Chapter 21: Once

Eli's POV

Travis Dunning asked for one thing in the aisle of a church hall, and it was to hold the baby.

"Once," he said. "I won't ask for anything else today."

I stood beside Cassidy with the sleeping weight on my chest and said nothing.

I had told myself for weeks that I would not decide this for her.

It turned out to be harder than carrying a man down four flights.

Cassidy looked at her husband for a long moment.

"Eli's holding her," she said. "He stays in the room."

"That's fine."

"You sit. You don't stand and you don't walk. You give her back when I say."

"Yes."

We went into the pastor's study, because it was the only quiet room.

Cassidy lifted the wrap off my chest herself, and her hands brushed my collarbone, and I breathed in.

She put the baby into Travis's arms.

He had stopped talking.

He sat on the edge of the pastor's old leather couch with a six-week-old girl in the crook of his elbow.

He did not move at all.

She had her fist against her mouth, and her gray eyes were half open.

He looked at her for a very long time.

I watched his face.

He wasn't performing it. There was nobody left to perform it for.

"She looks like you," he said at last, hoarse.

"She looks like my mother," Cassidy said.

"I never met her."

"No. You didn't."

He touched the baby's hand with one finger, and she closed her fist around it.

"I'm sorry," he said. He wasn't talking to Cassidy. He was talking to the baby. "I'm so sorry I wasn't there."

Nobody said anything.

I thought about my own father at a bus station.

I thought about the day I decided I would be the man who stayed.

I looked at Travis and thought: you could have been.

After four minutes, Cassidy said, "That's enough."

He gave her back at once.

He stood, and he didn't try to touch her or ask for more.

"Thank you," he said.

At the door, he turned to me.

"You'll be good to them," he said. It was not a question.

"I will."

"I know," he said. "That's what I can't stand."

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