Released (Caged #3)(60)

“Yes,” we replied in unison.

The nurse chuckled, moved the magic wand around Tria’s stomach again, and then proclaimed we were going to have a daughter. I had no idea how she could figure that shit out—I couldn’t tell the head from the foot.

“Fuck me,” I muttered. “She was right!”

“I thought she would be,” Tria said. “She was just too confident about it.”

“She was once confident that the wino across the street was Hitler,” I informed Tria. “I wasn’t about to take her word for that, either, though the dude did have one of those f*cked up mustaches.”

Tria giggled, and the nurse printed off a few pictures of the baby.

“What are we going to name her?” Tria asked as we climbed into the back of the Rolls. She hadn’t stopped staring at the picture, and I had to hold her hand so she wouldn’t trip over anything.

“I have no f*cking idea,” I said.

“Me either.”

“Something will come to us,” I assured her.

Tria realized she had been impolite, and quickly shifted toward the driver’s seat and showed Damon the pictures.

“It’s amazing what they can do these days,” he said.

“Do you have children?” Tria asked.

“I have a grown daughter,” he told her. “She used to babysit Liam when he was young. She has two children of her own now. I remember when she came home with similar pictures.”

“I think she looks like you,” Tria said as she held the image up to the window.

“You are so full of shit,” I said.

“I mean it,” Tria insisted. “She has your bone structure.”

I rolled my eyes, smiled, and pulled my wife close to me as Damon drove away.

Though I couldn’t really tell what I was looking at in the grainy black and white images, I couldn’t help but glance at them over and over again as we drove across the city. At one point, I reached over and wiped a tear from the corner of Tria’s eye.

“She’s going to be beautiful,” Tria whispered.

I was never one to argue with a woman, and I wasn’t going to start now.





Chapter 15—Change the Scenery


“There are two bedrooms, a bathroom with a tub and shower, and an eat-in kitchen.”

The landlord of the small rental house just five blocks from campus was thrilled to death a family was looking to move in instead of a group of students, who were a lot more likely to trash the place. It was just a small house in a row of other small houses, painted light yellow with brown shutters. There was a nice-sized porch with a swing, which Tria beamed at before we even walked inside.

“The second bedroom is right next to the master bedroom, so it will be perfect for your impending arrival.” She turned and smiled broadly at Tria, who instinctively covered her protruding stomach.

It wasn’t huge yet, but as little as Tria was, it was quite obvious at five months pregnant, Tria was having a baby. I tried to hide the fact that I was counting the days before she was further along than Aimee had been when she lost Matthew.

It was strange how knowing his name—even if it was the name Aimee’s mother had graced him with—made thinking about him a lot easier. Erin said it was because I had a name for the mourning, but I thought it was more about separating him from the baby Tria was having.

A girl.

That helped, too.

The place was perfect; I had to agree. For me, there were two major perfection points—it was big enough and fit the budget. Tria liked that there was a tiny, fenced-in back yard where she could take the baby outside to play.

We moved in four days later.

“I think I was getting used to having a car when we needed it,” Tria said as we lugged groceries up the steps of the porch. She carried the light bulky stuff—the bread and toilet paper. I wouldn’t let her carry any of the heavy stuff, and she refused to let me do it all by myself.

“I’m sure Damon will drive you around whenever you want,” I reminded her.

“I think Michael might actually enjoy having his driver back,” Tria said.

“He and Chelsea both really liked having you in the house,” I said, “driver be damned.”

“What would you think about having them over for dinner?” Tria asked. “It would be a good start to the hundreds of years of repayment I owe them both.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I shoved canned food into one of the cabinets. I put all our stuff away as Tria pulled out a couple bags for Krazy Katie. “Did you want to go over and see her this afternoon?”

“Probably,” Tria said. “We haven’t been there in two weeks.”

“We left her a month’s worth of stuff last time,” I said.

“True,” Tria agreed, “but I feel bad about not seeing her. She has to be lonely without her smoking buddy on the fire escape.”

We hauled two bags of supplies back outside and to the bus stop. It took a little over an hour, but we eventually made it to our old apartment building in the shit part of town.

Maybe it was just because I hadn’t been there for a while, but the place looked even worse than I remembered. There was trash f*cking everywhere and three hookers hanging out a block away in broad daylight. I glanced up to the fire escape, but Krazy Katie wasn’t outside.