Giddon chuckled. "I can vouch for the fact that her stomach is empty."
Lisa ignored his crude implication and kept her attention on his mother. "I'd be glad to help you with supper. I . . ."
"No, you sit down and relax. You've been through enough today."
A curly blond head peeked around the corner and large blue eyes studied the stranger cautiously. Lisa smiled and glanced up at Giddon. "This must be your daughter."
Giddon held his hands out and the toddler hurled herself into his arms. Using her momentum, he swung her over his head. She giggled wildly and he lowered her to his chest, hugged her close. "This is my daughter, Tammy. She's three."
The little girl was adorable in a Shirley Temple kind of way. "It's nice to meet you, too, Tammy," Lisa said. "Are you in preschool yet?"
Tammy regarded her suspiciously, ducking her head shyly. "I be in fust gwade tomowow."
Giddon chuckled. "She starts preschool this fall. Everything is either yesterday, today or tomorrow." He put the girl down and spatted her backside playfully. "Now go wash up for supper."
Tammy half skipped and hopped down the hall, throwing a shy smile over her shoulder at Lisa before disappearing into a doorway.
Giddon indicated the couch. "Have a seat." He said, and dropped into a recliner. He picked up a newspaper and snapped it open, his attention instantly captured by something he found in its crinkled pages.
Lisa gingerly settled her body on the couch. It ached in places there couldn't be muscles. Strange, but she didn't remember doing anything in the accident that required enough exertion to strain muscles. Her stomach lurched again as she thought about the way the car had stopped. Again she had avoided death. Only luck had kept her from joining her family today. Luck, or fate? "Maybe I was supposed to be with them," she thought, not realizing she spoke aloud.
Giddon glanced at her sharply over the top of the paper. "With who?"
She hesitated. It was no secret. It had been in all the local papers, but she wasn't sure she could talk about it without getting emotional.
"You said maybe you were supposed to be with them," he reminded her.
"My family," she managed tersely.
"Probably," he mused, his attention returning to the newspaper. "Then you wouldn't have run off that cliff."
When she didn't respond, he peered over the paper again. "Why weren't you with them?"