“Is he really my daddy?” Christie asked from the passenger seat.

“Yes, honey.”

Christie took a deep breath and let it out all at once, curling up her lower lip so the air rushed up her face and lifted her bangs. She giggled as the delicate hairs danced before settling back on her forehead.

“But he didn’t know he was my daddy before you told him today.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because Stacey didn’t tell him about you.”

“And you didn’t know about him?”

“Right.”

“Couldn’t he see me when I was in her tummy?”

“Stacey left his house before you were big enough to see.”

“How did I get in her tummy?”

Erin gripped the steering wheel tightly and resisted the urge to groan. As if there wasn’t enough going on, now Christie wanted to talk about where babies came from.

“Oh, look, you can see the ocean,” she said enthusiastically, trying to distract Christie.

It worked. The four-year-old peered over the dashboard and grinned. “It’s blue and goes forever. Does the ocean end?”

“The water doesn’t stop in one place and start in another, but it gets a new name.”

Christie glanced up at her and wrinkled her nose. “The water has a name?”

“Uh-huh. It’s the Pacific Ocean.”

Christie mulled that over for a minute. Erin gave her a quick look. Her daughter had been asking questions from the moment she learned how to string words together. Her adventurous spirit was pure Stacey. Erin liked to think that Christie had gotten her quick intelligence from their side of the family as well, but after researching Parker Hamilton, she had to admit he probably had something to do with that.