Page 65 of Secret Baby for the Triplets

“When she was around, he was a completely different person,” he explains to me. “She never let him shirk his responsibilities. She held him accountable for everything he promised to do. And the thing is, he actually respected that. He’d follow through when she asked. It was like her presence gave him something worth being responsible for.”

“He was better with her around,” I agree stiffly, shoving Emerson out of my mind. “But it doesn’t change the fact that she lied to us all, Brock.”

He stands and retreats to the barbecue without answering.

“Does it?” I ask. And deep down, I want him to disagree, to tell me that we can forgive her.

“You should go check on him,” he tells me. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

I’m not hungry, and I really don’t feel like fighting with Toby, but I do what he asks anyway.

Heading in the side door, I find Toby sprawled on the couch in the living room, staring at the ceiling, but not passed out.

“Come and eat,” I tell him gruffly.

“I didn’t mean to scare her off,” he moans.

I grunt. “Toby, you’re drunk.”

He sits upright and stares at me with bloodshot eyes. “Yeah,” he concedes with his boyish honesty. “But I still didn’t mean to scare her off. Why hasn’t she called us, Owen? Doesn’t she want us to know the baby? Does she think I’ll make a bad father?”

Groaning, I reach down and pull him upright. “I don’t know,” I answer. “And we haven’t called her either, since that morning.”

He stands up abruptly. “We should!”

I help him back outside, where Brock sets the table under the wisteria growing alongside the house.

“Right now!” Toby is still determined. “Brock, we need to call Emerson!”

I roll my eyes and plop him down on the nearest chair.

“I won’t be doing that,” Brock replies dryly. But as he says it, I catch the gleam of desire in his eyes.

He wants to call her. Should we call her?

“We need to accept that she’s trouble,” Brock mumbles. There’s not even a hint of conviction in his voice. He doesn’t believe a single word of what he just said. “A girl like that…”

“Is carrying our baby,” I cut him off, refusing to embrace this charade anymore. We’re all hurting without her. “She can’t be in a good place, the way she left things.”

“She chose to leave things like this,” Brock reminds me.

“Because of—” I stop myself from blaming Toby. “Emotions were running high that night. And none of us tried to make it right afterward.”

“The phone works both ways,” Brock insists.

I stare at him balefully as he reaches for a steak. Toby looks between us like he’s watching a tennis match. Brock just wants me to convince him. He’s looking for absolution, for the push.

But I’m not sure I can give it to him, because I don’t know if I trust Emerson either.

Why hadn’t she just told us the truth at the hospital?

It’s the same question I’d asked myself at least a hundred times over the past week. And the fact that she still hasn’t called speaks volumes to her state of mind now, too.

“Where do you think she’s staying?” Toby asks. “I tried to find her on social media.”

I look at my youngest brother. “Toby…”

“What?” he grumbles, stabbing his fork into a steak from the serving plate. “I didn’t find her.”

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