"Hi, Daddy. I've been saving all this side for you," Carly said in her nine-year-old voice, sweeping her hand over the yet-undone side of the puzzle. She tossed her silky limp hair aside and gave him that face, the mischievous one with the raised eyebrows and the smile made without parting her lips.

"Oh, saved it, huh?"

Nick walked over and reached down with both hands and his daughter took them on cue, and with a firm grip, he lifted and tossed her up with one motion and then caught her against his chest and she wrapped her legs around his waist and squeezed.

"You didn't just slow down so you could stay up later?" he said into her ear and then kissed her cheek.

"No way," she said, leaning back with her hands now locked behind her father's neck. "I could have done your side easy."

"I know you could have," Nick said, starting to move in a tight circle, beginning the spin he knew she expected, and her eyes got wider and brighter and the fake smile he'd carried in became unconsciously real as they went around together. They were both laughing when Elsa interrupted.

"Buenas noches, Mr. Mullins," said the small elderly woman, wiping her hands with a dish towel. "You need something for your dinner, yes?"

Elsa was Bolivian, a grandmother to two young boys, the sons of her immigrant daughter. A decade ago she came to the United States to take care of her grandsons and earned extra money by taking in the children of working parents as a daytime sitter. Kind and matronly and endlessly patient, she had looked after both of the Mullinses' girls from the time they were babies as their daytime nanny. While Nick and his wife worked, Elsa cared for the girls along with her older grandsons in her daughter's home. By the time the boys were old enough to be home alone, Elsa had fallen in love with the girls, and they with her. Nick offered her a live-in position and after the accident she stayed, although Nick had never asked her to. She took it almost as a duty to watch over him and Carly, to protect the child from her dreams and to protect Nick from himself.