Dreaming of the Bones

spilled out onto his face and hands.
    ”Gemma? May I come in?”
    She pulled the door back farther and he saw she’d changed into old jeans and a sweater. As he stepped into the tiny flat he saw the picture books spread over the bed, and a boy-shaped lump under the duvet. ”Is it too late?”
    ”We were just reading,” said Gemma, giving an exaggerated nod towards the bed. ”But Toby seems to have disappeared. I think he ate the magic pebble that makes little boys invisible, and I can’t find him anywhere.”
    Kincaid cleared his throat and put on his best Sherlock Holmes voice. ”Let me put my detective skills to use. Where’s my magnifying glass? All right, Watson, the game’s afoot!”
    There followed the elaborate ritual of hide-and-seek, as they ignored the occasional suppressed giggle from under the bedclothes, until finally the missing boy was brought to light with much squealing and tickling.
    ”More, more! Hide me more!” wailed Toby as Gemma carried him off to bed, but she tucked him in with a promise of another story in the morning.
    I missed all this, thought Kincaid with an unexpected stab of loss.
    ”Are you all right?” asked Gemma as she carefully shut Toby’s door. ”What on earth happened to you this afternoon?”
    He sat at the half-moon table, and she pulled out a chair so that she could face him.
    ”I don’t know where to start,” he said, absently rearranging the candies Gemma kept on the table.
    ”Start at the beginning. What did your mother say to you? You were white as chalk when I came back from the kiosk.” She leaned forwards and traced the line of his jaw with her fingertips, the gentleness of her touch belying the impatience of her words.
    ”You’re too observant by half,” he said, stalling, but she refused the bait and merely watched him in silence. He took a breath. ”My mother says Kit is the spitting image of me at the same age. She says she thinks Kit is my son.”
    Gemma’s eyes widened, the pupils dilating with surprise until he saw his own reflection in them. ”Dear God,” she breathed. ”How could I have been so blind?”
    ”You don’t doubt it?” He found he’d hoped for at least a token protest, and yet he felt some small kernel of satisfaction in her immediate recognition.
    Shaking her head slowly, she said, ”I saw it myself—the resemblance. He seemed so familiar, as if I saw him every day.” She touched his face again, with a look of wonder. ”And I do. But you—how could you not have known Vic was pregnant?”
    He pushed his chair back and stood, feeling suddenly confined in the flat. ”We could go for a walk,” he suggested.
    ”I don’t like to leave Toby.”
    ”No, of course not. Silly of me.” Bloody hell. He hadn’t got used to the responsibility of one child, much less two. He wouldn’t know where to begin.
    The odd sense of claustrophobia grew heavier, and searching for an excuse for movement, he fumbled in the breast pocket of his suit until he felt the book of matches he’d picked up yesterday in the pub. You never knew when things might come in handy. Bloody Boy Scouts had drummed that one into him, and he supposed it had come in useful. Had Kit been a Boy Scout? Could he tie knots? Whistle through his teeth? He wouldn’t know where to begin.
    Leaning forwards, he lit the candles, and when he’d blown out the match, he said, ”Things were strained between Vic and me. We hadn’t been... sleeping together much—”
    ”It only takes once,” Gemma interrupted with a grin.
    ”Well, yes.” Christ, this was awkward. There had been an argument, and a passionate reconciliation, some weeks before Vic left. He had forgotten.
    ”Was she unusually emotional those last few weeks? The hormonal changes at the onset of pregnancy are powerful enough to—”
    ”What you’re saying is that Vic might have walked out— which was irrational and totally unlike her— because she was pregnant?” There was no room to pace. He forced himself to sit on the foot of the reclining leather-and-chrome chair he called the torture cradle. ”I should have seen it. You’re quite right.”
    ”That’s not the way I meant. And she might not have known herself—”
    ”But I failed her then as well.”
    Gemma slid from her chair and came to kneel at his feet so that she could look up into his face. ”Bollocks. You can’t change what happened. There’s no point indulging in that sort of thing. What you have to decide is what you’re