Episode 547: You're Only Human

A dagger of envy sliced into him. He shook his head. Envious of a toy. Damn. He was even more of a mess than he’d thought.

"Lambie," Lucy said, so quietly Paul’s ears had to strain to hear; only he couldn’t make sense of it anyway.

Lambie. What kind of name for a girl was that? What kind of people had Lucy handed his child over to? He shook his head. He couldn’t have heard right. "What was that?"

Lucy cleared her throat. She shot her eyes to the ceiling and cleared her throat again, then nodded to the stuffed toy, her voice still so low and threadbare as she said, "her name is Lambie."

Lucy looked so distressed, clearly was, or she wouldn’t have misunderstood so hugely. Still, he couldn’t let it go, he’d never felt more desperate for anything. "Not the lamb’s name, hers. Please, Lu."

"Oh." She swallowed noticeably hard and as if her neither her legs nor her eyes were in working order, she groped her way into the armchair opposite the sofa where he sat. She took a breath and the name whispered out, "Hope."

Hope. Yeah. That made sense. With her rocky entrance into the world. Not to mention the way Curran Gable had threatened him, he and his wife had surely struggled to bring a child into their family.

"Pretty," Paul said and thought of that little face he’d only had the privilege to see once, how gentle and sweet her features. "It suits her."

Lucy nodded, and threw her eyes to an empty wall. "She’s so pretty."

"So you’re seeing her?" He asked, stabbed by that envy again, even though he didn’t want to see her. He shouldn’t. "When, how did you change that?" What was he doing? Looking for tips on how to edge his way into Hope’s life? "Or did you swipe Lambie from her carriage?" He meant it as a joke, he needed to laugh, to lighten his insides, but there had been times over the months since her birth where he might have swiped Lambie if the opportunity arose, if he had the chance at some souvenir, some piece of her to hold onto.

He stared at Lucy, staring at the wall. Had she swiped Lambie? Was she that desperate?

Episode 548: Losing Hope