Beau looked at it a beat too long.

“What is that?” he asked.

I rested one hand on Isla’s blanket, and I did not answer right away, because I wanted to look at him first — at the man who had abandoned his daughter two hours after her birth and come back the next morning expecting to find the situation managed.

For the first time since he had leaned over that bassinet and told me my daughter was a liability, Beau Draycott looked unsure of the ground under his feet.

He was right to.