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Keeping an eye on both Stella and Emma proved impossible but he tried long enough to make him cross-eyed.
Relax, he scolded. Stella was just riding her bike. But his heart started pounding out of control when she and Mariana disappeared down the street.
Garrett forced himself to sit back. His mother-in-law had the situation in hand. She’d been raising the kid alone for the past five years, for fuck’s sake. He could survive ten minutes.
Emma turned to him, her eyes wide. “Should we follow them?”
Yeah, there was a reason he loved this woman. He laughed nervously, pulling at the collar of his sweater before thinking better of it and taking it off altogether. “That’s harder than it should be, right?”
He plucked at the cotton of his shirt, lifting it up and down to get some air circulation. “I didn’t know my daughter existed yesterday morning, and today I am sweating when I can’t see her.”
Emma had said very little since getting out of bed. But she had eventually let Stella go, which he took as a good sign.
Now she put her hands on her head and staggered to the porch, where a worn wooden bench covered by a cushion looked over the front lawn.
“How did this happen?” she asked, dazed. “Why didn’t my mom tell me the truth?”
“I think she tried,” he said. “But you were in really bad shape when she did, and the memory didn’t stick.”
“How could I forget that?” she cried, her throat thick with tears.
Garrett scooted closer, wrapping his arms around her. “You had a traumatic brain injury. It’s a miracle you recovered.”
“But I did. I got better.” Emma sniffed, wiping her cheek. “She could have told me later.”
He wished she had, but he also understood why she hadn’t.
“Mariana was scared. Part of her has always believed that the father of your baby was a bad guy—bad enough to run you down in the woods.”
Emma closed her eyes, an inarticulate sound escaping as she let her head tip backward. “I keep thinking I’m dreaming and I’m going to wake up.”
Garrett squeezed her arm. “Right there with you. But it’s real and we’re going to handle it.”
He hoped that sounded confident enough. They were going to be a family.
Emma twisted to face him, a pleading anxious light in her eyes. “And you’re sure she’s ours?”
He swallowed, but not because he wasn’t sure. It was what he had to show her.
“One hundred percent,” he said, taking out his phone. “These are going to be hard to see—I sure as hell had a difficult time with them. But you should see them.”
Thumbing the screen, he flipped to the pictures Mariana had sent him.
“Your mom took pictures of you at the hospital, to chronicle your progress.”
“My what?”
It was better to show her. Grimacing, he turned the phone so she could see it.
Emma gasped and snatched up the phone.
It was her in the hospital, in a bed, hooked up to an IV and a bunch of wires to monitor her vitals. The sheets had been pulled taut over her in the shot, enough to discern the start of her pregnancy.
Garrett rubbed the back of his head. “The belly gets bigger in the later shots.”
Emma groaned and bent over the phone, scrolling to the more recent photographs. Her pregnancy belly swelled more and more until the final one, where an anonymous nurse hovered nearby with a tiny, wrinkled baby nestled in the crook of her arm.
“Shit.” Emma shoved the phone back at him. Then she snatched it back and swore again. “This is crazy.”