“Girl, you want your baby brother to be the father of your child?” she asked incredulously. “And here I thought my baby sister was crazy when she tried to pick somebody.”

Alice shook her head in my general direction. “Yeah really. I meant more like, I don’t know, a distant cousin or something. Not Howie! That’s way too close for comfort. Especially since I’m hoping he’ll want to spend time with the baby.”

“I didn’t mean anything bad,” I said, trying really hard not to appear like I was going to cry. My cheeks felt like they were on fire and I knew I was blushing terribly. I didn’t say anything else, choosing to look down at the table instead.

“It’s okay,” I heard Shane say. She seemed to be the first one who had noticed that I wasn’t doing so well, because as soon as she said it, everyone else echoed her.

“I know what you meant, baby,” Alice assured me. “I just think Howie’s a little bit too close, you know?”

“I guess. I didn’t really think about that. I just thought that if it was Howie, the baby would look like me and be close to being mine…”

“They baby will be yours whether you’re related by blood or not,” Jenny told me. I smiled weakly at her. At least I didn’t feel like crying anymore, but when I actually gave it some thought I could understand why it was a weird idea.

“Yeah, none of that stuff really matters. Kallie’s ours and she’s not related at all,” Alice reminded me, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Maybe we can see if you have any removed cousins or something, how about that?”

“Well, I think it’s okay to look at the donors from the clinic,” I said. “It was just a bad idea anyway.”

“It wasn’t a bad idea,” Tina told me. I just shrugged.

I cheered up a little as breakfast went on, and by the time the others started to leave for their days I was feeling a little better. Helena had Kallie until that afternoon, and Alice and I had the morning free. I’m sure I could have called and seen about speaking engagements for ESPN or something, but I’d been in contact with them and already had a couple appearances scheduled in the coming month. I was also doing some ads, one for Fila and one for Mercedes, so I felt that I didn’t need to call that day.