care. She told me that you have a daughter in Florida and that you aren't very involved in her life. Steph said she knew you'd pay child support and visit sometimes if she told you about the baby, the same way you did with your other daughter, but she didn't think that was any way for a child to grow up and figured things were better without you."

There was an extended silence after that while we all took that information in. Damn. I'd had no idea she felt that way about the situation with Julie. She had never indicated any sort of disapproval or approval. I had assumed she didn't care very much. I avoided looking in my mother's direction.

"But she almost called you the day Stella was born," Katie continued, in an obvious effort to eliminate the awkward silence. "She was talking about how much she looked like you and thought maybe it would be different because your life and your relationship with her was much different from when you had your other daughter. But she never did. After a while, I think she gave up hope that you'd ever show up. Every few months she would talk about calling you, but then make excuses about it. It was always obvious to me that the issue wasn't your involvement with Stella, but your involvement with Steph. She was still in love with you, and I think she was always afraid of what would happen if she had to be around you. Last year she finally seemed to accept that what I had been telling her was true. She said that she would call once she felt like she was over you. I thought it was bullshit, but it was her choice." Katie took another long drink from her glass.

"That seemed to make things worse," she continued. "She was constantly trying to figure out if she was over you yet. I had enough of it last month and told her that I didn't want to hear anything else about you again until she was telling me you were on the way here because what she was doing was selfish and just hurting Stella in the end. We didn't talk for a couple of weeks, but when I saw her again on Halloween, she told me that she had made the decision to call you after Christmas because I was right. It shouldn't matter if she was over you or not because Stella needed to know you. Stella had reached a point recently where she kept asking when you would be done working. That's what Stephanie has always told her– that you were busy working and that's why you weren't around. Steph wanted to get through the holidays because she didn't know how things might be once you knew about Stella, and she said you always work a lot during the holidays to give your employees with family time off. She told me that if I saw her backing down that I was free to tie her to a chair, dial your number, and force her to talk to you."

I wasn't sure how to feel about what Katie was telling me. While I was glad that Stephanie had intended to call me soon, I was somehow more furious than I had been. Maybe it was just the anxiety of her current condition, but I wanted to punch things. I wanted to go up to the hospital to shake her until she woke up, to yell at her for depriving me of a relationship with our daughter for the first three years of her life. For robbing me of the opportunity to be present at her birth and missing her first steps and words. I had missed all of those things with Julie because I was on the other side of the world when those things happened and by the time I was back in the same country, she was calling someone else Daddy. What also bothered me was how little faith Stephanie appeared to have in my feelings for her. Had she forgotten everything that had gone down in the time we had known each other? I had lost track of how many times I had risked my life for hers and how much money and man power had been put into keeping her safe. I had killed several people while attempting to find or protect her. I had lost several employees because they got tired of getting hurt around her.

My mother was wide awake after sleeping during the ride, so she stayed awake to go over the lists Katie made while I went down the hall to the second room on the right, which was Stephanie's bedroom. I could see a door around the bend in the hallway with a blue sign with cartoon characters on it and the name Stella written in purple. The door was closed. A decent-sized bathroom was next to her bedroom at the front of the house. I used the bathroom and went into Stephanie's bedroom to sleep. She had a queen-sized bed, dresser, night stand, rocking chair, and smaller television on a table in the room. I changed out of the clothes I'd been wearing for almost twenty-four hours and into a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. I contemplated looking through Stephanie's night stand and dresser, but emotion, exhaustion, and the glass of cheap wine on an empty stomach pulled me towards her bed. I asleep in less than a minute.

I was dreaming about Stephanie. We were in my apartment at Rangeman, drinking that cheap wine Katie had served. I was teasing her about it. She had hit me in the chest, but the pressure of the hit had lingered. It didn't hurt, but felt like something pressing on me. I was about to ask Stephanie what she had done when I felt something tickle my nose. I opened my eyes to find small blue eyes an inch from my own.

"Hi Daddy," Stella said cheerfully. She leaned back and I realized the pressure on my chest had been from her sitting on me. She was dressed in purple and white pajamas with several little dogs on the front. It looked like some of the same dogs that had been on the sign on her door. She had a bruise on the left side of her forehead and on her right cheekbone. Her curly hair was a mess.

"Hey," I replied. I felt almost speechless, being face-to-face with her for the first time. Her resemblance to Stephanie made my throat tighten briefly. "How are you?"

"My arm got broke," she said, lifting her left arm to reveal a tiny air cast. It was covered with a sleeve that was likely there to prevent her from removing it. "The car went upside-down."

I put a finger on the cast. "I heard. Does it hurt?"

Stella's bottom lip stuck out ever so slightly and her blue eyes went wide as she nodded her head. I fought the urge to smile. She looked like she might be a champion pouter. She seemed tiny for three-years-old, but I didn't have a good frame of reference.

"Abuela made pancakes," she told me. "I like them." She climbed off of my chest to stand on the bed. "Dora says Abuela too."

"Who's Dora?"

"Dora on TV," Stella replied, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Oh yeah. A little girl who speaks Spanish and English. Has a pet monkey? My nieces and nephews had liked it.

"Where's Mommy?" Stella asked as I tried to remember stuff about Dora the Explorer. We'd been talking for less than a minute and the topics had varied from her broken arm to pancakes to Dora and now to Stephanie. She certainly kept you on your toes.

"Mommy's at the hospital,' I said. "She got hurt when the car went upside-down and the doctors are trying to make her better. But I'm going to be here with you until she can come home."

"You all done working?" she asked. It took me a minute to both decipher her speech and to remember that Katie had said this was the explanation Stephanie had given for my absence.

"Um, yeah. I'm all done working." I sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at the clock on my phone. It was eight-thirty. I had two missed calls, one from Valerie and one from Helen. Both had left voicemails. I had managed about three-and-a-half hours of sleep. It was enough, especially since I could tell Stella wasn't going to leave me alone. She started jumping up and down on the bed and talking about something I couldn't understand. I grabbed her and lifted her off the bed. "You have a broken arm and a concussion. Let's not jump on the bed."

She wrapped her arms and legs around me, indicating that I should carry her. We went into the kitchen, where my mother was cleaning up from breakfast.

"Sit down and I'll get you a plate," she said as I put Stella on the floor. I took a seat at the dining room table and Stella sat in a chair next to mine, which had a small seat in it to make her taller.

"I want a banana," Stella told my mother.

"You don't have any bananas," my mother replied as she put pancakes in the microwave to warm.

"But I want one," Stella whined.

"You'll have to choose something else until we can go to the grocery store," my mother replied patiently. I didn't remember her being that patient with me as a kid when I had whined like that. She would have told me that stop whining or I wouldn't get anything to eat.

Stella looked as though she was considering a tantrum, but decided against it. "Grapes." She watched on as my mother pulled a bag of red grapes from the refrigerator. "Where's Katie?"

"She went home for a while," my mother replied. "She was up all night taking care of you before Daddy and I got here, so she went home to get some sleep."

Stella jumped out of her seat and ran to the living room. She climbed onto the couch and pulled the curtains back. "I see her house."

"She lives three houses down on the opposite side of the road," my mother explained as she put pancakes and fruit in front of me. She knew better than to bother with syrup. "Stella's appointment with the orthopedic center is at one-thirty. She'll be here at twelve forty-five to pick her up. She wasn't sure if you'd want to go or if Stephanie's family might be here by then."

I nodded and checked the voicemails on my phone while I ate. Valerie reported that she had managed to get ahold of her parents and had given them my phone number. Her father was going to drive to Indiana from Florida because he hated flying, and her mother was working getting a flight out of Jamaica. Helen's voicemail said she and her boyfriend Paul had managed to get a flight into the Indianapolis airport that would arrive around noon. They would rent a car and drive to Fort Wayne. She said she had called the hospital for an update on Stephanie and had been told she was still critical, but stable. Helen's plane would already be in the air, so I didn't bother calling her back. I assumed she would call once they were on their way. Stella had come back to the table for her grapes and a glass of milk. The lists Katie had made were spread out on the table, so I picked them up and read them as I finished eating. Katie was Stella's primary medical practitioner, though a pediatrician was also listed. She was lactose intolerant, so she could only have lactose-free dairy. She hated peaches, small dogs, her food touching each other, and any toothpaste other than the specific My Little Pony child's toothpaste that tasted like berries. She loved Dora, Paw Patrol, big dogs, cats, coloring, Play-Doh, going to the park, the zoo, playing dress up, and listening to music.

While my mother helped Stella pick out clothes and get dressed for the day, I opened my laptop and read through the background check Tank had done on Stephanie since leaving Trenton. She had been employed at Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne since March 1, 2015. Her current salary was around $53,000 a year, and she had been earning a raise every year since she started. She had resided at her current address since July 2015. Katie's address was listed as her address prior to that. She rented from people named Dennis and Charlotte Johnson, which Tank had noted were Katie's parents. She had a little money saved, had a couple of credit cards with balances, and was three years into a five-year loan on the 2015 Honda Accord that had been totaled in the accident. Gap insurance was in place to take care of the loan now that the car was destroyed. Three years with the same car was probably a record for her. She hadn't been involved in the legal system, either criminally or civilly. She had an Indiana driver's license. She had voted in the last two elections. Her spending history showed she went to the local minor league hockey games in the winter and the minor league baseball games the rest of the year. She paid for Stella to go to daycare at a facility near the hospital, though Tank had made a note that the facility had recently been shut down due to financial difficulties. Medical records showed both Stephanie and Stella were healthy. Stephanie's pregnancy and delivery had been without complication. Stella had been born at 10:30 AM, had weighed only seven pounds and one ounce and had been nineteen inches long, despite being born three days past Stephanie's due date.

She had been affected with chronic ear infections as an infant and had been put on medication due to something called Eustachian tube malfunction, which had been successful to avoid surgical intervention. She was considered to be at the small end of the height-weight spectrum for her age, but it wasn't of concern.

Katie had located the password to Stephanie's computer, so I went through it to see what I could figure out about her life in the last three years that wouldn't show up on a background check. No signs of a boyfriend. Her browser history showed some visits to dating websites, but nothing in the past several months. No emails between her and other men in any sort of romantic sense. The iMessage app on her computer was linked to her phone. There were a few text messages with men, but everything seemed platonic or professional. The only text thread I found that showed she had been seeing anyone had been from a few months earlier. Someone named Tyler had been texting with her for a while. It was clear they had gone out quite a few times over the course of about three months, but one of Stephanie's last messages to him explained everything.

I'm sorry. You're a great guy, but I'm not over my ex and it isn't fair for me to try to force something to be there between us that isn't. You don't deserve that.

He had texted a few more times, asking her to not give up yet. She had apologized again, and eventually quit responding to him. He had given up after a couple of days and there hadn't been any further contact. If there had been other men, they hadn't had iPhones and therefore their messages weren't visible on the computer. But considering she was telling someone back in June that she wasn't over me, I doubted there had been anyone else.

A search of her bedroom showed me the life of a busy single mother. Her non-work clothes were practical and comfortable and her professional attire was attractive, but inexpensive. She wasn't neglecting herself, but was prioritizing her spending. Her night stand contained pens, notebooks, two flashlights, chap stick, batteries of varying size and brands, and a long black box that held a pink vibrator and her favorite lube. No condoms. She was taking care of herself. There had also been a picture of me in the drawer. She had taken it one night after a particularly satisfying round of sex. I was lying on my back, the sheet on the bed barely covering my hips. She'd said it was sexy, like something you'd see in a magazine. I had been laughing when she had taken the picture.

I heard my cell phone ringing in the other room as I replaced everything in the night stand. Stella had reached my phone first and swiped to answer before I could get there.

"Hello?" she said cheerfully. I grabbed the phone and checked the displayed. It was Helen Plum's cell phone.

"Carlos, this is Helen. Was that Stella?"

"Yeah. I assumed you're in Indianapolis?"

I could hear commotion in the background. "Yes, we landed about thirty minutes ago and I'm waiting on our luggage while Paul goes to get our rental car. It was nearly impossible to get something because of the holiday."

"Stella has to go to the doctor in a while to get a cast put on her arm, but I can send her with Stephanie's friend Katie and meet you at the hospital. Have you talked to Frank? I'm not sure when he's supposed to get in."

"I haven't spoken to Frank since our divorce was finalized," Helen said, something between defiance and embarrassment coming through in her voice. "I didn't know he was coming. Is he bringing that child he calls a girlfriend?"

"I think so. Valerie said they in her message about him driving up from Florida," I told her, hoping that I wasn't going to be responsible for keeping them separated. I had enough on my plate.

Helen made a disgusted noise. "I'll just have to tolerate it. We're there for Stephanie. Any updates on her condition?"

"Katie texted earlier to say she is stable, but still considered critical. They aren't going to lift her critical status until they take her out of the coma."

"Okay. Well, you have my number. Call me if something changes. I've told Paul I want to go straight to the hospital. I'll let you know when we're close. Paul said the GPS showed the drive was a little over two hours. We've managed to get a hotel room not far from there. I told the hotel clerk what was happening and they gave us a discount on a premium room that had opened up."

We disconnected and I sat on the sofa with Stella while she told me about all of the dogs on Paw Patrol. I did my best to keep up between her mispronunciations and rambling. She had climbed up in my lap with a book that showed each dog and what their job was. She told me her favorite was one named Chase, who was a police dog, and that Stephanie's favorite was a girl dog name Skye, who flew around in a helicopter. Katie picked Stella up at twelve forty-five to go to the doctor. She'd had a tantrum when Katie said they had to go to the doctor, but Katie had been unfazed as she wrangled Stella into her coat, put a hat on her head, and carried her out to the car while she cried.

My mother was in the dining room making what looked like a grocery list.

"I was thinking of a grocery run, but I wasn't sure if you were going to need the car," she said.

I tossed her the key. "Go ahead. Stephanie's mother won't be here for another couple of hours. I'm going to take a shower and catch up on work until I hear from her."

I grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and drank part of it while my mother continued to add to her list. Her hair had only started to gray in the last few years, and there was surprisingly little considering what Silvia and I had put her through over the years. She had changed clothes at some point since we had gotten to Stephanie's and had put on make-up and done her hair. She was unflappable when it came to a crisis, but she refused to let strangers see her without make-up. The fact that she hadn't been touching up her lipstick and mascara in the car before we met Katie had been almost unheard of.

I watched as my mother drove away towards a nearby grocery and took in the neighborhood a few minutes later. It wasn't much different from what I had seen on Google Earth. I needed to face the reality that I likely wasn't going to be leaving this neighborhood anytime soon. Like Katie had said the day before, Stephanie was facing a long recovery and it would likely be months before she was home. I would call Tank after my shower. We needed to do some restructuring at Rangeman.

A/N: The bad grammar and missing words in Stella's lines are not oversights, but intentional as to convey how a 3-year-old might speak.