Special Delivery

by Abby Tyler

  Gertrude sure had changed her tune. Just a minute ago she was talking about how Jack didn’t deserve any help.

  “All right, Gertrude, I’ll go.” It wasn’t the first time she’d ticked off the matriarch of Applebottom. And it wouldn’t be the last.

  Louisa headed for the door. She’d done her part by alerting the town Jack needed help. He wouldn’t take too kindly to her interference, but she’d given him fair warning.

  It was a fine spring day, sunny and crisp. She stared up into the bright sky, and said to the clouds, “Poor Jack. Having to rely on somebody else.”

  He would hate every minute of the women picking up his dishes and deciding what he should eat. It made her laugh. Poor strict Jack, never needing anybody. And she’d brought the town on his head. One more time, she’d made him the focus of negative attention. Just not with Vaseline and a football.

  As she got in her car, she felt a little tingle of chagrin. If Maude was going to make Jack his favorite pie, the least she could do in a couple of days was deliver him another pepperoni and olive pizza.

  She was known across town for her “gossip pizza.” Maybe this time, she could cough up one called “apology pie.”

  Chapter 5

  Well, at least his house was clean.

  Jack sat on his sofa with baby Ella, pondering his vacuumed carpet, the neat stacks of diapers, and baskets of freshly folded laundry.

  Louisa had blabbed all right. An army of ladies had shown up the next day, armed with cleaning supplies and casseroles.

  One team had clucked over the baby while the others invaded his house.

  Even Delilah had dropped by with gifts for Nero, his Doberman. The dog finally got up from his oversized bed in the corner of the living room. He’d refused to leave it since the baby had arrived, other than to make an occasional trip to the back yard. Jack hadn’t been able to take him for a proper walk, obviously. Delilah said she’d make sure she’d come over once in a while to get him out.

  Jack had to admit, all of it was something of a relief. He not only had clean clothes and food, but he also had the promise of various women dropping by every day to make sure he continued to have them.

  This didn’t quite solve the problem of his nanny, though.

  While all the women had been great for a few hours, there was no one he could bother for the long haul. He needed someone full-time, willing to manage crazy hours.

  He’d been racking his brain trying to figure out a way to reorganize the three officers’ hours so that he could hire a normal nanny, but there just wasn’t any way. The system had been thought through and had worked perfectly for years. He couldn’t see messing with it now.

  Besides, Isaac had a wife and kids, and needed the day shift more than any of them. Jack’s situation was presumably temporary, and he couldn’t see upsetting the entire applecart with the staff just to put it back the way it was when his sister got out of jail.

  Not that she’d stay out. He probably shouldn’t think short-term. Jenica had never been out for more than two years at a stretch. And even so, she wasn’t exactly mother material, not without serious support.

  What else could he do? This baby was his kin.

  As much as he didn’t want to, he placed a call to his parents, who were retired and living in Florida. They rarely spoke, and pretty much the last thing Jack wanted was for his mother to come down with his domineering father. Buying them a condo in Florida had been his smartest move, even if it meant he had to put off any of his own goals for a while to do it.

  But at this point, he didn’t know what else to do.

  The number rang and rang before his father’s gruff voice came on the voicemail. Just ten seconds of listening to it made him hang up.

  No. They’d ruined his childhood, and Jenica’s disastrous life had begun under their care. He wasn’t going to give them a shot at wrecking Ella too.

  He glanced over at the baby swing shifting back and forth, Ella peacefully sleeping inside. That had been a stroke of pure genius, brought over by one of the women whose grandchildren had outgrown it. It had been the only way to get them to sleep, she’d told him. She’d been right. It worked great for Ella.

  They’d also brought at least fifteen remedies for reflux. He tried about half of them so far, but nothing seemed to stem the eruptions that baby Ella could produce. Maybe now that she slept somewhere other than in his arms, he could do a little reading up on it.

  The only sensible person of the group had been Maude, who patted him affectionately on the arm and said, “She won’t still be spitting up on her wedding day. It will end.”

  He had enough savings to take a leave of absence, but that didn’t help with the police officer problem. They needed three to cover the shifts. Maybe the solution was to find someone temporarily on the force, and he could stay home with the baby.

  But he couldn’t stay home forever. He had to work.

  Regardless, he had to decide something in the next seventy-two hours. His leave was up. The initial crisis might be over with the ladies and their food and laundering, but the bigger one had not been solved.

  A knock sounded at the door. Baby Ella immediately startled and began to wail.

  He really needed to put a sign on the door. One of the grandmothers had suggested it, saying that some of the delivery services were terrible about banging the door like they were trying to knock it down, waking every baby in the Tri-Lake area.

  It was probably today’s casserole or a gawking neighbor. Now that all of Applebottom knew about Ella, the number of random visits had gone up to a ridiculous degree.

  He lifted the baby from the swing, patting her on the back as he went to the door.

  When it swung wide, he took a step back.

  It was Louisa Temple, of all people.

  She held up a large silver disc covered in foil.

  “Are you my food relief today?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “But I saw the list and thought you might be tired of King Ranch chicken and pot pies. I brought a pizza.”

  “You run out of boxes?”

  She glanced down at the foil-covered circle. “Actually, I have retired. I guess you hadn’t heard. There was quite an uproar in town about it. At any rate, I’ve run out of boxes.”

  He stepped aside to let her in, curiosity getting the better of him. “I thought you were doing well with your deliveries.”

  “Well, I was when I had Mom with her Social Security and Dad’s pension. But now she’s gone, and Applebottom doesn’t have quite enough pizza delivery action for me to make it on that alone.”

  She set the pizza down on the coffee table and glanced around. “It looks good here. Are you still mad that I blabbed?”

  Jack decided not to answer that one, instead heading for the kitchen. “I need to get a bottle for Ella.”

  “Here, I’ll take her.” Louisa held out her arms.

  Jack hesitated. He remembered the contented look on Louisa’s face when he came out of the shower that first night. “You sure?”

  “Certainly. Everybody loves a new baby.”

  Jack passed Ella over to Louisa. In the kitchen, he opened a fresh bottle, noting that he was starting to get low. He was going to have to make a trek into Branson soon because this was an unusual brand and the ladies already discovered it wasn’t carried in the Applebottom store.

  Ella had a checkup tomorrow anyway. Might as well bite the bullet and do both things at once.

  When he returned to the living room, Louisa had managed to get Ella quieted down without the swing or the bottle. Maybe the baby was settling in. It was almost as if she knew when she was in good hands.

  Jack shook his head. Where had that thought come from? Louisa Temple wasn’t at all capable to him. She was flighty, ridiculous, and a practical joker.

  Although, she had spent all those years caring for her parents. She must have developed some fortitude, as well as a willingness to stay the course, even when it was hard and lonely.
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  “She likes you,” he said then wondered why his mouth had betrayed him like that.

  “She’s sweet.” Louisa took the bottle from him and sat down on the sofa.

  He’d learned when Ella tended to spit up, so he had less of his furniture covered now. One of the women had brought stacks of burp cloths, plain white rectangles of soft cotton. He went through a lot of them, but the ladies picked them up every day to wash.

  While Louisa fed the baby, he picked up a few empty bottles and dishes strewn about and took the trash out to the end of the drive. It came on Tuesday, and he was pretty sure this was Tuesday. The days had been an endless string of feedings and cleanup. At least he was showered.

  He sat down in the armchair. Ella had finished eating and was now sleeping, mouth thrown open, in the crook of Louisa’s arms. She wouldn’t sleep like that on him. Why was that? Was it how she held her? He tried to subtly adjust his arms to match her position.

  Louisa caught him from the corner of her eye and smirked. “Still learning the ropes?”

  He frowned and dropped his arms. “We’re fine. I have to take her into town tomorrow for a checkup and to pick up this weird brand of formula. We’ll make it through the night, but barely.”

  Louisa examined the bottle. “There are lots of brands. Maybe the doctor can suggest a different one. Is this the only one she’s ever had?”

  “They brought me two cases, donated, I guess. Why?”

  “They’re all a little different. If she’s spitting up, it could be the brand.”

  Why hadn’t anyone else mentioned that? The ladies had brought him all these remedies, from Karo Syrup to little eyedroppers of medicine, and nobody said it was the milk.

  “I’ll ask the doctor.”

  She nodded in agreement. Her expression shifted as she looked down at the baby. “Such a precious little thing.”

  Something turned in his belly watching her. Louisa was a completely different person when she held Ella.

  “So what’s your plan now that you’re done with pizza?”

  “A temp agency in Branson is looking for placements for me. I’ll probably start next Monday. I’ll be doing data entry and answering phones, stuff like that until I find a company with a full-time position.”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  She shrugged, smiling down as the baby sighed in her sleep. “How many of us do what we want to do? Sometimes you take the job that’s in front of you to get by.”

  Jack didn’t abide by that thinking. He’d always wanted to be an officer. So he had studied, gotten into the academy, graduated, and found an open position. He hadn’t started in Applebottom. He’d completed his rookie year in Kansas City, where he’d seen more ugliness than he had liked. Then two years in Springfield. Finally, a spot opened up in Applebottom and he’d moved back.

  The only hitch in his plan had been Jenica. His sister had become his worst criminal. She seemed to think that him being the law meant she could flaunt her drug dealer boyfriends and not get caught. Twice he’d had Officer Tatum arrest her on drug charges. He tried never to do it himself.

  He was aware his sister hated him, but there was nothing he could do about it. Their mother had bailed her out on those small charges, all reduced to possession and not distribution, but when she’d finally moved out of town, she had gotten in far bigger trouble.

  There were only so many times he could sponsor her for rehab before they had run out of programs that would take her, as she had always walked away as soon as it got hard.

  And getting clean was hard, no doubt about it.

  Now this. A baby.

  Jack didn’t know exactly how to break the news to his parents. Certainly not in a voicemail. He didn’t speak to them much since his dad was always belligerent and rude. The majority of the conversation was spent with his mother asking his father to calm down, and Dad roaring at her to stop nagging.

  He wasn’t sure how blissful their retirement could be, really.

  They’d thankfully quit asking about girlfriends and marriage. Most of the women he knew were already taken, and Applebottom was small. Sure there were young things, but they seemed foreign to him with their selfies and yoga pants. He’d resigned himself to bachelorhood a long time ago.

  A wife sure would be useful right now, though.

  The baby let out a delicate burp, and Louisa laughed quietly. But Jack recognized the writhing that had begun. Ella would be awake soon and wailing her lungs out.

  And he had an idea. It was a horrible one, probably his worst ever. But he had no other choice.

  “What if you had something more important to do than answering phones all day?” he asked.

  Louisa had sensed Ella’s discomfort and already started jiggling her. “Are you going to be like T-bone and insist you can’t live without my pizza?”

  “No. I’d never even had your pizza until the other day.”

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  “No, I was thinking—would you like to take care of Ella? I have strange hours, and between that and being on the wrong side of the lake, I’m not finding any nanny candidates.”

  He could see she wasn’t convinced, so he would have to swallow his pride and pay her a compliment. “You’re a natural with her.”

  Now Louisa’s eyebrows rose. The baby let out another burp, so he quickly snatched up one of the white cloths and passed it to her.

  Louisa covered her shoulder and lifted the baby to pat her back. “But it’s just for six months.”

  “Can’t you start the temp agency any time? Seems like they are always looking for people. You said yourself they didn’t have anything in particular in mind. You’d just be taking jobs to see what was out there.”

  Ella burped again, this time dribbling spit-up down the cloth. Jack jumped up with a second one and made sure the baby didn’t mess up Louisa’s shirt. That would not be a good impression to make at this very moment.

  “Jack, I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a nanny. I don’t have the patience.”

  “But you cared for your parents for two decades.”

  “Are you saying elder care is equivalent to raising a child?”

  “No! Just that you seem to be fine with sitting around a house.”

  “Is that what you thought it was?”

  “No! I mean. No. I—” He cut himself off. He wasn’t going to say the right thing. Story of his life.

  “It’s nice of you to offer,” Louisa said, passing the baby back to Jack. “And she’s a sweet little thing. But I have a plan, and I feel I should stick with it. Isn’t that what you always say?”

  She had him there. His plans had just all gone out the window thanks to his sister.

  “All right then.”

  She turned to pick up her bag, then asked, “You still taking her to the doctor tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. Her appointment’s at eleven.”

  “You’ll need help for that.”

  His gut tensed. “I can manage by myself, thank you.” He was beyond angry that she’d turned him down. For what, to punch numbers into little squares on a screen?

  She hesitated. “I just know how hard doctor visits can be. You have to manage the extra person, try to listen to instructions, and deal with details. It might be good to have an extra pair of hands.”

  She was right, but there was no way he would admit it. “I’ve got this.”

  Louisa nodded. “If you change your mind, let me know. The car ride alone is going to be harrowing.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” he said.

  And right on cue, Ella squirted forcefully out the other end, her diaper leaking at the edges.

  Louisa bit her lip. “And definitely ask about that formula.”

  Then she left.

  Chapter 6

  She really should have left Jack to fail.

  All morning, Louisa stewed in her house, pacing from the front door to the back. Jack Stone had asked for her help. That was shocking on both counts. Him
needing it. And it being her.

  She’d turned him down out of sheer stubbornness.

  Actually, it was more than that. She already had a plan. And it was the first plan she’d come up with on her own, after years and years of living based on other people’s schedules and needs.

  If she’d bowed to Jack on this, she’d be living her life for him and Ella. Their needs. Their lives. Their terms.

  Also, he was about as flexible as concrete. She didn’t really want to spend the next six months banging her head against that.

  But that baby needed her.

  Louisa had never fit in. She inserted herself by playing pranks and being the comedian. But she’d never dated here. Never fell in love. This was the first time she’d connected to anyone with her heart.

  Of course it would be her worst enemy’s baby niece.

  She checked the clock. Almost ten. If Jack had an appointment in Branson at eleven, he’d be leaving in the next fifteen minutes.

  Before she could think better of it she grabbed her jacket and walked straight out the door.

  When she turned onto Murray Street, there was no doubt that Jack was still there. She could hear Ella from two blocks away.

  She hurried toward his big, red truck sitting on the driveway with all the doors open. Jack was half inside the back seat of the King cab.

  Ella was strapped into her bucket seat, which sat on the lawn. The sun was right in her eyes. Louisa immediately turned the carrier around so the light wasn’t bearing down on her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Jack lunged backward, whacking his head on the frame of the door. He grunted. “Trying to install this car seat base.”

  “You have to leave in the next five minutes or you won’t make it.”

  Jack’s voice could have cut glass. “I’m perfectly aware of the time.”