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bedroom. This way, Nicole had pointed out, Kennedy wouldn’t have to climb the stairs. The room had been called the birthing room when the house was built back in the eighteen hundreds, because it was near the kitchen and easy to keep warm. When her parents were married, this room was the TV room.
    Kennedy had worried that Maddox would be afraid to be on the second floor, so far away from his parents, but Nicole had decorated the spare bedroom in a spaceship theme, with posters of rockets and a bedspread printed with comets. All around the ceiling, small stickers of stars, planets, and meteors glowed gently in the dark. A bookshelf held building blocks, children’s books, and tractors, dump trucks, and fire engines. Maddox loved it. He immediately called it
his
room.
    Last night, Nicole had served a delicious meal, even though the calorie count was over the moon. Pork loin with apples and onions, roasted squash risotto, broccolini, beets with orange sauce, and fresh, homemade, whole wheat bread with butter. She’d bought the kind of veggie burgers Kennedy had requested and cooked those for Maddox, who ate all of them, as well as his broccolini and beets.
    This morning, Nicole and Kennedy’s father had taken Maddox out for breakfast in town, allowing Kennedy and James to sleep late and spend time alone in bed snuggling, something they had been unable to do for months.
    Then
, because the day was sunny and surprisingly mild, her father and Nicole had suggested having a picnic way out on Great Point, where Maddox could see the lighthouse and the big fat seals who lounged about on the shore, grunting, lolling, and snorting.
    The last thing Kennedy wanted to do was to be bounced around in a four-wheel-drive vehicle along a sandy beach path. Her lower back was twinging with such force she felt like a grunting seal herself.
    When she begged off going, to her utter amazement, Nicole had cooed, “Of course you should stay home. Why don’t you settle on the sofa? I’ll have your father build you a nice fire. I’ve got a stack of magazines and light reading you might enjoy. Go on, put your feet up. Get comfy.”
    Kennedy had lowered her bulk onto the sofa and raised her heavy feet up to a pillow. Instant ecstasy. Before she left, Nicole brought in a tray. On it were a plate of sandwiches, a bowl of carrots and red pepper strips, and to Kennedy’s childish delight, a selection of homemade Christmas cookies. Gingerbread men and women with white icing faces. Irresistible sugar cookies with snowy icing covered with multicolored sprinkles shaped like reindeer, wreaths, and angels. Finally—in a white pot decorated with green holly and red berries—there was steaming, rich, milky, homemade hot chocolate to pour into a matching mug.
    Kennedy’s father, James, and Maddox were hefting a picnic basket, several wool blankets, and a couple of thermoses out to the Jeep Grand Cherokee.
    “Bye, Mommy,” Maddox called.
    Nicole came back into the living room, wearing jeans, a green Christmas sweater with a snowman on it, and hiking boots. “All set?” In her hands she held a red and green plaid down blanket trimmed in satin. “I’ll just tuck this in around you.” She fluttered the cover over Kennedy’s legs and nudged it in around Kennedy’s feet. She scooted the coffee table close, just within Kennedy’s reach. “Anything else?”
    “This is great,” Kennedy admitted grudgingly. “Thank you.”
    “Bye, then. See you in a few hours.” Nicole fluttered her fingers and left.
    A few hours? A few hours alone in the house with cookies, hot chocolate, and peace and quiet? Kennedy almost wept with relief.
    Although … something about being tucked in with a blanket unsettled her, brought up memories from the far distant past that filled her with a melancholy longing. Now she was the one who made sure her child was covered with a blanket, but there had been times, she could almost remember, like reaching out through a fog, when her