Sean’s son.
She shut down her emotions. She could be happy they were safe and still hurt and angry that everyone knew Sean had a son except for her.
Well, she knew, but he hadn’t told her.
She didn’t know if she could forgive him. She wanted to, but … what could he say to make it right? Lies of omission were just as bad as outright lies.
You promised me … you promised you would never lie to me.
She had work to do. She got up, took a shower, and felt almost human again. She left the bedroom and saw Nate clean and dressed, sitting on the couch typing on his laptop.
“I got a message from Sean. He’s okay. They all are.”
Nate smiled, and she saw the relief in his posture. He’d also been worried.
“I’m kind of hungry,” she said.
“This place is supposed to have a great free breakfast.”
She sent Noah a message that she and Nate were up and eating breakfast if he wanted to join them. He didn’t respond.
But he still hadn’t returned her message when they were done. They checked out at eight thirty, and went back to the hospital.
Lucy tracked down Dr. Laurel Davidson while Nate went to the lobby to call Noah and Villines and find out what the next step was. The doctor looked as tired as Lucy had felt last night. “I’m just getting off a thirty-six-hour shift,” Davidson said, “but I thought you might want an update, so I hung around.”
“How do you do that? Work thirty-six hours straight?” Lucy asked.
“I get naps here and there. But I’m looking forward to ten hours of lights-out. I’ll be back to check on the infants, though, and I’ll be on call.” She motioned for Lucy and Nate to follow her to an alcove. “Baby Elizabeth is doing great. I have no reason to keep her here, no medical reason, but Agent Armstrong said you’re close to finding her mother?”
Lucy nodded, though it seemed impossible at the moment. Unlikely. “Ana de la Rosa is her family, too.”
“Children’s Services wants to put her in a foster home, but Agent Armstrong was quite emphatic that she wasn’t to leave this hospital for her own safety, so I ordered some more tests just to keep her awhile longer. Baby Lucia is in the neonatal unit.”
Lucy’s heart skipped a beat. It hadn’t really sunk in that the nurses had named her Lucia. Lucy’s given name.
“She was just under five pounds when she came in. I’m guessing based on her development that she was about thirty-six weeks into the pregnancy. She’s perfectly developed, just small, and her lungs are immature. She can breathe on her own, but it’s a struggle, so we’ve put her in an oxygen-rich environment. She’s having a hard time keeping formula down, so we’re feeding her every hour in small quantities.”
The doctor reached out and took her hand. “Are you okay, Agent Kincaid?”
Lucy nodded, out of habit more than anything. “Did I … do something wrong?”
“No. She would have died if you waited to get her mother to a hospital. The toxins from the mother’s body would have made their way into her bloodstream, if the lack of oxygenated blood didn’t kill her first. She’s alive because of you. She’ll be here for at least a week.”
“And then what happens to her?” Lucy asked.
“That’s out of my hands. It’s up to Children’s Services.”
For a moment, just a moment, Lucy wanted to say, I want her. And she did. Desperately. Lucy couldn’t have her own children, but Baby Lucia was as close as she’d come to delivering a child.
But her life was a mess. And dangerous. She was twenty-six and ill prepared to be a mother. She was unmarried, and while she and Sean had talked about adopting … they didn’t lead calm lives. Could they? Could they settle down, move to a mountain in the middle of nowhere, and raise an infant?
And yet … right now, at this moment, Lucy didn’t even know what was going to happen between her and Sean. A baby wouldn’t solve any of their problems. And they had many. Far more than Lucy had thought. For nearly two years, she’d thought their relationship was perfect. Ups and downs but they, together, were a constant. She trusted Sean explicitly with everything, with her heart and her thoughts and her fears.
Trust. It all came down to trust. She couldn’t marry Sean if she didn’t trust him anymore.
And she couldn’t possibly raise a child on her own. Women did it all the time. And maybe, if she were a different woman, she could do it. But Lucy didn’t want to taint a baby with the horrors of the world, and those horrors were a part of her life. For the first time, she considered what Nate had told her months ago, that he never wanted to bring children into the world because the world was a screwed-up place. And Lucy had said it was up to people like them to raise the future leaders to clean it up.