by Lilian Darcy
He said slowly, “What was it John Lennon once said? ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’”
“Or while you’re in a coma,” she drawled.
“Yeah, then, too.”
Tentatively, they both smiled, and something kicked inside him. He had a couple of memories that were like yesterday to him, too. Her passion in bed, almost fierce, as if in lovemaking, too, she had to prove her own strength, had to fight against the wrong preconceptions. Her saucy grin when she undressed. And his ambivalence.
He really, seriously, hadn’t known if it was a good idea to take her to bed that first time, even though she said she wanted it, and said she understood there was no long-term, and no promises, and that was fine. He’d told himself a couple of times their first night that he would stop kissing her soon, that he would reach out and still her hands if she went to pull off her clothes.
But then she’d done it. Crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her top to show a hot-pink bra and neat, tight breasts. Shimmied her way out of her skirt. Grinned at him.
And there’d been no question of stopping after that point. He’d used protection, but—not to get technical, or anything—maybe applied it just a little too late.
“But the dates don’t fit,” she said suddenly. “She’s too old. She’s smiling. Lucy isn’t.”
“Because DJ was premature,” he explained again. “Healthy preemies learn to smile at the same age after birth as full-term babies, even if they’re smaller and a little slower in other areas. DJ and Lucy would have been born within a week or two of each other, if DJ had come at the right time. The doctors say it’s good that she didn’t. It was easier on your body that she was little, and early. Would you like to hold her?”
He asked it before he thought. Blame Lucy for that. Jodie had looked so happy and comfortable holding her tiny niece today.
DJ was different. DJ had baggage.
Jodie stiffened and stammered. “No, she’s—she’s— N-not yet, when she’s asleep. If I disturbed her and she cried…”
“It’s fine. We’ll transfer her in the sling. It’ll be easy, I promise.” Listen to him! Five minutes ago, he’d been scared about the strength of her maternal feelings and what they might do to his own connection with his child. Now he was trying to rush her into them. He didn’t know what he wanted anymore.
Which was weird and unpleasant, because he always knew what he wanted.
Her weakened left hand made a claw shape on her thigh. “No. No, I can’t. I just can’t.”
Jodie heard the note of panic in her own voice, but there was nothing she could do about it. The panic was there. She couldn’t explain it to Dev. Couldn’t even explain it to herself. But there was a huge, massive chasm of a difference between holding and clucking over Maddy’s little Lucy and holding this baby.
My baby. Half an hour ago, I didn’t know she existed. But she’s mine.
It was overwhelming.
It should have been wonderful. A miracle.
Dev loves her. I can see it.
But it didn’t feel wonderful, it felt terrifying.
Thank heaven Dev loves her, because I don’t.
No. No! She had to love her own child! She did. Of course she did.
But why couldn’t she feel it? Why wasn’t it kicking in at once, the way it had with Elin and Lisa and Maddy and all the other normal mothers in the world, the very first moment they looked at their babies? Dev clearly expected it to, with his urging that DJ would be safe in her arms. It wasn’t a question of safety. Why could she feel so tender toward Lucy today, and yet so distant and scared about this baby?
Scared? A surge of strength hit her. She wasn’t in the habit of giving in to scared. She took in a breath to tell him that she would hold the baby after all. And she would have reached out her hands before the words came, except they were a little slow to respond to her brain’s signal and she had to make an extra effort.
But before either the movement or the words could happen, Dev accepted her refusal, gave her an easy excuse. “You’re tired,” he said. He let out a breath that might have been partly relief, as if maybe he’d doubted the strength and coordination in her arms more than he’d let on. “We should wait a little.”
She almost argued.
Almost.
But, oh, he was right, she was tired, and she’d tried so hard to stay on top of everything today. She let it go, and watched him tiptoe to the infant car carrier sitting in the corner of the living room and lay the baby down, easing his forearm out from beneath her little head with a movement so practiced and gentle it almost broke her heart.
“Very tired,” she managed to respond. “I’m sorry.”
I’m so sorry, DJ.
“Don’t beat yourself up.” The baby stirred a little, but didn’t waken.
“I—I—” Did he know? Did he understand the extent of her panic?
“Let’s take it slow. It’s okay.”
“Thanks. Yes.”
She heard a car in the driveway, and footsteps and the voices of Elin and Mom. Dev lunged for the door before they could knock. He held it open and stood with the width of his body shielding the room from their view.
Mom said, “Is she still here?”
“Yes, but why are you here, Barb? I asked you very clearly to—”
“I’m sorry, we just couldn’t— I’m sorry.” This was Elin, clearly reading his anger. “We have a right to be involved in this, too, don’t we? DJ is ours, too. We all care so much.”
“You’d better come in.”
“Thank you,” said Mom, in a crisp voice.
“I really think it’s best, Devlin.” This was Elin, in a softer tone.
“We are as involved in all of this as you are.” Mom again.
They dropped at once to sit on either side of Jodie on the couch, their voices running over her along with their hands, all of it a jumble that she heard at two steps removed, like recorded voices or lines from a half-remembered play. Honey, are you okay? Obviously you know. Obviously there’s so much to talk through. That’s why we wanted to wait until you were ready. What has Dev said, so far?
“You barely gave me time to say anything,” he said.
“Listen, it’s not as if any of us have had any experience with a situation like this, Devlin,” Elin said.
“Shh…keep your voice down, can you?”
“Sorry…sorry.” Elin glanced over at the baby and looked surprised. “You have her in the car carrier?”
“She seems to sleep better in there, during the day.”
“Well, then, I guess…” But I never did that with my babies, was the implication.
“She’s fine. She wouldn’t sleep so peacefully if she was uncomfortable there.”
“If you say so.”
Both Devlin and Elin were holding it together with difficulty, and Mom looked trapped and unhappy, her mouth open as if she wanted to speak, although no words came.
Jodie slumped against the back of the couch. She’d started to shake. Could they feel it? She felt more tired than she’d ever felt in her life, and her lips had gone dry. She closed her eyes, willing this chaos of family and tension and questioning to…just…stop.
“Should we take her? Jodie, are you ready to go home?”
She opened her eyes. “Yes, take her.”
I mean, who is she? How can she even exist?
“I—I don’t know what I want to do,” she blurted. “I think I need some space. Another nap.” Her own bed seemed like the safest haven in the world.
There was a small silence, while Elin and Mom and Devlin all looked at each other, shrugged and raised eyebrows and gestured—body language that was beyond Jodie’s ability to interpret right now.
“I guess that’s an option,” Dev said slowly to Elin and Mom. “For you to take her and Jodie to stay here.”
“That’s not—” What I meant. But the rest of it wouldn’t come, and the first bit had come almost on a w
hisper, and they were too busy making plans to hear her.
“She should transfer to the car without waking,” Dev said. “I have a couple of bottles made up in the fridge.”
“We have bottles. We have diapers, clothes, everything. You know that. She’s due for her bath.”
“I’ll drop Jodie home when she’s ready. She’s right. We need to talk. Have some space.”
They’d worked it all out between the three of them, while Jodie was still struggling to lift an arm to brush a strand of damp hair from her eyes. She was staying here with Dev to talk. The baby was going back with Mom and Elin. Going back before she, the mother, had even touched her.
She wanted to argue the plan, but the words wouldn’t come, so in the end she let it happen, and when the baby carrier was buckled into the car and Mom and Elin had driven away, she felt so relieved, and so ashamed of the relief, and so horribly, horribly tired. “I can’t—” she said to Dev.
“I know you can’t talk yet. Sleep first.”
“Two naps a day. I’m like—” She stopped.
A baby.
My baby.
“Just rest.”
“Why aren’t you in New York? Tell me why. In simple words. Because it seems to me that you didn’t have to still be here. Obviously DJ is being taken care of. Obviously she’s loved. Obviously I have the support. So why?”
He looked at her steadily, with some of the anger he’d clearly felt toward Elin and Mom still simmering below the surface. He seemed to be thinking hard before he chose his words.
“Because she’s my daughter.” The last two words came out with a simmering intensity. “Because we’re a family. You and me and DJ. Three of us. That’s not negotiable. Three of us, not two.”
“A family…” Jodie echoed foolishly, tasting the word and not feeling sure of how it felt in her mouth.
“Not a regular family, for sure.”
“No…”
“But DJ needs a family of some kind….” He paused for a moment, and she filled in the words he didn’t say, in her head. And not necessarily a whole cluster of over-involved grandparents and aunts. “I’m right here in the picture and I’m not going to go away. And we have a heck of a lot to do and talk and think about, to decide how that’s going to work.”
Chapter Four
Jodie woke to the smell of something delicious coming from Dev’s kitchen. The daylight had begun to fade, which meant she must have slept a good three hours this time. She felt disoriented and not in full possession of either her body or her brain. It was just the way she’d felt coming out of the coma. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane—eerily quiet, with a sense of danger all around.
She gave herself a couple of minutes to regroup, then sat up and eventually stood, steadier on her feet than she would have expected. As before, Dev had left her walking frame within reach, and the quiet, considerate nature of this small gesture almost brought her to tears.
She could hear him in the kitchen, chopping something on a wooden board. The delicious aroma announced itself as beef sizzled in a pan. She’d had a crush on him thirteen years ago, she’d slept with him three times, and she’d had no idea until now that he could cook. It didn’t surprise her, though. When Devlin Browne put his mind to something…
He heard her—the rubbery tap of the frame on the floor—as she reached the kitchen doorway, and he turned. “Hi. Better?”
“Think so. It’s crazy. To need all that sleep.”
“Your brain is still healing.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“I’m making brain food. A beef-and-vegetable stir-fry, full of iron and vitamins.”
“It smells great.”
“Ready in a couple of minutes. Sit down.” He nodded at the wooden kitchen table, then moved to pull out a chair for her.
“No, don’t,” she said quickly, taking one hand off the frame to reach for the chair herself. “I’m fine. I hate—” my family hovering over me “—too much help.”
“Duly noted.” He turned back to the stove, tossed in slivers of onion and red bell pepper, sticks of carrot and celery, lengths of green bean. The pan hissed and made a cloud of aromatic steam, filling the silence made by their lack of conversation.
He seemed to understand instinctively that she didn’t want to talk yet—or not about anything important, anyway—and to her surprise the interlude of silence between them felt easy and right. She didn’t have that uncomfortable itch to break the quiet with a rush of words that people often experience in the company of someone new.
Not that Dev was new.
But this felt new.
Untested.
Three of us. We’re a family, he’d said.
Anything but the usual kind.
She watched him. Just couldn’t help it. The way his neat, jeans-clad butt moved as he tossed the contents of the pan. The way his elbow stuck out and his shoulder lifted. He added the cooked meat and leaned back a little as another cloud of hissing steam came up. There was rice in a steamer on the countertop, and a jug of orange juice clinking with a thick layer of cubed ice.
Nine months ago, he hadn’t wanted a serious relationship, but now it was as if she’d simply blinked and woken up to find herself here, in his kitchen, and the mother of his child.
Connected.
Yet not.
Are we dating?
She felt they needed to talk about it—for hours surely—but had no idea what to say, what to suggest. He was the one who’d had time to think. The surge of chemistry she’d felt earlier at the family barbecue couldn’t compete with her shock and disorientation. It hummed in the background of her awareness, but she didn’t know what to do with it, just wished it would go away.
“Is there a schedule?” she blurted out.
“A schedule?”
“Of who takes care of—of DJ.”
DJ. That’s my baby’s name. Well, it’s not her name. It’s what we’re calling her in the interim.
A crazy litany of baby names began to scroll in her head, the ones she’d vaguely thought, over the years, that she liked. Caroline, Amanda, Genevieve, Laura, Jessica, Megan, Anna… The idea that it might be up to her to make a decision, replace temporary DJ with something different and permanent that would belong to the baby her whole life, was daunting. A huge, confusing responsibility that she didn’t feel equipped to handle.
“Your family has her when I’m at work,” Devlin answered. “Mainly your mom. She’s set up Elin’s room for a nursery.”
“That’s why Lucy had to sleep in my room today.” An image flashed in her head of her sister’s old room with the door firmly closed. Even if she had seen inside, she would have assumed it had been set up for Maddy’s baby girl.
“But Elin and Lisa have her sometimes, too. And then I pick her up on my way home.”
“The night shift.”
“That’s right. I expect she’ll spend more nights at your parents’ place now.” Now that you’re home, he meant.
“That’s why you look tired.” A rush of tenderness and guilt ran through her. Those creases around his eyes, and she hadn’t been here to help. Crazy to feel that it was her fault, and yet at some level she did. What kind of a mother slept through her whole pregnancy and didn’t even waken to give birth? What kind of a mother had an eleven-week-old baby that she’d never touched and held?
He made a wry face. “Yeah, she’s not exactly sleeping through. Your sisters have been great with that. They’ve stayed over here three or four times to give me a good night. Your whole family has been—” He stopped, as if the word he’d originally intended to say was wrong. “Amazing. They have. I was a little short with them before, and I shouldn’t have been. The boundaries—the roles—are complicated.”
“It’s okay. I know how you feel. Just be thankful they’re not trying to cut up your food.”
He laughed and she smiled at him and then her breath caught, and the question she’d been asking in her head even before she’
d found out about DJ came blurting out, “Are we dating, Dev?”
He went still. She just knew he was going to say no. It was there in his body language so clearly, and she wondered why on earth she’d thought it necessary to ask. Well. She hadn’t thought. Her brain didn’t seem to control either her body or her words anymore.
Eventually answered in a slow, careful way, “That’s a question, isn’t it?”
“I mean, I’m not suggesting you have a thing for unconscious women.” The humor didn’t work. It was too dark for a moment like this. It didn’t evaporate the tension, as intended. She apologized. Seemed as if she might be doing a lot of that. “I’m sorry. I was just—”
“It’s okay. Lightening the mood. You had a right to ask. I talked about making a family, just now.”
“When you came to see me in the hospital, I didn’t know why you were there. Because I didn’t know about DJ. And last fall we…”
“I know.” He was still so uncomfortable. They both were.
“I don’t think we’re dating,” she said, before he could say it. “It would be crazy. It’s not what we need. It would just be a complication. We have enough of those.”
He nodded, and looked relieved. “You’re right. I guess that’s what I’ve felt. First things first. Take care of DJ. Take care of you. Take all of it slow. You’re not strong enough to do much with a baby right now. We want to find a way to share her and love her. There’s no hostility or conflict. I want to keep it that way. We have to keep it that way. I want as much involvement as I can have.”
“But she’ll be with me most of the time.” Was it a question, or a statement? She didn’t even know.
“Once you know her,” he said. “Once you can take care of her. You’re her mother and most of the time the baby stays with the mom. I’m accepting that.”
But am I?
She saw herself stranded with baby DJ in her parents’ house for weeks at a stretch with barely a break. She imagined the winter days closing in, keeping her and the baby inside the house, when normally even in the cold weather she loved to be outdoors.
These weren’t the pictures she wanted to have of herself and her baby, but they were the ones that came. She heard herself wrangling and bickering with Mom about when to introduce solid food and whether to dress her in pink.
