Allie nodded. “I plunked myself down by my front window and watched for her to leave, intending to rush out and talk to her if she did. I did that for two and a half nights with no results before I lost my patience. When there was no sign of her by three a.m. on the third night, I took the house key she’d given me—” She stopped her narrative to explain. “I talked her into giving me a house key just the week before this all happened. She only had a month and a half to her due date, but she was so big I was afraid the date was off. I was worried she’d go into labor and not be able to negotiate the stairs to the main floor safely on her own. I told her if she started having contractions, she was to call me and I’d go over, use the key to get in, then help her down to the car and drive her to the hospital.”
When he nodded in understanding, she returned to the original subject. “Anyway, at three o’clock that third night, I took the key and went over, determined to make her talk to me. We were friends. I’d helped her pick her unborn baby’s name, promised to be a free babysitter and help her with him or her. Besides, I had a ton of questions.”
“Was she there?” Tricia asked with curiosity.
“No,” Allie said with disgust. “Her car was there in the garage, but the house was empty. She’d dug a path through the snow from her back door to the fence and had apparently jumped it and used the footpath through the woods to go Lord knows where.” Anger tightening her lips, she added grimly, “On foot. In November in Calgary. November twenty-fifth to be exact. It was minus 17 degrees Celsius that night,” Allie told them with a combination of dismay and outrage. “I mean, how irresponsible is that? She was pregnant, for heaven’s sake. What if she’d gone into labor while strutting through the snow? Liam would have frozen to death before he hit the ground.”
“Liam would have been fine,” Tricia said soothingly. “Immortals do not freeze as easily as mortals.”
“Well, I didn’t know that, did I?” Allie said dryly, and then sighed. “She showed up at a little after four in the morning. I was sitting in the dark so that she wouldn’t see the light and avoid coming home. A bad idea as it turned out. She mistook me for a robber and damned near killed me before she realized it was me. Of course, then she alternated between feeling horrible for throwing me across the living room, and being angry that I had been sitting in wait. And of course I was a confusion of anger at her for avoiding me, and apologetic about using the key when I knew she wouldn’t have wanted me to.”
Allie shrugged philosophically. “We were both emotional, and there was a lot of back-and-forth. One minute she was crying, and then yelling, while I was alternately apologizing and then demanding we talk. But finally we both settled down. She still wouldn’t talk at first. Not until I said I considered her the best friend I’d ever had, like a sister, really, the only family I had, and I didn’t want to lose her friendship. Besides, I reminded her, I was going to be little Liam or Sunita’s godmother. She had to talk to me.”
“Liam would have been Sunita if he’d been born a girl?” Tricia asked with a grin.
“Yes,” Allie answered, and then tilted her head slightly and asked, “Why?”
“That’s Elvi and Victor’s daughter’s name,” Katricia said with a smile, and then explained, “They are good friends who live in Port Henry. Our children play together. They have a bed and breakfast and that’s where you will be staying in Port Henry.” She shook her head. “What a coincidence they picked the same name as you and Stella did for a girl baby. I mean, Sunita isn’t that popular a name.”
“That’s part of the reason we picked it. It’s beautiful and unusual. And we could have called her Sunny for short.”
“That’s Sunita’s nickname!” Tricia said with delight.
“Yes, yes,” Lucian said with exasperation. “Sunita is a beautiful name and I am sure Elvi and Victor’s calling their daughter that and it being chosen as the name Liam did not get is some kind of mystical miracle or an omen that you were