Suddenly

by Barbara Delinsky

  They were greeted by the wild applause and cheers of the waiting groups, then by hugs and laughter—even he hugged and was hugged—and in that short period, before the reality of the descent could loom before them, Noah knew that the trip had been worthwhile. The climbers were cold, wet, and tired, but spirited and enthusiastic enough to include him in their glee. They had tasted a kind of victory that not one of them had ever tasted before.

  It kept them bolstered, even when night fell and the descent grew labored. What with rest stops and snack stops and stops when someone stumbled in the dark and fell, it was midnight before they reached the vans and four in the morning before those vans finally turned in under the wrought-iron arch and pulled around the campus drive to the dorms.

  “Sleep in today,” Noah told them as he sent them off to bed, and for once no one argued.

  Exhausted, he headed for his own house, but exuberance kept him awake. He stood for a time at the back window with a cup of hot cocoa, thinking how much he wanted to tell someone what had happened, if only to keep it real. But he didn’t have anyone, and the sadness of that seemed all wrong, given the victory he had scored. So, when the first hint of dawn cast its slim line of light on the horizon, he put on his running shorts and set off for town.

  Paige awoke at six to tiny sounds coming from the monitor that linked her room to the baby’s. She crept upstairs to change Sami’s diaper, then brought her down, warmed a bottle, and settled back into bed. Kitty joined them, curling in a ball at Paige’s feet.

  “There,” Paige whispered to Sami. “How’s that?” She gave the pillows another nudge. “Better?” Comfortable and lazy with the pleasure of staying warm in bed on a cool October morning, especially when she knew she’d have to get up before long, she watched Sami drink. Tiny hands framed the bottle, overlapping Paige’s Sami’s eyes held hers.

  “Taste good?” Paige whispered with a satisfied smile. “I’ll bet it does, warm milk going down just the right way.” As she said it, she ran her thumb down Sami’s tummy. Sami drew up her legs and made a gurgling sound that Paige chose to think was a laugh. She gave the little girl a kiss on the tip of her nose.

  Settling back onto the pillow, she was struck by the loveliness of the moment. It had become a miniroutine, this early morning time with Sami, stolen moments before the day began. The house was quiet, save for the soft sound of sucking and the gentle beat of rain on the leaves of the trees in the yard. Between those lulling sounds and the warmth of the bed, of Sami, and even of kitty, she felt an unexpected peace. She knew it couldn’t last. Sami and kitty both were temporary fixures in her life, and it was surely the novelty of their presence that gave the illusion of peace. Still, it was nice for now.

  A tap came at the window. Paige guessed it was a branch from the nearby maple and ignored it, until it came again, more insistently. She looked at the window and gasped. After setting Sami down, she climbed from bed and raised the sash.

  “What are you doing here at this hour?” she asked in an urgent whisper. The last thing she wanted was for Jill to wake up, look down, and see Noah.

  “Running.” He was out of breath. “Had an incredible experience. Had to tell you about it.”

  The incredible experience was seeing him there with what precious little he was wearing clinging to his body. “It’s six-thirty in the morning!” she managed to say.

  “Can I come in?”

  “No!” She tried to pull her nightgown more tightly around her, but it was a poor substitute for a robe, and then Sami began to whimper, so she hurried back to the bed. “Shhhh, sweetie, it’s just Noah.” She sank down, returned the bottle to the child’s waiting hands, and looked up just as he climbed through the window.

  Her protest came too late. He was already in the room, shutting the window behind him. “Noah, this is my morning, my house.” And he was disturbing her peace.

  He looked around, spotted the bathroom, and disappeared, only to emerge seconds later wiping first his glasses, then his face and neck with a towel. His shoulders were leanly muscled and gleaming.

  “Still raining,” he said unnecessarily. His sneakers, running shorts, and singlet were all drenched. “But it was incredible. We were up there at the top of the mountain.” He peeled the singlet over his head, tossed it aside, and rubbed himself down with the towel. “I thought for sure I’d made one hell of a mistake. I mean, the rain was coming down. The path was obscured by the clouds. The kids were terrified”—he shimmied out of his shorts between swipes with the towel—“and I mean terrified. I thought we were in for a major disaster”—he kicked off one sneaker and bent to dry his leg—“someone falling over the edge, someone pushing someone else over the edge.” He kicked off the other sneaker. “And then they came together. I mean, it worked the way it was supposed to, but I didn’t think it would. So help me, I didn’t.”

  Tossing the towel aside, he came to the bed and then slipped under the covers. “God, am I freezing,” he said, sliding closer to her. “And tired. Haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.” He tugged off his glasses and closed his eyes. “Just wanted to tell you. The good news.”

  Paige wanted to say something. She tried to think of what it was. But the sight of Noah Perrine naked had swept every other thought from mind, and then it was too late. While she stared in astonishment, his features slackened, his breathing slowed, and he fell into a deep sleep.

  For a minute she didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t stay long; having a naked man in her bed was the worst kind of example to set for Jill, and she wasn’t sure whether Sami should be seeing him, either, though the little girl seemed no worse for the experience. She was drinking her milk happily, making the same sweet sucking sounds, now mixed with the slow sough of Noah’s breathing.

  Kitty rose from her ball, stretched herself shoulders to rump, and hopped over the lumps in the bed until she reached Noah’s face. She explored it with her nose. He didn’t move. She caught sight of a corner of the sheet extending beyond his shoulder and bounded toward it. He didn’t move then or when she began to play.

  It struck Paige that for someone who had spent years enjoying a wide expanse of bed in solitude, she had quite a crowd in it now. Assuring herself that it was a temporary condition, she felt an odd pang low in her stomach. But the pang wasn’t unfamiliar. She let Sami finish her bottle and burped her, then sat her in the playpen and retreated into the bathroom.

  A short time later, she emerged freshly showered. Noah hadn’t moved an inch. His damp hair looked darker than usual, all the more so against the white of her pillow, and his limbs seemed to stretch forever under the covers. He had the solid build of a casual runner, not skinny as a fanatic would be, but well toned. Even as she told herself that he had no business being in her bed, she couldn’t deny that he did wonderful things to the shape of her sheets.

  Sami was still sitting—the skill had come quickly, as Paige had known it would—and was gravely studying a small stuffed dog while kitty struggled to climb the mesh walls of the playpen and join her. The tiny animal made it halfway up before losing her footing and tumbling back down, but on the next try she crested the top and scrambled inside. Sami looked at her, made a soft sound of greeting, and reached out.

  Something was agreeing with her here, Paige thought with more than a little pride. Granted, someone else would be taking over her care before long, but Mara would be pleased with what Paige had done. Not that it had been hard. Sami was an incredibly easy baby. She ate and she slept. She took her shots with barely a peep and put up with the exercises Paige did morning and night. The amoeba infection she had come with had cleared itself up, and if there had been emotional problems, they were responding to love.

  Wrapped in a large towel, Paige bent over the playpen. She reached in and stroked Sami’s head. “That’s kitty. Can you say it? Kit-ty. Look at her play…. Oooops, she has your ball. Let’s get it.” Paige reached for the knobbed toy. She squeezed it into a squeak, then held it out for Sami to grab.

&
nbsp; Sami stared at Paige.

  “Here,” Paige said. She rubbed the ball against Sami’s hand. Sami looked down, studied the ball, cautiously put her hands on either side of it. “That’s right,” Paige encouraged. “That’s my girl.”

  She straightened and looked at Noah, who remained dead to the world. So she dressed and dried her hair, then scooped Sami from the playpen. The silence from the second floor told her that Jill was still asleep, which was nothing new. She was a typical teenager. Paige didn’t have the heart to wake her until it was absolutely necessary.

  Holding Sami on her hip, a shield against temptation, she came down on a knee on the bed and called a soft, “Noah? Wake up, Noah.”

  He breathed deeply in, deeply out.

  “You can’t sleep here,” she sang. “I have impressionable children in this house.”

  Actually, Sami didn’t seem impressed at all. She was studying Noah the same way she had her stuffed dog, curiously but unattached.

  “Noah?” Paige called more loudly, then gave a staccato, “Noah.”

  He drew in a breath and turned over.

  She sighed, straightened, and said in a full voice, “Okay. Just until Sami and I have breakfast. Then you have to leave.”

  She shut the door tight with kitty inside and told Sami, “Let her pounce on him for a while. He’ll wake up.”

  But he didn’t. Twenty minutes later he was sleeping as soundly as before. This time Paige shook his shoulder. “Noah?” She shook it again. “Wake up, Noah.”

  He made a disgruntled sound.

  “Noah.”

  One eye came open. Paige saw no sign of recognition in it.

  “You have to get up, Noah. You can’t sleep here. Jill will be waking up soon, and a representative from the adoption agency is coming by. The last thing I need is for either of them to see you.”

  He stared at her for another minute. “Paige?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  He looked around in confusion, until understanding slowly came. Then he made a tired sound.

  “Look,” she said, and one part of her wasn’t lying, “I’d like to let you sleep here, but this is a really bad time. The rain has let up. You can run on back to Mount Court.”

  He had both eyes open now, focused on her in a muzzy way. “How long have you been up?” he asked.

  “A while now.”

  “You look great.”

  She didn’t want his compliments. They were too potent at a time when she had other things on her mind. “You have to leave, Noah.”

  “Did I tell you about the trip?” he asked without raising his head from the pillow.

  She nodded. “I’m glad it worked out well, given that half of my team missed practice yesterday. So now who’s the stickler for discipline?”

  “I was taking your advice and being flexible.” He shifted under the covers. “Your bed feels great.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Did you get your period?”

  She nodded.

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  “It happened just this morning.”

  “Ahhh. Are you relieved?”

  “Very. Aren’t you?”

  “You bet. Kids should be planned. I bought a box of condoms the other day. Of course I didn’t think to bring any along when I ran over here.”

  “That’s fine, because nothing’s happening,” she said, though there was a stirring inside that belied the words. Something was happening all right. He hadn’t touched her, and he was turning her on, particularly incredible given the ache her period caused. She stood up and begged, “Please leave, Noah. I have to get on with my day, and I can’t do it while you’re in my bed.”

  One long arm came from beneath the covers. It lay on the comforter for a minute, before the rest of him emerged.

  Paige stepped back. She told herself to leave the room—then told herself to stay and make sure he left—and all the while she watched him dress. When he was done, he put on his glasses and finger-combed his hair. Then he looked at her and kept on looking.

  “What?” she asked, none too steady.

  He said nothing, simply came forward, took her face in both hands, and kissed her on the mouth.

  It wasn’t until she heard the front door closing that she realized he was supposed to have gone back out the window and snuck off through the trees.

  An hour later Paige was sitting in the living room, holding Sami on her lap, while the adoption agency’s Joan Felix looked through the papers Paige had just passed her.

  “Financial report, personal report, medical report, professional record, birth certificate—everything seems to be here,” she said and smiled up at Paige. “There was never any question about a temporary placement, of course. You’re eminently qualified for that. I don’t have to study these papers to know that you’re every bit as qualified for a long-term placement. I take it you’re willing to do that?”

  Paige turned one bright plastic key after another around a plastic key ring, while Sami watched in fascination. “From the start I said I’d keep Sami until an adoptive family is found. The last thing she needs is to be passed from foster home to foster home.”

  “Will you have a problem attending the preadoptive sessions we run?”

  Mara had told Paige about those. Held biweekly in Rutland, they were group meetings of the agency’s foster and adoptive parents of foreign-born children. Their purpose was both educational and supportive.

  “I have no problem with those,” Paige said.

  “It may take a while to find the right family.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Do you?” Joan asked kindly but bluntly. “Given Sameera’s background, placing her won’t be as easy as placing some babies, not in as homogenous a state as Vermont. Of those families currently in our files, none are appropriate. New families are always coming forward, and we do coordinate with agencies in other states, but I think you ought to know what we’re up against.”

  Looking at Sami, adorable in a green-and-white-striped playsuit with a white ribbon in her hair, Paige couldn’t understand why any parent-to-be wouldn’t snap her up in a minute. She was healthy, even-tempered, and bright. Paige also could swear that she saw the germs of affection, if the way the little girl was clinging to her arm was any indication.

  “What if it takes a year or two?” Joan asked.

  A year or two. Paige felt a twinge for Sami’s sake. “Won’t placing her get harder the older she gets?”

  “Yes and no. The older she gets, the more personality she has, and the more appealing she may become. Parents are often scared off by statistics. Knowing that this little one was nearly killed at birth because she was born female, knowing that she was stashed away for the first two months of her life before being passed from orphanage to orphanage, is pretty gruesome. The older she gets, the more that fades away. The older she gets, the more Americanized she becomes. Vermonters like that.”

  Paige grunted.

  “The problem,” Joan cautioned, “is that the older she gets, the more attached she’ll be to you and vice versa. It’s a problem all foster parents face. When the time comes, will you be able to give her up?”

  “I think so,” Paige said. She didn’t look at Sami this time. “There’s so much else going on in my life.”

  “Do those other things make taking care of her difficult?”

  “Oh, no.” She held Sami closer, loving her warmth and her sweet baby smell. “Not at all. It’s working out fine. She’s doing well.”

  “That’s obvious,” Joan said. She sat back, looking from Paige to Sami and back. “Would you consider adopting her yourself?”

  “Me? Oh, I couldn’t. I never planned on having a child.”

  “That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t make a wonderful mother.”

  But Paige had her doubts. Her own mother had been lousy at it; she had needed her freedom, and though Paige was much more of a homebody than Chloe, everything was relative. Being
a homebody to Paige didn’t mean staying home with a baby. It meant being daily on the go within the confines of a small town and returning home quite happily each night. Now she had Jill to baby-sit, but Jill would have her own baby before long, and Paige would have to hire another sitter, which wasn’t fair to Sami. She deserved a full-time mother.

  “Well…” Joan sighed and slipped the papers into her briefcase. “Do think about it. I’ll file these and be back next week to talk more. In the meantime, we’ll be on the lookout for an adoptive family, if you’re sure that’s what you want.”

  “It’s the best thing for Sami,” Paige said, and believed that it was, all the more so when Peter cornered her the next morning.

  thirteen

  “WHAT’S UP?” PAIGE ASKED, SETTLING IN AT her desk with a cup of coffee and a curious look at Peter.

  “We have to talk,” he said from the door. He slid a look at Angie, then folded his arms over his chest. “What’s going on around here is absurd. I’m tired, Angie’s tired, you’re tired. Things were supposed to level off once the trauma of Mara’s death passed, but it hasn’t happened. We need help. We need a fourth doctor.”

  Angie groaned, expressing Paige’s sentiment exactly.

  “I know it’s hard for you both”—he looked from one to the other—“you’re still feeling an allegiance to Mara, but, damn it, she’s dead. She’s up on that hillside, cold as stone. She doesn’t know we’re working our butts off, so what’s the point?”

  Paige couldn’t put the point into words.

  “Okay,” he tried, “so you don’t want to see someone else walking in and out of her office, but you sold her house, didn’t you?”

  “I had to,” Paige said, defending the action, reluctant though it had been. “The monthly mortgage was going to waste. And besides, the realtor had a buyer.” Paige liked the family. Husband and wife were stockbrokers, fed up with city life, determined to work by computer out of their home. They had two children and believed in feeding the birds. “But it wasn’t easy for me. It doesn’t seem right that Mara isn’t there.”