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you have one of those chairs that rocks the baby?” she asked Eric.
    He nodded and pointed to the far corner.
    Jesse dug it out from behind a pile of towels and set it in front of the sofa. Molly fussed when she was put in, but quieted as the chair began to crank back and forth.
    The piles of laundry needed attention first, Jesse thought. “Where are the washer and dryer?” she asked Eric.
    He showed her the utility room off the kitchen. She loaded in towels, added soap and started the machine. She took baby clothes out of the dryer and quickly folded them, giving him socks to match up.
    “Excellent job,” she told him, as she cleaned off the kitchen table, wiped it down, then stacked the clean clothes in piles. “Are you thirsty?”
    “Uh-huh. I can have juice.”
    There were boxes in the fridge. She got him settled with his drink, then loaded the dishwasher with as much as she could fit in before filling the sink and washing the big pots and pans by hand. She just started drying them when Nicole walked into the kitchen.
    “Where’s Molly?” she asked.
    Jesse pointed to the slumbering baby in the rocking chair. “There’s a load of towels going in the washer. The dishwasher is full, but I didn’t know if it would pull too much hot water from your shower, so I waited.”
    Nicole sank into a chair at the table. “You didn’t have to do this.”
    “I don’t mind.” She knew what it was like to be overwhelmed, to think she was never going to get enough rest to feel human again.
    The doorbell rang. Nicole winced, but Eric went running. “It’s Billy and his mom,” he yelled. Molly started to cry.
    “I’ll take the baby,” Jesse said.
    “Thanks. Eric’s spending the afternoon at his friend’s house. I’ll be right back.”
    While Jesse soothed Molly back to sleep, Nicole saw off her son, then returned to the kitchen, looking exhausted. They stood staring at each other for an awkward second.
    “So, you’re back in Seattle?” Nicole asked as she sank into a chair at the table.
    “For now.” Jesse remembered the pictures she’d brought and went to get them. When she returned, she handed them to her sister. “Gabe’s been asking about his father. I’ve put off their meeting as long as I could, but I’m running out of excuses. So we’re here, at least for a few weeks.”
    She hesitated because Nicole hadn’t looked at the pictures. “I went to see Matt this morning. He wasn’t expecting me.” There was an understatement. “I’d told him I was pregnant when I left, but he didn’t believe he was the father. Given the circumstances, I guess I can’t blame him.”
    Now came the hard part, Jesse thought. She’d practiced what she wanted to say dozens of times, but suddenly couldn’t think of any of her carefully prepared phrases.
    “I didn’t sleep with Drew,” she said, jumping in and hoping her sister would listen. “I never slept with him, tried to sleep with him or thought of him as anything but your husband. He and I were friends. We would talk and that was it. I was in love with Matt.”
    Nicole stood and crossed to the dishwasher, where she pushed a couple of buttons to start the cycle. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
    “We have to eventually.”
    “Why?” Nicole turned to face her, then sighed. “Okay. Maybe. But not today.”
    Jesse wanted to push. She’d felt awful about Nicole’s hurt and anger for five years and she didn’t want to wait any longer. But the mature choice would be to let her sister get used to the idea of her being back first.
    “I’ll leave the pictures,” Jesse said quietly. “You can look at them later. There’s a lot of Matt in Gabe. Especially in his eyes. It made it hard to forget.”
    Not hard. Impossible.
    Nicole nodded. “I will.” She crossed her arms across her chest. “I thought I’d hear from you when you turned twenty-five.”
    Meaning she thought Jesse would show up to get her half of the bakery. Their father had left the