Chapter 4

CHAPTER

FOUR

DALTON

I slicked my fingers through my hair, smoothing the last strands into place, and checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror, tugging at the ends of my bowtie so it sat perfectly. Every hair was in place, my face was smooth and clean-shaven, and I looked good.

I smoothed down the front of my tux and adjusted my cuffs.

I was so ready for this.

There was a whine at the bathroom door and the scrabbling of claws. I waited for Marty to come barreling into the bedroom to fetch Squirrel like he usually did, but all I heard was another whine, more urgent this time.

"I'm coming buddy," I said, swinging the door open. Squirrel eased himself to his feet and led the way slowly downstairs, and I let him out into the yard. While he was outside I filled his water bowl and checked my watch. We had to leave soon. I went back inside.

"Marty?" I called.

Silence.

While not knowing what Marty was doing wasn't as much of a worry as it would have been during our college days, it was unusual—especially today of all days. At least a little bit of sound and motion still tended to follow Marty wherever he went. It was part of the Marty O'Brien experience, and I loved him for it.

"Babe?" I called again.

I knew he was dressed—the hanger for his tux was empty, and I'd had to listen to him grumble about wearing shoes on a Saturday—but now he'd vanished into thin air.

I checked my watch again. The sitter was due to arrive any minute, and if we didn't hurry we'd be late. I let Squirrel back inside and said, "Where's Marty, huh? Can you find him?"

Squirrel gazed at me with soulful eyes and then wandered over to his basket and sank down with a sigh.

So no help there, then.

It wasn't like I was surprised; he was an old dog. His days of running wild with Marty were well and truly behind him. These days he preferred to be petted gently and fed snacks on the couch. And who could blame him?

"Marty," I called again. "Where are you? Hayley's going to be here in ten minutes, and we need to be ready to go."

Time management was still one of Marty's weak points—that and donuts.

I stuck my head around the living room door, but it was empty. I did the same in the dining room, not expecting to see him in there—we ate in the kitchen mostly, and the dining room hardly saw any use—and did a double take when I saw a little daisy-print butt sticking out from under one of the chairs.

"Amina?"

She wriggled backwards and stood up, her thumb stuck in her mouth. She used her free hand to point under the table.

I crouched down to see what was going on under there.

Through the forest of chair legs, I saw Nasr first. He was sitting there, hugging his drawn-up legs, with his forehead resting on his knees. And Marty was wedged under there with him, wearing his tux and a stricken look on his face.

"Hey," he said in a calm voice that didn't match his expression, his hand resting on Nasr's back. "Uh, I think we should call Hayley and let her know we don't need her tonight."

"Okay," I said, pulling my phone out and sending off a quick text. Hayley was our sitter, and she was great. We would definitely pay her for her time, whether we'd used it or not. Amina loved her, but Nasr...

Well, Nasr was six, at best guess. Amina was little enough that we hoped she hadn't retained too many traumatic memories of her life before us. Nasr, though, was carrying a lot of messed up stuff in his head, way more than any kid should, and despite the fact that we'd talked about the wedding for months now, and how Hayley would be staying overnight with them, it looked like when the time came for it to actually happen, his fear of abandonment had come back in full force. I'd skipped the bachelor party in favor of a cartoon and pizza night, and even then Nasr had worriedly watched the door as though he was afraid Marty might never step back through it.

I sat down on the floor, and Amina crawled into my lap. "Okay," I said. "What's the plan?"

Because Marty always had a new plan.

When I'd joined Médecins Sans Frontières, we'd agreed that Marty would stay home for the year.

"Change of plans," he'd said with a grin when he'd turned up in Calais three weeks later. "Turns out they can use lawyers here too. And I really missed you, boo!"

And yes, he'd Facetimed a very confused Squirrel at his grandpa's every night.

When I'd first noticed the little boy with the baby hanging around the temporary clinic in the refugee camp, I'd worked hard at gaining the boy's trust, and enlisted Marty to try to figure out where they came from and who they were with.

And it turned out they had nobody left.

Marty had gone quiet for a day or two after he found out, and the next night he'd turned to me, expression more serious than I'd ever seen, and said, "We can't leave them here, Dalton. Change of plans?" Which had been a relief, since I'd been planning on asking him the same thing.

That was just over a year ago now. It hadn't been easy, but I'd always said Marty would be hell on wheels as a lawyer, and when it came to adopting those kids? He'd been unstoppable. So here we were, back in the States with our two kids, a shitload of ongoing therapy sessions, and a fallback position of using Google Translate whenever we stumbled across a tricky English word that the kids didn't know. Their English, it had to be said, was a shitload better than our Arabic. Hell, they even had better French than us. And all because Marty O'Brien didn't think inside the box.

Hell, Marty didn't know there was a box.

So I knew he'd have something figured out this time, too.

He grinned at me as he rubbed Nasr's back. "Hey, Nasr. Wanna come to a wedding?"

Nasr nodded silently, and Marty beamed and said, "Change of plans."

The thing about parenthood was that no matter how hard you tried, you were never prepared for every situation—case in point, at no time since we'd moved back to Richmond had I said to myself, "You know what these kids need? A formal outfit in case they attend a society wedding."

So we worked with what we had, which were matching purple Hawaiian shirts and cargo pants from Grandpa Martin and Grandpa Billy. Great for a luau. Not so much for today.

"Marty, omigod," was all Briar had to say when we turned up at Saint Stephen's with two little kids in tow.

"Hey, Briar," Marty said with an easy smile. "It's cool we brought Nasr and Amina, right?"

"Hi, guys!" Briar said with a smile too bright to be real. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, this is fine. I'm going to have to add two seats to your table at the reception, but I can do it."

"Nah," Marty said easily. "Too many new people. These two probably wanna sit in our laps. Right guys?"

Nasr nodded vigorously, and clung a little more tightly to my hand. I couldn't say I blamed him. Not only was a wedding something new and unknown, but it was also full of strangers. The church was old and imposing enough; I had no doubt the reception would be intimidating in different ways.

Amina nodded because Nasr nodded. She was too little to remember much, but she knew enough to look to her big brother if she was unsure about anything—although she trusted Marty almost as much. I'd never thought of Marty as the father figure type, but something about him drew the little girl to him like a flower opening toward the sun, and it was kind of beautiful to see.

Nasr was quieter, more reserved, and he and I hadn't connected as instantly as Marty and Amina, but we'd forged a bond while I was working at the clinic and he'd hung around watching me. He'd really latched onto me after Amina had caught a chest infection which I'd cleared up with a round of antibiotics. That had been enough to convince him I could be trusted, and now he looked to me in the same way Amina looked to him.

This parenting business was terrifying, but it felt like the most important thing I'd ever done. More important than being a doctor, even, and I'd worked for that my whole life.

Nasr clung tightly to my hand as we walked inside the church.

Charlie strode down the aisle to meet us. "Wow, you guys are cutting it fine!"

"I already said that!" Briar exclaimed. He hadn't, but his stress levels had certainly telegraphed his feelings on the matter .

Amina, sitting on Mary's hip, tugged on his sleeve and whispered something in his ear.

"He is tall," Marty said with a grin. "Like a big orange giraffe! I'll bet later on he'll give you a piggy back! Won't you, Uncle Charlie?"

Amina beamed when Charlie nodded.

"Okay, let's move it along, please!" Briar said.

Nasr gripped my hand even more tightly.

"Tanner! Hey!" Marty called out as we got to my assigned row. "You and Dalton can be pew buddies! Okay, you kids can sit here with Daddy, okay? I gotta go with Uncle Charlie."

I was pretty sure Charlie almost swallowed his tongue.

Uncle Charlie? Tanner mouthed at me under cover of the organ that was quietly playing.

Shut up, Uncle Tanner, I mouthed back as I drew Nasr with me onto the pew.

Out of all our friends, Charlie and Tanner were the only ones who hadn't met the kids yet. But now they were back in Richmond, they were on automatic uncle duty.

He laughed, so I guessed he'd understood well enough. I'd been at med school when Tanner and Charlie had gotten together, but we all moved within the gravitational pull of Marty's personality, so it was inevitable that we'd gotten to know each other. It was great that they were back in the country now, and even better that they'd decided to stay in Richmond.

Nasr and Amina needed all the family they could get.

"See you guys after," Marty said, and held Amina out to me.

She made an unhappy noise, and clung hard to him.

"Marty, we have like three minutes until the processional!" Briar hissed urgently.

Marty held my gaze for a moment.

Oh no.

He grinned. "Change of plans."

And then he swept toward the front of the church, with Amina still in his arms and Charlie and Briar hurrying after him.

Because we'd run late, the church was already full and I didn't have too long to panic about ruining what Briar had called a million times "the wedding of the season." Jesus, Briar was going to murder Marty for this, and I hoped Marty would thank him for a quick death, because it would be a mercy compared to what happened when Scout's mother caught up with him. I'd met Mrs. Talbot-Smith a few times, and not once had she struck me as anything approaching chill. It was where Scout got it.

Scout .

Oh no.

I looked helplessly toward the altar, where Marty—and Amina—were lined up with Archer and Casey, all of them there to support Trey. Casey had taken out his buttonhole and was showing the flower to Amina. She did grabby hands, and smooshed it.

Oh no.

But I sat there with a smile plastered on my face and tried to look relaxed, because Nasr got anxious if he thought there was trouble in the air—he was afraid that he might be the cause of it, and afraid that me and Marty might decide to get rid of him because of it, no matter how many times we'd told him it would never happen, that he was part of our family now. Up at the altar, Amina was now trying to grab Marty's buttonhole, and he was grinning at her like it was the cutest thing he'd ever seen. Which, to be fair, it was . But not right now.

There was a sudden hum of low noise as the organ breathed, and then it struck a single chord. The guys at the altar turned to face the aisle, and everyone rose as the organist launched into the processional .

Four guys in expensive tuxes, and one little girl in a violently bright Hawaiian shirt.

Oh no.

Charlie and Briar and Bax Three, Scout's brother, walked down the aisle, with Scout following behind them.

Scout was going to be pissed .

I saw his eyes widen briefly as he took in the sight of Amina on Marty's hip, her hands full of squashed flower. And then, in an action so unprecedented and shocking that it took my breath away, Scout Talbot-Smith's face cracked with a genuine, honest-to-god smile.

And he walked forward to meet his soon-to-be-husband at the altar.