Blue Dahlia

she’s more substantial.”
    With a chuckle, Hayley slipped Lily out of her carrier. “Big guy like you shouldn’t be afraid of a tiny baby. Here. Now, make sure you support her head.”
    “Got long legs for such a little thing.” And they kicked a bit in transfer. “She’s picture pretty. Got a lot of you in her.”
    “I can hardly believe she’s mine.” Hayley fussed with Lily’s cotton hat, then made herself stop touching. “Can I open the present now?”
    “Sure. She all right in the sun like this?”
    “We’re baking the baby,” Hayley told him as she tugged at the shiny pink ribbon on the box Logan had set on the patio table.
    “Sorry?”
    “She’s got a touch of jaundice. The sun’s good for her. Stella said Luke had it too, and they took him out in the sunshine for a little while a few times a day.” She went to work on the wrapping paper. “Seems like she and Roz know everything there is to know about babies. I can ask the silliest question and one of them knows the answer. We’re blessed, Lily and I.”
    Three women, one baby. Logan imagined Lily barely got out a burp before one of them was rushing to pick her up.
    “Logan, do you think things happen because they’re meant to, or because you make them happen?”
    “I guess I think you make them happen because they’re meant to.”
    “I’ve been thinking. There’s a lot of thinking time when you’re up two or three times in the middle of the night. I just wanted—needed—to get gone when I left Little Rock, and I headed here because I hoped Roz might give me a job. I could just as well have headed to Alabama. I’ve got closer kin there—blood kin—than Roz. But I came here, and I think I was meant to. I think Lily was supposed to be born here, and have Roz and Stella in her life.”
    “We’d all be missing out on something if you’d pointed your car in another direction.”
    “This feels like family. I’ve missed that since my daddy died. I want Lily to have family. I think—I know—we’d have been all right on our own. But I don’t want things to just be all right for her. All right doesn’t cut it anymore.”
    “Kids change everything.”
    Her smile bloomed. “They do. I’m not the same person I was a year ago, or even a week ago. I’m a mother.” She pulled off the rest of the wrapping and let out a sound Logan thought of as distinctly female.
    “Oh, what a sweet baby-doll! And it’s so soft.” She took it out of the box to cradle it much as Logan was cradling Lily.
    “Bigger than she is.”
    “Not for long. Oh, she’s so pink and pretty, and look at her little hat!”
    “You pull the hat, and it makes music.”
    “Really?” Delighted, Hayley pulled the peaked pink hat, and “The Cradle Song” tinkled out. “It’s perfect.” She popped up to give Logan a kiss. “Lily’s going to love her. Thank you, Logan.”
    “I figured a girl can’t have too many dolls.”
    He glanced over as the patio door slammed open. Parker scrambled out a foot ahead of two shouting, racing boys.
    They’d been this small once, he realized with a jolt. Small enough to curl in the crook of an arm, as helpless as, well, a fish out of water.
    They ran to Logan as Parker sped in circles of delirious freedom.
    “We saw your truck,” Gavin announced. “Are we going to go work with you?”
    “I knocked off for the day.” Both faces fell, comically, and the buzz of pleasure it gave him had him adjusting his weekend plans. “But I’ve got to build me an arbor tomorrow, out in my yard. I could use a couple of Saturday slaves.”
    “We can be slaves.” Luke tugged on Logan’s pant leg. “I know what an arbor is, too. It’s a thing stuff grows on.”
    “There you go, then, I’ve got a couple of expert slaves. We’ll see what your mama says.”
    “She won’t mind. She has to work ’cause Hayley’s on turnkey.”
    “Maternity,” Hayley explained.
    “Got that.”
    “Can I see her?” Luke gave another tug.
    “Sure.” Logan crouched down with the baby in his arms. “She sure is tiny, isn’t she?”
    “She doesn’t do anything yet.” Gavin frowned thoughtfully as he tapped a gentle finger on Lily’s cheek. “She cries and sleeps.”
    Luke leaned close to Logan’s ear. “Hayley feeds her,” he said in a conspirator’s whisper, “with milk out of her booby .”
    With an admirably straight face, Logan nodded. “I think I heard about that somewhere. It’s a little hard to believe.”
    “It’s