11.

I don't know how long I've been asleep for, but judging by how stiff my neck is and the line of dried drool coming from my mouth, I'd say it's been a while.

I crane my sore neck to the side and look at the dark window.

"How is it still dark?" I mutter to myself grumpily.

"It's not." I jolt at the sound of Ben's voice in the kitchen. "It's dark again."

I sit up straight, my head hurting at the temples. "I slept the whole day?" I say, swiping at my mouth.

"You must have been exhausted." He calls back. "Coffee?"

"Oh!" I jump up from the couch. "Gimme gimme."

I go into the kitchen, shielding my eyes from the bright fluorescent light.

Ben is standing at the kitchen counter beside the fridge, placing a new K-cup into the Keurig.

I drop onto a bar stool at the island and wait impatiently as the coffee maker wines and sputters. I'm not usually big into coffee, but my head is pounding and I need my body to wake up.

"Cream and sugar?" Ben asks, taking the big red mug over to the other counter.

"Both please." I nod. "My head is killing me."

"Here." He says, shuffling through a drawer and passing me a pill bottle of Tylenol and then a glass of water to chase it with.

"Thanks." I greedily take two and swig them down. "Now caffeine." I hold out both hands, waggling my fingers.

Ben grins as he passes me the mug and I take a deep sip, groaning as the warm liquid goes down.

"Not a morning person, huh?" He laughs and I shrug, drinking some more before I set it on the island in front of me.

"Not a morning person." I agree. "Not necessarily a night person either." I add. "Really, barely a person at all."

Ben shakes his head and comes to lean against the side of the island where I'm sitting. "I wouldn't say all that now." He smiles. It's not the first time I notice how pretty his smile is. The man could do toothpaste commercials on the side.

His chin and cheeks are covered with a thin layer of stubble, but you can still see that he has dimples.

"I wish I had dimples." I don't mean to say it out loud, but there it is.

He laughs, looking away. "Don't start." He says.

"What?" I ask, confused.

He just shakes his head. "It's all I ever hear about." He smiles, but you can tell he's holding it in, not letting it show. "It's exhausting."

"Oh poor pitiful, Ben." I mock. "It must be so hard living life so beautiful."

He cuts his eyes at me at the same time I realize I've just called the man beautiful.

"You'd be the one to know." He says under his breath before walking back over to the counter by the fridge.

Yep, I'm not touching that comment with a ten foot pole, but I do hide my smile in my mug as I take another deep swallow of the coffee.

"Where's Elizabeth?" I ask, looking around like she's just going to walk in.

"Give me your phone." He says and I narrow my eyes at him. "Just do it." He laughs.

I slide off of the stool and go back to the couch to search for it, finding it wedged between the cushions.

I walk back to the kitchen and pass it over to him, leaning against the counter beside him to watch over his shoulder as he downloads an app.

I watch him type in a username and password and then he passes the phone back to me.

I look down at the grainy video on my phone and see a big messy bed with a small cradle beside it, Elizabeth snoozing away in it.

"You got a monitor." I say, smiling down at the screen.

"Set it up a couple hours ago." He nods. "She was fussy for a bit, but she likes the skin to skin thing and she has been taking her bottles." He furrows his brows as he looks over at me. "She's really shaking sometimes." He says, his voice dripping with worry.

"That's normal." I frown. "Give me your number and I'll send you the articles I was reading yesterday."

"Yes, please." He says, his eyes lighting up. "I need all the help I can get."

"Do you have a room for her?" I ask and he straightens.

"You wanna see?" He asks excitedly.

"Duh." I respond, following him as he rushes out of the kitchen.

We go up the stairs where there is a bedroom on the right side of the hall, a bathroom to the left and another closed door a few steps down.

"It's not done yet, obviously." He says, suddenly looking nervous as he opens the door and flips the light on.

I step into the smaller room.

The walls are a plain white and the window facing the front doesn't have any blinds yet, but there is a fully put together dark wood crib to the right of the door and a changing table set up beside the small dark wood dresser.

"It used to be a guest room." He says. "I tossed the bed and stuff into the backyard for now, so don't judge me on that either, but I've got all kinds of stuff to put in here."

I look around the floor at all of the boxes.

A baby swing, more of the big pillows she likes to sleep on, a high chair, a random assortment of baby toys and blankets, and a laundry basket full of tiny pink and yellow clothes.

"Wow." I say, taking it all in.

Ben laughs a little nervously. "Yeah as soon as I got off of the phone with the hospital I called my mom and she immediately started sending overnight packages." He explains. "I haven't had a chance to do much yet, but I put the crib together while y'all were asleep."

There is still a small tool box laying on the floor beside the crib and I don't know why the thought of him in here putting together a crib is a turn on, but it kinda is.

"This will be perfect for her, Ben." I turn to look at him and he beams.

"You're not just saying that?"

I roll my eyes. "I never just say stuff I don't mean."

He pauses for a second, scrutinizing my face. "I believe that." He says after a minute.

"Good, because it's true." I shrug, skipping over to look into the crib. "When are you going to move her in here?"

"Not until I feel safe sleeping without her next to me." He says. "So probably never."

I laugh. "She's gonna be fine." I say, looking down at the bare baby mattress. "Do you have any bedding?"

"Over here!" He slides passed me and over to the corner by the window and drags over a huge bag from Belk. "Do you like this or do you think it's too much? I started to get plain but then I just got this instead."

He pulls a pack of light pink sheets with tiny purple and yellow butterflies out of the bag and the bumper to go around the crib to match it.

"It's very cute." I laugh, taking them from him.

"I already washed everything but I was waiting until my mom got here to put it on in case I needed to go back and get something else."

"She's a baby, Ben." I laugh at him. "She couldn't care less what you put on her bedding right now. You've got at least a few years before she starts fighting you on everything."

"Teenage girls scare me." Ben shakes his head.

I set the bedding down. "Me too, but she'll be a good one."

"How do you know?"

"Because she'll have plenty of people to love her." I reply quickly.

Ben nods, moving over to sit down in the padded rocking chair across from the crib on the other side of the window.

"I'm scared I'm going to fuck her up." He says quietly. "I have no clue how to be a father."

I grip the side of the crib tightly.

I can't imagine what this is like for him. I know how scary it was thinking I'd be the one taking care of her, and I'm just her aunt. This is his child. He became a father without the nine months to prepare and wrap his head around it.

"I don't really think anyone knows what they're doing when they're just starting out." I say. "I think you just do the best you can every day, and that's all anyone can ask of you." I turn to face him and he looks over at me with big scared brown eyes. "You're not going to fuck her up, Ben."

"I hope you're right."

"I know that I am." I say, lifting my chin. "She's in good hands."

As if on demand, Elizabeth let's put a small whine from the other room and Ben jumps up to go to her.

He comes back with her in his arms, a bottle already tucked in her mouth.

He sits back down in the chair and rocks her while she drinks.

I catch myself staring at the two of them again and I force myself to turn, opening the packet of sheets and pulling it out.

I shake it out and then lean over the crib to put the sheet onto the mattress. When I've got it on nice and tight I lay the mattress back down flat and smooth out the sheet before pulling out the bumper.

"How does this work?" I ask, looking down at it in my hands.

"I think you just wrap it around the inside and tie the little strings to the rails."

"Sounds easy enough." I nod. But my arms aren't long enough to reach the other side so I shake the crib, making sure it's sturdy. I might be starting to have a little bit of faith in his fathering skill, but I don't know about his handiwork yet.

It seems sturdy enough though so I hoist myself up over the rail and sit down inside of the crib.

Ben laughs from the other side of the room.

"Look at silly Aunt Hay Hay." He says to Elizabeth, turning her in his arms. She blinks, uninterested and continues to drink her bottle. "She's in your bed."

I glare at Ben. "You did not just nickname me after the brainless chicken from Moana."

"From what?" He asks, looking at me quizzically.

I sigh and shake my head, going back to attaching the bumper. "You're a girl dad now, Ben." I say. "We are going to have to get you up to date on your Disney movie game."

"Maybe Lizzy doesn't want to be a princess." He whispers to her in a sweet low voice. "Maybe she wants to be a knight."

"There is a movie about that one too." I say, laughing. "Quest for Camelot. It was my favorite movie growing up."

"See," he says. "Now that's something we could get into, couldn't we."

"Done." I say triumphantly, looking around at my own handiwork.

I climb out of the crib and re-straighten the sheet. I look down at the finished crib and then dig back in the bag at my feet.

I pull out the light green and yellow seahorse and press it's belly. The stomach lights up and a soft lullaby starts to play.

"I thought it was cute." Ben says.

I lean back over the crib and use the velcro straps at its back to attach it to the inside of the crib.

"Well if that isn't fucking adorable." I laugh and Ben shooshes me.

"Freaking adorable." He grins at me. "Baby ears over here."

Fancy saunters into the room and sniffs around, looking at everything.

"You shouldn't be here." I say to her but she just swooshes her tail before jumping up into Ben's lap and laying down to stare at me. "Brat." I say to her, but I can't help but smile. She is a little cute. Even if the idea of her digging around inside of a litter box filled with her own feces gives me the ick.

She closes her eyes and lays down her head, completely unbothered.

All four of us jump a little when my phone starts to ring and Ben brings Elizabeth up closer to his face, kissing her forehead and whispering to her.

She cries for a second but stops.

"I'm sorry." I whisper, grabbing my phone out of my back pocket and walking into the hallway. "Hello?" I say quietly into the phone.

"Miss Maxwell?"

"This is she." I say, peering back into the room at Ben and Elizabeth.

"We spoke the other day at the hospital, Yolanda?" The woman says and I frown. Her again. "I'm calling to see if you've been in touch with your sister?"

"The other day." I say. "When I was there." I crinkle my face. "Why?"

"I apologize to be calling so early." Yolanda tells me. "But your sister left the hospital sometime over night and no one has been able to locate her."

"I'm sorry, what?" I gasp and Ben lifts his head to look at me, mouthing to ask if everything is ok. I shake my head at him. "When you say left, you mean she was discharged?"

"No ma'am," she tells me. "She left of her own volition and without the doctor on staff's recommendations. That's why I'm calling you."

"What the hell do you mean?" I ask, losing all sense of composure. "You don't know where she is? She was under hospital care and you all just lost her? How does that even happen?"

"I understand this is stressful," she says quickly. "Surveillance shows she left in the middle of the night and she had a car pick her up out front. I was hoping it was you."

"Well it wasn't." I snap.

"I'm sorry, Miss Maxwell." She says with a sigh. "If we hear anything we will be in touch, but as of right now there isn't anything we can do. She's an adult and left on her own. I was only calling to see if you had spoken to her and to let you know what had happened if you hadn't."

I don't want to hear anything else.

I hang up on her and turn to lean my head against the wall and groan into my fist trying to calm myself down.

I jump at Ben's hand on my shoulder.

He gently pulls me back to turn and face him. "What's going on?" He asks and I start crying.

"Alice is gone." I bite my quivering lip. "She took off."