It wasn’t too surprising. Everyone adored Charlie, but Shane did especially. Maybe it had something to do with her being the first one to hold him; I don’t really know. But she loved him. She’d come to visit us at least once a day, and she’d hold him and talk to him and tell him anything she could think of. She doted on him, and Alice and I mocked her for it but deep down we thought it was adorable.

We knew she’d gone to Helena to see about fostering, and Alice’s suspicions about Shane being in love with Jenny got stronger, mostly because they’d both have to foster the child if it was approved. When I protested that being roommates didn’t mean they both had to parent, Alice scoffed at me. “Come on,” she muttered at me. “They’re totally together.” I just rolled my eyes and shrugged, not caring in the slightest and figuring that if they really were together, they had a right to privacy.

I ignored her, just like everyone else did. Even Shane and Jenny didn’t really seem to pay much attention to it. They were used to Alice’s gossiping, and nobody gave it much mind. We all figured she was a little bored. Aside from taking care of the kids all day and writing every now and then, she didn’t do very much. She couldn’t, really, and all those years as a reporter and a radio host had made her into a gossip hound. I was surprised I didn’t come home to find huge stacks of celebrity gossip magazines in the living room, but she’d never really been into that sort of thing. I was grateful for that.

Alice was still under contract, and she still worked on her novel. It was at a much slower pace than the previous ones had been, obviously, since she had so much more to do now with two young children at home. But the previous books had been whirlwinds and she’d finished them in record time, so her slowdown didn’t hurt her career at all. We’d set up a bouncy chair in Alice’s outdoor office for Kallie when she was a baby, and now Charlie used it when Alice wrote in the day. She made a little blocked off area with toys and books for Kallie, too.