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and as I looked into his eyes I thought,
I love this man.
A warmth I hadn't felt in a while curled around my heart and I reached over to touch his cheek.
    The screen door slapped open, and Anneke burst into the house. “Mommy, Mommy, I found a worm!” She held it up, a long pink
     string that bunched and pulled and made my stomach curl.
    Okay. Calm voice. Soothing voice. Don't make her drop it. “Honey, Mommy doesn't like worms in her kitchen.” Surely it was
     too cold for worms. Where had it come from?
    Anneke held it up in front of her face, inspecting it further. Then, with a light shrug, she turned and ran directly into
     her little brother, who had followed her in. Nicholas fell back on his diapered bottom, his bland expression registering only
     mild surprise.
    But Anneke collapsed in a tangle of long, skinny legs and flailing arms, her cry of indignation a complete overreaction to
     what had actually happened.
    “Where's Teddy, the worm?” she exclaimed.
    “Should have gotten her a dog,” Dan muttered, finishing his cookie as Anneke scrabbled around on the floor.
    “I lost my worm!” Anneke wailed.
    Two words,
lost
and
worm,
galvanized me into action.
    I pushed past Dan and snatched Nicholas into my arms before he found Anneke's new pet and inspected it the way he did with
     all new discoveries. With his fingers, then his mouth.
    I quickly scanned the floor. A pink worm should be easy to pick out on the Day-Glo linoleum. “Honey, stop crawling. I see
     it.” I juggled Nicholas, reaching for her arm just as she put her hand down in the wrong place.
    And Teddy was no more.
    Anneke discovered this the same moment I finally snagged her hand. The wail she let loose would send air force pilots scrambling
     to their planes.
    Dan made it to the murder scene in time to catch his sobbing child in his arms.
    “A little speed would have been nice,” I muttered, shifting Nicholas's chubby weight on my hip.
    “It's just a worm, Leslie.”
    “That's now squished all over our kitchen floor and your daughter's hand.”
    Dan inspected Anneke's hand, then wiped it on his shirt. He cuddled Anneke, whose sobs didn't show any sign of shifting to
     normal.
    “Dan, for goodness sakes, wash her hands,” I snapped, raising my voice to be heard above the growing din.
Great, Leslie. Way to motivate him.
I opened my mouth, apology ready to spill out when I heard the door open behind us followed by the thump of shoes and two
     young girls burst into the house.
    “Hey, Uncle Dan!” they both said at the same time.
    I looked over my shoulder in time to see the grinning faces of Tabitha, Gloria's daughter, and Allison, Judy's oldest girl.
     Tabitha was fourteen,Allison thirteen, and to me they were interchangeable. They could be sisters instead of cousins.
    “Is your dad at the corrals already?” Dan asked Tabitha, obviously thankful for the interruption.
    “He's backing up the trailer with the horses in it,” she answered in a tone that made it clear she was Gloria's daughter.
    “Then I better get going.” I saw an unfamiliar light of pleasure in his eyes as he scrambled to his feet. Dan had been talking
     all day about the horses Gerrit was delivering, and the sparkle in his eyes left me with a flicker of jealousy.
    He handed a still-sniffing Anneke to Tabitha, flashed me a quick smile, and left.
    Nicholas let out an angry wail, but Tabitha, still cradling Anneke on her hip, tickled him, distracting him from the departure
     of his beloved father. I often wondered how Dan got such a huge return on such a small investment of time. I spent precious
     hours playing with Nicholas, reading to him, and still he resisted my charms. A quick tickle, a brush over his chubby cheeks
     was all Dan had to bestow on our son and Nicholas was desolate whenever he left.
    “So how do you like being on the farm?” Allison asked, watching Tabitha play with Nicholas and Anneke but making no move to
     join them.
    Time to put on my hearty voice.