Lilian Darcy - Raising Baby Jane

An outwardly healthy, capable, in-control woman like this should at least like her own sister’s child, he considered. No one was asking her to adopt the kid! What was her problem?

Fortunately, Allie hadn’t noticed his look of disapproval. She was over at the window, staring out at the gathering darkness, and she didn’t seem to notice his curiosity, either. How long was she going to stand there like that?

Minutes, apparently.

Jane was on her tummy on a receiving blanket spread out on the floor at a safe distance from the fire. The central heating had warmed the place up fast, as had the roaring fire in the fireplace. Jane was cooing at the leaping brightness and banging a toy. Needs fully taken care of, but utterly ignored. Allie just kept staring out the window. For some reason it seemed incredibly sad.

Instinctively, he went up to her, needing to understand her. He liked Karen a lot. She was warm, enthusiastic, full of energy and optimism…except when panicking about a jammed camera. Why was her sister so different and difficult?

He’d almost reached Allie when she turned from the window at last. “Those clouds are coming over pretty fast. Is it going to snow?”

“It’s starting to look like it,” he agreed. “I warned Karen about the forecast, but even half an hour ago it looked like it’d probably hold off, and she was desperate about that camera.”

“She’ll make it back, though, won’t she? They won’t close the roads. She guaranteed me she’d make it back tonight!”

The appeal and fear in her face hit him like an electric shock. “Then she’ll do her best, I guess,” was all he could say. It sounded lame in the face of her need.

Something about this situation had her completely terrified. Was it him? He didn’t think so, but there was something. Karen’s appeal to him to “look after” her suddenly made a whole lot more sense. Karen had known Allie would feel this way. How? Why?

And why did he have such a clear, powerful intuition that the answers were going to matter to him?

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