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shoulder. “Since you know I’m not going to take the boy, Josie. Why don’t you just let me…hold him?”
    She wet her lips. Hesitated.
    “Please.”
    In one fluid movement Josie swept her hand beneath the child legs and then carefully laid him in his father’s arms.
    His son. Adam caught his breath. For all his good intentions and promises, holding his child for the very first time made him wonder if he’d spoken too soon. He did not want to tear this baby from the only mother it had ever known, but this was his son. His flesh and blood. And Adam would not settle for weekends and every other Christmas, just experiencing bits and pieces of his childhood.
    He felt Josie tense at his side, but he didn’t focus on her discomfort. Adam had always made his own rules in life—or figured a way around the ones he didn’t like. That’s exactly what he was going to do now.
    He gazed into the baby’s bright blue eyes and found just enough voice to whisper, “Hello, son. Daddy’s here now. Daddy’s here—and nothing is going to come between us ever again.”

Chapter Four

    “N othing’s going to come between us again.”
    Adam’s words to Nathan still rang in Josie’s ears twelve hours later as she rushed about the diner trying to get ready for the morning coffee crowd.
    Yes, crowd.
    Large cities and fancy coffee shops and cafés with big noisy machines were not the only places that people liked to gather to chat on their way to work in the mornings. There had always been the usual fellows, the retirees who liked to do a little of what locals lovingly called, “pickin’ and grinnin’, laughin’ and scratchin’.’’ They met every day but Sunday, of course, to solve the problems of the world, tell jokes and stories they had all heard a hundred times, and reward their long-suffering wives with a little bit of “me” time.
    Then there were the commuters. Ever since the layoffs had started at the Crumble, more and more folks began their drives to workplaces in other nearby towns with what Josie had listed on tent cards on the tabletops as “Cup O’Joe To Go.” It wasn’t the kind of thing you could get at those fancy places. No grande or venti size disposable cups with insulated wrappers to keep the drinker from burning his or her hands or fancy tops that looked like Nathan’s sippy cup. No, this was a bank of coffeepots, sweetener options and creamers where people walked in, filled up the coffee conveyance brought from home, dropped a dollar or two in an old pickle jar and headed off to face the day.
    Often stopping to share a word of encouragement with one another or to check the chalkboard for messages or new prayer requests. Always with a sense of community that one couldn’t find anywhere else.
    This was, to Josie, the essence of why she lived in Mt. Knott. It was also one of the reasons she had brought Nathan to work with her this morning. She felt safe here and felt her son would be safe here, as well.
    Not that she thought Adam would do any harm to Nathan or even break his word about taking the child but…
    But in her whole life she could not recall ever having felt so vulnerable.
    A product, she suspected, of more than just Adam’s introduction into Nathan’s life. This emotion was also a byproduct of her realization that the man would be a presence in her life for a long time to come, as well.
    She went up on tiptoe to peer over the cash register at the baby playing quietly in the bright blue portable playpen in the corner of the café.
    She had promised herself she wouldn’t make a habit of bringing Nathan to work. Maybe when he was older, she had thought, she would have him come by after school. He could do his homework in one of the booths and she would serve him a snack and whatever advice she could spare until he got into calculus or something else she knew nothing about. But until then she had determined she would have him at work as little as possible.
    Josie didn’t need to bring him