Babies and Badges. Laura Altom Marie

with its collection of silver-framed pictures of Noah as a boy. Not on any of the hardback classics lining a built-in bookshelf. Not even on the glass paperweights lounging on the seating area’s coffee table, basking in the sun.

      The room was a shrine.

      But to who or what?

      Noah’s mother and the daughter she’d wanted? To Noah’s lonely childhood—assuming he’d had one? To his ex-wife, or one of the women in the support group? Or to something more? Something Cassie sensed hiding deep inside him. Something all seventeen members of that goofy group also might have sensed, but hadn’t identified.

      Cassie, on the other hand, wondered if she might have accidentally stumbled across the answer.

      Whether he knew it or not, could Noah, the breaker of hearts suffer from a broken one?

      Having herself fallen victim to the very same malaise, Cassie figured she ought to be able to recognize the signs in others. Something she also recognized was the fact that no amount of talking or praying—or for that matter, dusting—would ever cure the disease. Maybe time would, but for her at least, not enough had passed yet for her to be able to tell.

      Goose bumps dotted her arms.

      Crossing them, she ran her hands up and down her shoulders, suppressing a shiver. For all the room’s warmth, why was she suddenly so cold?

      Chapter Four

      “Thanks,” Cassie said to Noah in the cereal aisle of Riverdale Grocery.

      “For what?” he asked, snatching the box of fiber flakes from the top shelf and tossing it in their cart. He’d offered to push, but though she hadn’t said anything to him, the day’s activities were starting to take a toll. She was exhausted from her latest trip to the hospital to feed the babies and holding the cart gave her much-needed support. “Because if I were really and truly a good guy, I’d save you from eating this overpriced cat food in a pretty box.”

      She made a face.

      “Seriously,” she said, rounding the end cap piled high with Pop-Tarts to turn down the baby aisle. “Thank you. I’m not used to this damsel in distress role I seem to have fallen into. It seems like every time I turn around, caught yet again in another jam—this time unable to reach my favorite cereal—you gallop up on your trusty sheriff-steed to save me…I mean, us. Guess I need to start getting used to that, huh? The fact that I now have a family.”

      “Aw, shucks, ma’am,” he said, pretending to whip off a cowboy hat while he deeply bowed. “’Twasn’t nuthin”’

      She swatted the top of his head with the store sale circular. “Just for a second, would you stop horsing around? I’m trying to be serious.”

      “But I’m tired of being serious,” he complained. “We’ve done that for, like, the past two days, and it’s starting to be a major drag.”