Free Secondhand Sinners by Genevieve Lynne Page B

She was all he had left. Emily knew they had a baby. She didn’t know they had to get married. How old was Abby? When she first saw her in the police station, she guessed she was twelve, mostly because there was no way she could have been any older. Having spent the day with her and hearing that Miller and Sara got married because she got pregnant, thirteen was a reasonable assumption.
    An old wound was opening up, and Emily could feel herself bleeding again. It wasn’t simply the guilt that was seeping from her veins, there was regret too. Guilt and regret, her lifeblood.
    She snagged a beer from the refrigerator and took it outside to Miller.
    “Thanks,” he said and twisted the cap off.
    “Everything is ready in there.” She took Jack by his shoulders. “Come on, let’s go wash your hands.”
    “No.” Jack squirmed out of her grasp. “I’m going to wash my hands like a man.”
    Emily looked at Miller and raised an eyebrow. “How does a man wash his hands?”
    Miller nodded to the side of the house. “There’s a bar of soap on the shelf next to the faucet.”
    Emily walked Jack to the side of the house, handed him the soap, and stepped back when he insisted he could do it by himself. When he finished, she sent him inside for a towel to dry his hands and legs, which were drenched from all the spray. He ran into the house, giving Miller a high five when he ran past him.
    Emily smiled when Miller held up his hand and Jack responded appropriately. Damn it, she’d been smiling all night. That was one of those social situations that they had worked on—how you can tell the difference between a high five and an assaulting slap, and it was good to see Jack was mastering it.
    When the back door slammed, she walked back to Miller. “He’s going to start peeing in the grass, isn’t he?”
    Miller shrugged. “That is how men do it.”
    Emily inspected Miller’s profile to see if she could get a glimpse of the familiarity she saw on Abby’s face. She might have been right about the resemblance in the mouth. There was something else, though.
    He looked at her from the corner of his eye. “What?”
    “I was just trying to decide if Abby looks more like you or Sara.”
    He took a long drink. “Sara. She looks like Sara.”
    “I thought there was a little of you in her too.”
    “Yeah. That’s what Sara said. Then she left.” He walked back to the fryer and pulled the basket out of the oil. “This is almost ready. It’ll be a few minutes.”
    Emily felt terrible. She shouldn’t have brought up Sara. They were having such a nice day, and she’d tainted it by reminding him of his ex-wife.
    “Miller, I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t—”
    With his back to her, he waved off her apology. “I’ll be right in.”
    They ate an awkward dinner where Abby talked too much and Miller didn’t talk at all. After they cleaned up, Emily put her own clothes back on and said she and Jack should leave so they could get back to Levi’s before it got too dark.
    Abby frowned, her eyes darting around the room, then she grabbed an empty jar from the counter. “I was hoping to show Jack how to catch fireflies. Daddy can drive you back later, right, Daddy?”
    Miller sighed. “Sure, Abigail.” Then he walked out the front door and sat on the porch steps.
    Emily sat next to him while Jack ran and jumped around the front yard singing, “Twinkle! Twinkle! Little star! How I wonder what you are!” at the top of his lungs.
    It was the first time Jack could play freely without being shushed, monitored, or expected to conform to social rules he didn’t understand. It was also the first time she could remember being free to enjoy her son. She loved it. She loved the whole day.
    “Look, Mom! I’m chasing the stars!”
    “They’re fireflies, baby.”
    “Nope. Gotcha! See? They twinkle. They’re stars.”
    “It’s so dark out here. I don’t think he’s ever seen so many stars. He’s in heaven,” she said.
    Miller smiled a