Maybe Tonight by Kim Golden Page A

his father and telling him about the baby would make him feel better. If anything, it had left an even larger hole inside him. Questions still remained unanswered.
    By the time he reached
Dronning
Louise Bridge, the questions he hadn’t asked, the ones he’d felt too uncertain to ask, burned inside him. Almost too soon his apartment building loomed ahead. The sky was a weird orangey black with thick, heavy clouds. Snowflakes fluttered down around him as he stared up at the windows to his bedroom. Laney was sleeping still, he knew this. She hadn’t called and asked where he was. Lately she slept like the dead. Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night afraid that something was wrong and her steady, even breathing and the heat rising from her body was enough to reassure him. Maybe that was all he needed now, to be close to her again.
    He pressed in the code to the main door and then pushed it open. His neighbors’ bikes were all jumbled to the right, under the loggia and protected from the falling snow. Tomorrow he’d have to remember to move his and Laney’s bikes to the shed. He crossed the cobblestone courtyard and then climbed the timeworn granite steps to his apartment. For a brief moment an image of his father, his lined face and sallow skin, his shaggy, dull gray hair flooded his mind. Damn it, no good would come of their being in touch.
    He fumbled for his keys. He could have sworn he’d shoved them in his jacket pocket but they weren’t there now. Had he dropped them along the way home? Walking back to his father’s place would take too long and it was too cold. His legs were freezing and the gloves he wore weren’t thick enough to hold the pervasive damp chill at bay. A stream of choice curses rushed out of him as he knocked on the door. What an idiot he was…the keys….they’d fallen out of his jacket pocket at his father’s place and now he could picture them on the scarred coffee table, waiting for him to return to claim them. He’d have to go back in the morning. His keys to the workshop were on that key ring.
    The door creaked open and a very sleepy-looking Laney pulled him inside.
    “Where’ve you been?” she asked as she fidgeted with the buttons on his coat. “I woke up and you weren’t here.”
    “I went to see my father,” he said and gathered her in his arms. Holding her close, breathing in the warm scent of her skin and the faintly floral scent of the oil she used in her hair always calmed him. “I don’t know if it helped. I don’t know what I want from him.”
    “What did he say?”
    “Nothing…I don’t know. I told him about the baby, but he knew already. Henrik had already told him.”
    “Was he interested?”
    Mads kissed the top of Laney’s head, then planted a gentle kiss on her forehead. She smiled up at him and pushed the darkness away. “I…he said she should name her Liv.”
    “After your mother…”
    He nodded.
    “We should. We could call her Olivia and have Liv as her nickname, or we could call her simply Liv.”
    “You’re okay with that?”
    “I know you call her Liv already.” She stepped back and then pushed his coat off his shoulders. “I saw it on the designs for the nursery.”
    Mads hung up his coat and unraveled the woolen scarf from around his neck. A teenage boy wandered into the living room. He looked uncertain, tired. “Hvem er det?” Mads asked Laney cautiously though he had an idea already. The boy looked too much like Laney’s ex, Niklas. He hung back and said a cautious “
hej
“. “
Er det Jesper?
”
    Laney nodded. “He arrived a little while ago.”
    Mads regarded the teenager. Something about his slumped shoulders and the dazed expression on his face reminded him of the teenager he’d once been. “Does your dad know you’re here?”
    Jesper shook his head no. “I just needed a break. And…I missed Laney.” His voice was raspy as he spoke. He didn’t look up from his feet.
    “You can stay here with us,” Mads said.