"You need a baby of your own, " Stacy told me, when I called her one afternoon. "That's what your biological clock is telling you."

I had tried to describe to her how Luke, in his small and innocent way, had broken down my defenses. For the first time in my life I was experiencing an emotional connection with a child, and it was stronger than I ever could have expected.

I had told Stacy I was in terrible trouble.

I wanted Luke for a lifetime. I wanted to be there at every stage of his growing up. But soon his real mother would come for him, and I would be on the periphery.

It was one hell of a one-two punch, what Tara and Luke had done to me.

"It's gonna hurt bad when you give him up," Stacy continued. "You need to be ready for that."

"I know. But I don't know how you get ready for something like that. I mean, I've told myself that I've only had him for about three months. That's not a huge investment of time. But I've gotten attached to him all out of proportion."

"Ella, Ella . . . there is no proportion with babies."

I gripped the phone tightly. "What do I do?"

"Start making plans. Come back to Austin right after Luke is gone, and stop wasting time with Jack Travis."

"Why is it wasting time if I'm enjoying it?"

"There's no future in it. I admit he's hot, and I'd probably be hit-tin' that, too, if I were single. But Ella, keep your eyes open. You know that kind of man's not in it for the long haul."

"Neither am I. That's what makes it perfect."

"Ella, come back home. I'm worried about you. I think you're fooling yourself."

"About what?"

"About a lot of things."

But privately I wondered if just the opposite was true—that I had stopped fooling myself about a lot of things, and life had been more comfortable and less complicated when I had been mired in self-deception.

I talked with my sister once a week. We had a couple of long, fairly awkward conversations, littered with the inevitable psychospeak that you couldn't help but lapse into after having seen a therapist. "I'm coming to Houston next week," Tara finally told me. "Friday. I'm leaving the clinic. Dr. Jaslow says I've gotten a good start, but I should probably keep seeing someone if I want to make more progress."

"I'm so glad," I managed to say, feeling cold all over. "I'm glad you're better, Tara." I paused before making myself ask, "You'll want to take Luke right away, I guess? Because if not, I could always—"

"Yeah, I want him."

Do you really? I wanted to ask her. Because you hardly ever ask about him, and you don't seem to find him all that interesting. But maybe that wasn't fair. Maybe he meant too much to her . . . maybe she couldn't bring herself to discuss the source of such powerful longing.

I wandered to Luke's crib, where he was sleeping. I reached out to touch one of the honeypots on the mobile. My fingers were trembling. "Can I pick you up at the airport?"

"No, I'm . . . that's being taken care of."

By Mark Gottler, I thought. "Listen, I don't want to be a pest, but. . . that promissory contract we talked about. . . it's here at my apartment. I hope you'll at least take a look at it while you're here."

"I'll take a look at it. But I won't sign it. There's no need."

I bit my lip to keep from arguing with her. One step at a time, I told myself.

Jack and i argued over the prospect of tara's return, because he wanted to be there, and I wanted to face it alone. I didn't want him to be a part of something so painful and personal. I had a pretty good idea of how much giving up Luke was going to hurt, and I would rather not have Jack see me at a moment of such weakness.

Besides, that Friday was Joe's birthday, and they had planned to go fishing on an overnight trip to Galveston.

"You have to be there for Joe," I told Jack.

"I can reschedule the trip."

"You promised him," I said, fully aware of the effect that word had on Jack. "I can't believe you're even thinking of backing out on your brother on his birthday."

"He'll understand. This is more important."

"I'll be just fine," I said. "And I need the private time with my sister. Tara and I won't be able to talk if you're there."

"Damn it all, she wasn't supposed to come back until the next week. Why the hell is she getting out early?"

"I don't know. I can't believe she didn't think to schedule her mental-health issues around your fishing trip."

"I'm not going."

Exasperated, I paced around his apartment. "I want you to go, Jack. I can be stronger about this without you. I need to do it alone. I'm going to hand off Luke to Tara, drink a big glass of wine, have a bath, and go to bed early. If I really need to be with someone, I'll go upstairs and visit Haven. And you'll be back the next day, and we can do the postmortem."

"I'd rather call it the postgame analysis." He watched me intently, seeing too much. "Ella. Stop that damn pacing and come here."

I was still for about ten seconds before I went to him. His arms went around me, and he pressed my resistant body against his at intervals: my shoulders, back, waist, hips.

"Stop pretending everything is fine," he said near my ear.

"That's all I know how to do. If you pretend everything's fine long enough, everything eventually becomes fine."