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“There’s only so many cops, Daffy,” Matt said, now defensively. “They can’t be everywhere at once.”

“My point exactly,” Chad said.

“I like the idea of La Bochabella,” Daffy said. “Ex ercise makes me hungry.”

She handed the baby back to her husband.

“I’ll shower fir

st,” she said.

“Give me the urchin,” Matt said mischievously, “and you can shower together.”

Chad took him seriously.

“Yeah,” Chad said, and handed him the baby. “Good thinking. One of the perks of married life. You should try it, buddy.”

“Don’t drop her, Matt!” Daffy said.

“She will be a good deal safer with me, madam, than she would be in her mother’s arms,” Matt said solemnly.

“You’re up to something, Matt,” Daffy said. “I don’t trust you.”

“I have no idea, madam, of what you’re accusing me.”

“Fix yourself a drink,” Chad said. “You know where it is.”

“Yeah.”

Fixing himself a drink proved more difficult than he thought it would be. When he went to the bar, holding the baby, it became immediately apparent that he could not easily, one-handed, either open a scotch bottle or get ice from the refrigerator.

He walked to the couch and, with infinite tenderness, laid his goddaughter down on it, far enough away from the edge so there was no chance of her falling off.

He was halfway back to the bar when Penelope Alice Nesbitt expressed her displeasure at being laid down by howling with surprising volume for someone her size.

She stopped howling the moment she was picked up again, and he carried her back to the bar, where, with great difficulty, he made himself a drink. Then he carried the baby back to the couch and sat down.

After a moment, he propped the baby up at the junction of the back and arm of the chair, and watched to see if she would start to howl again. She didn’t. She liked that. She smiled and made a gurgling noise.

“Would Penny and I have made something like you, sweetheart?” Matt asked softly as he extended his finger to the baby. She took his finger in her hand.

Matt became aware that his eyes were tearing and his throat was very tight.

“Shit!” he said, and took a deep swallow of his scotch on the rocks. The emotional moment passed.

Surprising him, Daffy returned first, dressed to go out.

“You should have gotten yourself a date,” she said. “It would be like old times.”

“You mean, you and Chad in the backseat of the car, making elephants-in-rut-type noises?”

“Screw you, you know what I mean,” Daffy said. “Are you seeing much of Amanda these days?”

He shook his head, “no.”

“Why not? She’s a really nice girl.”

“We never seem to be free at the same time,” Matt said.