CHAPTER FOUR
Emily took a final sip of her decaf coffee and put the mug down on the kitchen table. She’d slept deeply but had awoken feeling groggy—partly because of the alarm clock being set a whole hour earlier than she’d gotten accustomed to over the summer—and she really could have benefited from some actual caffeine. It was probably the thing she was most looking forward to once Baby Charlotte arrived, the thing she missed the most and yearned for the most. She watched Daniel enviously as he drank his across the table from her.
“Right, darling,” Emily said at last, looking at Chantelle. “It’s time to head to school.”
Chantelle was sitting with her head bowed over a pile of clock pieces, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth in concentration. Her empty bowl of cereal was b
