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СКАЧАТЬ tightened. Mairi had probably been afraid she’d be disappointed in her, as her letter seemed to say. Fiona had been so strident about neither one of them ending up like their mother. “I didn’t know about Stella.”

      Marc’s eyes narrowed. “Over nine months’ time, I think I would have noticed if any of my sisters were pregnant.”

      “Marc,” Pastor Connor cautioned.

      “During Mairi’s pregnancy, I was in Guam managing the USDA farm there.” She pinned Marc with a gaze. “You know that from my professional profile I gave you. Mairi and I talked and emailed, but after she drove me to the airport for my flight to Tamuning...” She closed her eyes. This time, she couldn’t swallow the emotion that clogged her throat. “I never saw her alive again.”

      A warm male hand covered hers, and her eyes flew open to Pastor Connor pushing away from the desk. It was Marc’s hand, giving her hope that despite his antagonism, they could work something out.

      “I’ll get you some water,” Pastor Connor said. He left the office.

      Marc’s hand tightened on hers. “I’m sorry I was so rude. Are you okay?”

      “I’m fine.” Fiona allowed herself to take comfort from his strength and wonder what it would be like to have a man like Marc care for her.

      He removed his hand from hers. “I can’t imagine how I’d handle it if it had been one of my siblings. That’s when you came back to the US?”

      “I came back for a couple weeks when the authorities contacted me, and then finished my contract in Guam.” She didn’t need to tell him now that her sister had used a false name to rent the cabin, nor how long Mairi had lain in the morgue as a Jane Doe until she could be identified from her fingerprints on record for her nursing license, and while Fiona was located.

      “Where do we go from here?” she asked.

      “We get together again to work out details.” He sounded as drained as she was.

      “I’m willing to work with your lawyer, to put together something official.”

      “No, I was thinking along the lines of telling the rest of the family, introducing you to them and Stella. You haven’t really met her, except the other day at the doctor’s office. We’re going to have to handle Stella’s getting to know you carefully.” He dropped his gaze to his hands on the desk. “Since Cate, my wife, died, Stella has verged on being hostile toward women with light-colored hair, who remind her of her mother.”

      Had Marc emphasized mother, or had that been her nerves triggering her imagination? On Friday, Stella had clung to Marc and hidden behind his leg, but she hadn’t been hostile. Or was that Fiona’s longing coloring her perception?

      Pastor Connor placed a cup of water in front of her. “You two can work out meeting the family and whatever other details you think are necessary. But I have a recommendation to help Stella adjust.”

      Hope rose in Fiona.

      Pastor Connor met her gaze, then Marc’s. “It’s what I’d do if she were mine.”

      * * *

      Marc folded the last of the clothes from the dryer and walked into the living room to wake Stella from her nap. He and Stella and Fiona were all going to go to the introductory meeting of his sister Renee’s new toddlers Bridges group tomorrow morning. As far as he could tell from his sister’s enthusiastic description and the literature she’d given him, Bridges was a program for broken families.

      He sighed. He guessed that’s what he and Stella were, and he was feeling it more since Fiona had dropped her bombshell.

      Marc ran his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t had any other choice but to agree to have Stella participate in the group, not after the way Fiona’s face had lit up when Connor had couched his recommendation for Stella in such a personal way. And he’d given into Connor’s other suggestion that he and Fiona try the Bridges groups for parents that Renee’s supervisor at the Christian Action Coalition was starting. For Fiona. He’d been there, done that already with grief counseling.

      Agreeing had given him some breathing room, time to investigate Fiona as much as he could. Before they’d left Connor’s office, he and Fiona had agreed to put off getting together until after the Bridges meeting. Tonight he was taking his mom and dad out for a Friday fish fry to update them.

      Looking down at his daughter’s sleeping face, her long red-brown lashes resting on her plump baby cheeks, he hated to disturb her. Were Fiona’s lashes red-brown, too? He couldn’t recall.

      “Stella, sweetpea.” Marc touched her shoulder and she blinked her eyes open. Eyes that were the same golden hazel as Fiona’s. “Time to wake and go to Aunt Natalie and Uncle Connor’s house to play with Luc.”

      Stella sat up. “Luc? Luc at school. Stella go to school?”

      He took her wanting to go back to preschool after spending the morning there as a positive sign. While Stella hadn’t resisted going, she hadn’t talked much about school, either, even when he’d prompted her. So he didn’t know whether she liked playing with the other kids or how she’d react to going to Renee’s group.

      “No, not school. Aunt Natalie and Uncle Connor’s to play with Luc,” Marc repeated. “Remember? I told you when I picked you up at school? Daddy has a meeting.”

      Stella nodded and climbed off the couch. “Burgers and ice cream.”

      He laughed. “Yes, you guys are going out for hamburgers. I didn’t know about the ice cream.”

      His daughter nodded emphatically. “Ice cream. Stella’s ready.”

      Looking at her bedhead mop of curls, Marc laughed with love and wonder that God had given him such a treasure, a treasure he wanted to feel secure enough about that he could share her with Fiona.

      “Let me brush your hair first.”

      “’Rette?” Stella asked.

      “Sure. I can put a barrette in it.”

      He got her ready and over to the parsonage with plenty of time to spare to drive to the restaurant in Schroon Lake where he was meeting his parents.

      “Give Daddy kisses.”

      Stella bussed his cheek, and he rubbed noses with her before he placed her down in the parsonage kitchen.

      “You be a good girl for Aunt Natalie.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. Stella had never stayed with Nat before, but she obviously liked her cousin Luc, and the restaurant where he was meeting his parents wasn’t far from the parsonage or the Paradox Lake General Store, where Natalie and Connor were taking the kids.

      “Stella good girl. Big girl.” She stood tall as if trying to match the height of her slightly younger, but taller cousin.

      “All right, then. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

      “Daddy come back.”

      Was that a quaver in her voice? No, she seemed okay.

      “We’ll СКАЧАТЬ