Free Lullaby and Goodnight by Wendy Corsi Staub

want her mother judging her every move the way Allison’s reportedly does.
    Then again, she can’t help secretly thinking it might be nice to have a built-in babysitter. Or a few of them. Allison’s parents helped to care for her children when her husband left her. Now her teenagers are old enough to take care of themselves, and to pitch in with their new sibling.
    Allison will have plenty of willing hands standing by when the baby comes along. Peyton will have none. Nobody to help . . .
    But nobody to interfere, either, she reminds herself, and decides to change the sore subject.
    “I keep wondering what the baby looks like,” she tells Allison. “It’s hard, you know? Never having seen the father.”
    “I know, but just think. Maybe his genes won’t matter anyway. Maybe it’ll look just like you did as a baby.”
    “God, I hope not. I was totally bald until I was about a year old.”
    Allison laughs. “Well, I had so much hair when I was born that my uncle Norberto nicknamed me Peludo. ”
    “ Peludo? ”
    “You don’t know that word? It means shaggy. He still calls me that. I hate nicknames. When my kids came out looking just like me, with piles of shiny black hair, Uncle Norberto tried to pull it again. But as soon as I told him I’d teach them to call him Pelado in return, he cut it out.”
    “What does Pelado mean?”
    “Baldy,” Allison says with an evil grin, and turns her attention to the menu in her hand. “So what should I order for dessert? What’s good? The margarita ice cream?”
    “No liquor, young lady,” Peyton says with mock disapproval. “Not for another two months.”
    “Yeah, well, the second I deliver, I’m breaking out the tequila.”
    “Want me to bring you a bottle of Cuervo in the hospital?”
    “Make it Patron and you’ve got a deal.” Allison grins, her old sunny self once again.
    Watching her friend scanning the dessert list, Peyton decides that she’ll definitely ask Allison to be her labor coach. It’s something she’s been mulling over all week.
    For one thing, she can’t think of anybody else to ask. For another, Allison’s irreverent sense of humor will be welcome in the delivery room. Yes, and she’ll certainly be well acquainted with the rigors of childbirth by that time.
    Before Peyton can pop the question, though, Allison poses one of her own. “How’s the flan here?”
    “As good as you’d expect.”
    “Does it have a lot of caramel sauce?”
    “Yup.”
    “Is it good caramel sauce?”
    “Delicious.”
    “Then that’s what I’m having.” Allison snaps the menu closed. “Oh, and speaking of delicious, that hottie over by the bar has been watching you for the last ten minutes. If you weren’t so opposed to husband hunting, I’d tell you to turn around and wink.”
    “Wink?” Peyton laughs, shaking her head, trying to imagine herself winking at a strange man. “Who am I, Betty Boop?”
    “Oops, too late, Betty. It looks like he’s leaving. Anyway, men are off-limits to you, unless you’ve changed your mind already?”
    Peyton assures Allison that men are as off-limits in her immediate future as margarita ice cream is.
    Still, curiosity gets the best of her, and she turns around.
    Just in time to glimpse a vaguely familiar face in the split second before the figure disappears out into the street.
    For a few minutes, she can’t seem to place him.
    It isn’t until she and Allison have given the waiter their dessert orders that she realizes, with a twinge of excitement oddly tainted by a vague sense of uneasiness, who he was.
    Tom.
    The complete stranger who bought her the watermelon that night a few weeks ago.
    Tom . . .
    The complete stranger who seemed to know where she lived.
     
    The thing about New York is that you can be utterly anonymous, utterly unnoticed. It takes a lot more than a river of mascara running down a person’s cheeks to capture attention on a crowded sidewalk.
    Anne Marie wipes her face and eyes with a futile swipe