Brought Together by Baby. Carolyne Aarsen

She fell, but she’s okay. How are you and Dad doing?”

      “Good. But I was hoping we could come up sometime and help you and Ben finish the house.”

      “That’s okay, Mom. I don’t want you and dad to trouble yourselves. It’s too far to travel from Florida to Richmond just to pound a few nails.”

      His mother’s moment of silence created another twinge of guilt. “I see. Well, we will be up Labor Day. I hope we can see you then.”

      “Of course.”

      Peggy asked a few more general questions as the conversation drifted into the final goodbye.

      Eli punched the button to end the call and tossed the phone aside. Then he sat and leaned his head back against the soft leather of the couch as he looked around the house. Much as he did not want to admit it to his parents—or his brother Ben, for that matter—he’d been wondering more and more if buying this house wasn’t a colossal mistake. All his life he had wanted a place of his own. A place that he could build up himself. It wasn’t something he could easily explain to Peggy and Tyrone, much less to himself. Not even Ben understood why a confirmed bachelor wanted to tie himself down to a mortgage when he was still single.

      But then, Ben did not have the memories of family that Eli had. And it was those vivid memories of a previous life that he clung to in the traumatic first year after witnessing his parents’ lives snuffed out in front of him. He had loved his parents and it was that love that had caused some misunderstandings with Peggy and Tyrone Cavanaugh when he first went to live with them. It was as if they did not quite know what to do with a child who came with other memories.

      So they never talked about his parents. Never mentioned them.

      Eli had accepted that. Until he found the pictures.

      He had taken the box of photos back with him, and now and again took them out as if trying to discover who these people were, these people who had given him life and had taken care of him those first few years.

      Unconsciously he rubbed the scar on the back of his hand, a mute reminder of the accident.

      He thought of Gracie Noble. She was young enough that she would not have any memories of her mother. As far as he was aware, the Nobles had encouraged contact with Gracie’s mother, but the woman had left town as soon as she had put Gracie up for adoption.

      Eli had been Gracie’s doctor since she was born and it was really amazing that the child was as healthy as she was. Of course, she’d spent most of the first year of her life in and out of the hospital—whenever her mother seemed to think she needed a break from the demands of taking care of a handicapped child, which was every weekend and often during the week, as well. Eli had been the one to contact Pilar Estes, a social worker with Tiny Blessings—and a friend of Rachel’s, he’d later discovered—with his concerns. Thanks to his intervention, Gracie had found a stable and loving home with the Nobles.

      As Eli pushed himself up from the sofa, he thought of Rachel and wondered again if she was the best person to be taking care of Gracie. She had the same attitude Gracie’s mother had had toward the child’s handicaps. Though Rachel had tried to hide behind a cool facade, he had noticed the fear in her face when she first entered the hospital room.

      He would have to see how she managed. If he had any doubts at all about Gracie’s care, he would get her put into a better place.

      “Reuben, I want you to leave Mrs. Binet to me,” Rachel said, accelerating through a yellow light as she spoke on her hands-free cell phone. “If we push too hard, she could easily end up throwing it to some questionable organization. I’m going to be seeing her tonight and I want to advise her to wait.” Provided Pilar could still baby-sit Gracie.

      “We just need to find the right combination for her and I think I found one,” said Reuben.

      “Which one?” This was news to her. Last time she and Reuben had spoken to the woman, LaReese was still undecided.

      “It’s a new one that I’m investigating.” He gave her the name, and Rachel frowned in puzzlement.

      “Never heard of them.”

      “It is like a Make-A-Wish foundation and the focus is children of prisoners.”

      Rachel glanced at the clock on the dashboard of her car and stifled panic. She was already fifteen minutes late and the day care where she had brought Gracie this morning was another ten minutes away.

      She slowed down, stuck behind a bus that was trying to make a left turn across two lanes of traffic. She glanced behind her and saw two lanes of traffic bumper to bumper behind her. This was not looking good. Today was the second day in a row she was going to be late.

      “Doesn’t sound like a match to me, Reuben,” Rachel said, tapping her fingers restlessly on the steering wheel.

      “From our last meeting I got the impression that Mrs. Binet is looking more closely at health issues, rather than social ones.”

      “I think we could get her excited about this group. So far they seem on the up-and-up.”

      “The ink must barely be dry on their license. Why don’t you give me what you’ve got? I’ll see about showing it to her tonight.”

      “You don’t trust me?”

      Rachel glanced past the bus and saw a hole in the on-coming traffic she could slip through.