"I took her flowers already,” Ford objected, “and a big pink teddy bear.”

“Eight pounds, five ounces out of her-”

“Gift shop.”

Loaded down with flowers, Mylar balloons, a plush musical lamb and a stack of coloring books for the new big brother, they walked into the birthing suite.

Josie sat up in bed, in her arms the swaddled baby, a bright pink cap over her dark hair. Josie’s younger sister stood nearby, cooing over a tiny, frothy white dress, while Brian unwrapped a bubble-gum cigar and Matt snapped a picture of his wife and daughter.

“More visitors!” Josie beamed. “Cilla, you just missed your dad and Patty.”

“I came to see someone else.” She leaned over the bed. “Hello, Olivia. She’s beautiful, Josie. You do wonderful work.”

“Hey, she’s got my chin, and nose,” Matt claimed.

“And your big mouth. Do you want to hold her, Cilla?”

“I thought you’d never ask. Trade.” She put the lamb on the bed, took the baby. “Look at you. Look how pretty you are. How are you feeling, Josie?”

“Good. Really good. Only seven and a half hours of blood, sweat and tears with this one. Ethan took twice that.”

“Got some stuff here for big bro.” Ford set the coloring books on the foot of the bed.

“Oh, that’s so sweet! My parents just took him home for dinner. He looks so big, so sturdy. I can hardly… Oh, hormones still working,” she managed when her eyes filled.

“It’s a full house!” Cathy announced as she and Tom came in with a bouquet of pink roses and baby’s breath. “Let me see that beautiful baby.”

Cilla turned obligingly.

“Oh, look at all that hair. Tom, just look at this sweet thing.”

“Pretty as a picture.” Tom set the flowers down among the garden of others, then poked Brian in the shoulder. “When are you going to get busy making us one? Matt’s got two up on you now. You, too, Ford.”

“Slackers,” Josie agreed, and held out her arms for Olivia.

“I have such high standards,” Brian said. “I can’t settle for any woman who isn’t as perfect as Mom.”

“That’s a clever way out of it,” Cathy commented, but she beamed with pleasure as she stepped over to kiss Brian’s cheek. She turned and kissed Matt. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. We figured we had another week. When Josie called this morning, I figured it was to remind me to bring her home a caramel coconut sundae. She’s been eating mountains of them.”

“I have, too!” Josie said with a laugh.

“It was peanut brittle for me. Acres of peanut brittle. I’m lucky I have a tooth left in my head.”

“Never touched it again after Brian was born,” Tom commented.

“It’ll probably be a good long while before I can look at coconut.” Josie stroked Olivia’s cheek. “Thank God I didn’t go another week.”

“And now you’ll be able to show off the baby at Cilla’s party. We’re all looking forward to that,” Cathy added. “I guess you could say the house is your baby.”

“Without the pink teddy bear and pretty white dresses,” Cilla agreed.

Matt passed out more cigars. “I had to bail out today. We’d just started installing the kitchen cabinets. How’s it going?”

“We just have to set the island, put on the doors, the hardware. We’ll be ready for the counters, on schedule.”

“I’m going to have a powwow with Patty and Ford’s mother. And if you sweet-talk him,” Cathy told Cilla, “Tom might make his special ribs.”

Cilla smiled. “What makes them special?”

“It’s all in the rub,” Tom claimed. “Family secret.”

“He won’t even give me the recipe.”

“It passes down only through the bloodline. Many have tried to unlock the secret. None have succeeded. We’ve got to be on our way, Cathy.”

“Meeting friends for dinner. You get some rest, Josie. I’ll pop in to see you and that precious baby tomorrow when I’m here.”

It took several more minutes for the leave-taking, especially when other people came in. By the time Cilla and Ford walked out, she had a bubble-gum cigar in her pocket.

“It’s nice that your parents-yours, Brian’s, Matt’s-take such an interest in all of you. It’s almost tribal.”

“We grew up practically joined at the hip, along with Shanna. Her parents split about ten years ago. They both remarried and moved out of the area.”

“Still, three out of four sticking with it. Well above national average. They looked so happy. Matt and Josie. Little beams of happiness shooting out of their eyes. How long have they been married?”

“About six years, I guess. But they’ve had a thing a lot longer. Listen, if you want to stop and have dinner, that’s okay.” His fingers tapped on the steering wheel. “But I’d kind of like to get home.”

“No, I’m fine. Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing’s wrong.” Except a rampant case of nerves, he realized. And the sudden and inescapable understanding that he needed to take the next step, make the next move.

Ready or not, he thought. Here it comes.

HE POURED two glasses of wine, brought them out to the veranda where she sat rubbing Spock with her foot and studying the house across the road.

“The coat of primer on the front of the first story, on the veranda, doesn’t add style. But it’s clean. And it shows care and intent. It was the oddest thing, Ford, the oddest thing. To be working with one of Matt’s crew on the cabinets, knowing my father was out back scraping old paint, and Angie was out front priming for new. Then Patty shows up at lunchtime with a bunch of subs and sides. Before they were fully devoured, she has a paintbrush in her hand.

“I didn’t know what to think of it, what to make of it.”

“Family pitches in.”

“That’s just it. For basically the first half of my life, family was an illusion. A stage set. I used to dream about my mother when I was a kid. Those lucid, conversational dreams I get. But she was on that set, part of that illusion, a combination of her and Lydia-the actress who played Katie’s mother.”

“Seems pretty much normal to me, given the circumstances.”

“My therapist said my subconscious merged them because I was unhappy with the reality. Big duh, and it was more complicated than that. I wanted pieces of both those worlds. But I was me in them, not Katie. I was Cilla. Katie had her family, for eight seasons anyway.”

“And Cilla didn’t.”

“It was a different kind of structure.” A shaky one, she thought now. “Later, I stepped away from it. I had to. And coming here, I stepped out again. It’s strange trying to figure out how to blend in, or catch up, or sign on with family at this stage.”

“Be mine.”

“What?”

“Be my family.” He set the ring box on the table between them. “Marry me.”

For an instant she wasn’t capable of thought or speech, as if she’d taken a sudden, shocking blow to the head. “Oh my God, Ford.”

“It’s not a poisonous insect,” he said when she snatched her hands away. “Open it.”

“Ford.”

“Open it, Cilla. You’re not supposed to piss a guy off when he’s proposing. Thrill or crush, but not piss off.”

When she hesitated, Spock grumbled at her, and bumped his head into her shin.

“Just open it.”

She did, and in the soft dusk the ring gleamed like dreams. Lucid, lovely dreams.

“You don’t wear jewelry much, and when you do, you don’t go for the flash. You go more subtle, more classy.” He felt that thing in his chest again, the hot rock of pressure he’d experienced with her father in the kitchen. “So I figure, you’re not going to impress the girl with a big, fat rock. Plus you work with your hands, and that has to be considered. So having the diamonds set in instead of sticking up made sense. My mother helped me pick it out a few days ago.”

Yet another layer of panic coated her throat. “Your mother.”

“She’s a woman. It’s the first ring I’ve bought for a woman, so I wanted some input. I liked the idea of the three stones. The past, the right now, the future. We’ve got our yesterdays, we’ve got our right now. I want a future with you. I love you.”