Last-Minute Marriage. Marisa Carroll

this way from California, she can find her way to the grocery and buy some food.”

      “And milk for her baby. I know that women who are going to have babies are supposed to drink a lot of milk so their babies are big and strong.”

      “Who told you that?”

      “Tara Webber’s stepmom had a baby last spring, remember? She told me.”

      A lot of his friends’ moms were having babies. He wouldn’t mind a baby brother or sister himself. Except his mom didn’t live with them anymore. He could hardly remember when she had. She’d moved to Chicago so long ago. Chicago wasn’t all that far away. He’d looked it up on the map once. But she hadn’t been back to Riverbend since a year ago last Fourth of July. She hadn’t even called him on the phone for weeks and weeks. Not even since he’d got his own phone. The one with the special earphones so that he could really hear her voice.

      She didn’t have a computer, so he couldn’t e-mail her. She said she’d get one if his dad sent her the money. She said she couldn’t afford to buy one on her own, and she wasn’t allowed to e-mail him from work. Sam wanted to believe her. But the truth was, his dad did send her money, and she always had something else to spend it on.

      He was almost getting used to it—his mom not doing what she said she was going to do didn’t hurt so much anymore. Most of the time. But it would be nice to have a mom again. If he couldn’t have his own mom come back to live with them, maybe his dad could find another woman to be his mom.

      Sam bent his head and pretended to study the piece of ham on his plate. Only he really wasn’t checking out the fat on the edge of his ham slice. He was thinking. Thinking real hard.

      His dad must like the lady in the boathouse. If he liked her some, maybe he could learn to like her a lot. And if he liked her a lot…well, wasn’t that how grown-ups sometimes fell in love?

      When Sam’s mom had first left, he hadn’t wanted his dad to have any girlfriends. He figured if his dad had a girlfriend, then his mom would never come back. But as a guy got older he saw things differently. In January he would be eleven. Practically a teenager. Almost a grown-up. He could share his dad now. With the right woman. Maybe Tessa was the right woman.

      She didn’t have a husband, as far as Sam could tell.

      And she was already going to have a baby.

      That was good, too.

      Once, just before his mom left, he’d come into the room while she was arguing with his dad. Her face was all red and scrunched up like it got when she was going to cry. His dad had seen him and tried to make her be quiet, but she wouldn’t. Sam was getting pretty good at reading lips by then, and he’d seen what she was saying before she figured out he was there. Sam had never forgotten that one sentence. She’d said, No more babies, Mitch. No more babies like Sam.

      But Tessa’s baby wouldn’t be like him. Her baby would be able to hear.

      Tessa didn’t have a husband. His dad didn’t have a wife. And Sam didn’t have a mom, or a baby brother or sister. If he could get his dad and Tessa together, he’d have everything he needed to make a family again.