“You don’t have any problems getting to sleep, do you?” she whispered to Sammy. Brushing back the little girl’s blond locks, she stared at her daughter for a long while.  It was something she did often while Sammy slept.  Counting the number of times her chest rose and fell with each breath.  Losing count, then starting over. Tracing the lines of the little girl’s face, imagining what she would look like when she was older.  Sammy was a mirror image of her, but Spencer wondered if that would change as she got older.  She and Carmen had never seen a picture of the donor, but Carmen had wanted someone with dark features to match her own.  But so far, it seemed the blond hair and blue eyes Spencer had gotten from her own mother were winning the battle of genetics.

When Sammy began to stir, Spencer quietly got up from the bed to avoid waking her.  Leaving her daughter for hours a day was hard enough.  Leaving her daughter while she was awake and crying was more than Spencer could cope with just now.

By the time Spencer was dressed, her father was already in the kitchen making omelets.

“One day I’m going to beat you down here,” Spencer joked, sitting at the table.  Her father plopped a cheese omelet on her plate.

“And one day I’m going to convince you to let me put some vegetables in that thing,” her father said, moving back to the stove.

“Un-unh,” Spencer mumbled, her mouth already full. “It’s better this way.”

“Sure it is.  No fiber.  No vitamin C.  Just fat and protein.”

“And calcium,” Spencer protested. “Personally, I credit these omelets for my cavity-free teeth and lack of osteoporosis.”