The Baby Agenda

by Janice Kay Johnson

He laughed. “The thing is, I’m stubborn enough not to always admit I was wrong even when I should. Or even to realize that I was. I saw myself as having to give up everything I’d ever wanted to fill in for my dad. I was mad at him for dying. But now I think…sure, I lost a lot of choices I might have made, but somehow the four of us cobbled together quite a family. And my life has been pretty damn rich to this point. I still don’t know what I wanted to grow up and be. Who’s to say it would have been any better than what I had?”

  Moira was silent for a long time. “Do you mean that?”

  Will could admit to himself that he’d started with the intention of reassuring her that taking on an unexpected family wasn’t so bad the first time around, which meant he really didn’t mind having his life derailed a second time by yet another unexpected family. The funny thing was, as he’d talked he had known he meant it. He was as proud of Sophie and his brothers as any father would have been. He liked all three of his siblings. When he looked back, he remembered doing a lot of laughing along with the quiet swearing when he was by himself.

  Keeping the business in the black those first years had been the most hair-raising. He’d known the construction side, but not the business itself. He’d made a lot of mistakes, lost good employees, hired some lousy ones. But after a couple of shaky years, he had found his footing and made a success of Becker Construction, too. He’d built it into a bigger company than his father had left him, one with a solid gold reputation. He was proud of that, too. Proud he’d saved a legacy from Dad for Clay and Jack.

  “I do mean it,” he told Moira. “I’m a different man than I would have been if my dad and stepmom hadn’t died when they did, but it’s possible I’m a better one.”

  In a strange, gruff little voice, she said, “I think you’re a very good man, Will Becker. I just wish I didn’t think you’re such a good man, you’d lie to me to keep me from believing I’ve taken advantage of you.”

  He had a fleeting and uncomfortable instance of wondering if he might be lying even to himself. He didn’t think so, even though it was a little unsettling to realize he had been looking at his own life upside down all along. No matter what, it didn’t seem like words were going to convince her that she could count on him. She wouldn’t believe him if he said, “I love you.” Time, he thought, might be his only hope.

  What he did was lay a hand on her stomach and rub. “This is our baby, Moira. This time, I really will be Daddy. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere but here.” And that was the truth, whether she wanted to believe it or not.

  She took a sip of her now cooling cocoa and didn’t say anything else. But her belly surged under Will’s hand and a knob poked his palm.

  “Amazing,” he murmured.

  “It is, isn’t it?” Moira whispered.

  He turned his face to nibble her earlobe. “Merry Christmas, Mama of my baby.”

  He felt more than saw her smile. “Merry Christmas, Daddy,” she said softly.

  THEY MADE TWO MORE CHILDBIRTH classes, one the week before New Year’s, one the week after. Two more visits to her obstetrician, too. Her due date was the fifteenth, but at the last visit, Dr. Engel said, “You’re sure about when you conceived this baby?”

  Will and Moira exchanged a glance. Newly self-conscious, Moira nodded. “Very sure.”

  “I doubt you’ll last another week.” She smiled at them.

  “Daytime labor would be nice.”

  Apparently that was a joke. They both laughed dutifully.

  Once the doctor had whisked out the door, Will helped Moira sit up. It wasn’t easy. Chuckling, Will said, “Now you’re a pregnant pygmy goat.”

  All she muttered was, “God.”

  On the way home, she made a few observations about how unlikely it was that this gigantic, linebacker kid of theirs would be able to exit her body in any approved manner. Under her breath, she said, “It’s the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. No one else in the Lamaze class looks anything like me.”

  “Most of them aren’t as close to due.”

  “Mindy is. Did you see her?” The tiny blonde was the hateful kind of woman who’d have her prepregnancy figure back two weeks after she delivered.

  “Her baby’ll probably be five pounds and have to spend two weeks in an incubator.”

  “While ours will come out crawling. At least rolling over. He sure does plenty of that now. Especially when I’m trying to sleep.”

  Will thought that was funny. He wasn’t the one who was barely sleeping in brief snatches.

  Moira sighed. “I am so ready.” She brooded on that for a moment. “What if he’s late? If I have weeks left?”

  “You won’t.” Will patted her hand. “I promise.”

  Like he had any more idea than she did.

  He parked in the driveway at home and turned to look at her. Abruptly, he said, “I don’t want you going back to work.”

  She’d managed half days this week because four hours was as long as she could bear either to sit in her desk chair or perch on the stool at her drafting table. Gray and Will had, together, nixed any more site inspections for her, and she hadn’t argued.

  “Gray’s got another—” she had to calculate “—week in office.”

  “He can call in absent to city hall,” Will said in a hard voice. “Or you guys can hang up a closed sign for a week. This has to be a deadly slow time of year anyway.”

  “Not so much. A lot of people are planning for spring.” Moira hesitated. “I guess I’m pretty much done, though.”

  Will looked closely at her, but didn’t gloat at her capitulation. He only nodded and got out to come around and help her. Once they were inside, he said, “Nap?”

  “I might as well lie down.” Her back was killing her.

  “I’ll give you a massage.”

  “I’d love that,” she admitted.

  He followed her into the bedroom and sat on the bed once she’d settled herself on her side, facing away from him. Then he lifted her shirt and went to work, those big strong hands unerringly finding every ache and kneading as if she were stiff bread dough. Pure bliss.

  Eventually his touch became more gentle. He was soothing her to sleep, and it worked.

  The backache returned more fiercely that night. By the following day an occasional contraction rippled across her stomach, turning it rigid beneath her touch. Moira didn’t tell Will. He’d fuss worse than he already was.

  One week exactly before her due date, Moira couldn’t sleep at all. The contractions become more painful, more frequent. Will had sprawled onto his back beside her. If he’d had his arm around her, his hand settled in its usual place, he would have felt the waves of tension seizing her. But she waited and let him sleep, her gaze on the clock.

  Finally, she groaned and had to pant when the sharpest one yet gripped her in bands of steel.

  “Huh? What?” Will rolled toward her.

  She could only keep panting.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “That’s it, sweetheart. One, two, three, four. You can do this.”

  He got her dressed, got her to the hospital. He had to go park and she could tell he’d been running when he rejoined her. Moira fumbled for his hand and held on tight. She needed him. She did. His voice, his touch, his eyes, became the center of her world.

  Eight hours and forty-five minutes later, Caleb Graham Becker was born.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IT WAS ALL WILL COULD DO to tear himself away from Moira’s side. The sight of his wife nursing his son was so stunning, he had a giant lump in his throat and wasn’t sure he could have said a word. Caleb hadn’t taken much urging to latch onto his mommy’s breast. He was so small, so precious. And for all that Moira looked exhausted, her hair sweat-dampened and matted, she was also lit up from inside with a glow that made her beautiful. Will hadn’t known he could feel so much.

  But she finally said, “You’ll call Mom?” and he reluctantly nodded.

  “Yeah. Sure.” He started toward the door. “I’ll be
right back.”

  For a moment he wasn’t sure she’d even noticed he was leaving. He felt a sharp slice of pain. For all that he’d held Caleb first, had been the one to lay their baby in Moira’s arms, Will had this momentary fear that she had what she needed now, and it wasn’t him, that he was on the outside looking in.

  Then she looked up and gave him a smile that started soft and grew radiant. “Oh, Will,” she murmured, and he found himself grinning idiotically at her. How foolish to get his feelings hurt for nothing.

  “I’ll hurry,” he repeated, and left.

  He went downstairs and stepped outside, startled to realize it was daytime. A part of him felt it should still be the middle of the night. He glanced at his watch. 11:20 a.m. Almost lunchtime. He had the same sense of dis-orientation he did after an international flight. The last hours had seemed entirely apart from the normal flow of time.

  Shaking his head, he stepped aside from the double doors as a family pushed an old woman in a wheelchair in. He took out his cell phone and called Moira’s mom first.

  “You have a grandson,” he told her, smiling as she exclaimed and wept and begged for details.

  “Quite a bit of hair, I think you’d call it auburn. Not as bright as Moira’s, but there’s some red in it. I couldn’t tell with his eyes, they were kind of muddy. Maybe they’re going to turn brown. Uh…he’s eight pounds, nine ounces. Thank God he was a week early,” he said fervently.

  Her mother laughed. “Has he said his first word yet?”

  Discovering his legs were a little shaky, Will leaned against the stucco wall and laughed, too. “No, and I don’t think he’s quite ready to crawl, either. Now, if he’d had another week…”

  “Think what a grump his mother would have been by then.”

  He was still laughing when he called Becker Construction and told Clay the news. Clay didn’t weep, but he sounded staggered.

  “Man. Are you going to call Sophie?”

  “Yeah. You’ll tell Jack?”

  “Hell, yes! Can we come up and see the kid in a couple of days?”

  “Any time after we’re home and Moira’s rested.”

  He then called his sister, who predictably enough did cry. She also, if he was hearing right, was jumping up and down while screaming, “So cool!” But then she went quiet, and finally said softly, “And you named him after Dad. That was, um…”

  Will had to clear his throat. “I’m glad Moira liked the name.”

  “Oh, Will.”

  She, too, promised a visit, although thought she’d probably wait a couple of weeks.

  Then Will made one more call, to Gray. “Moira and I have a son,” he said.

  “A son. Well. Damn.” The pause made Will wonder if Moira’s best friend wasn’t fighting some tears of his own.

  “Have you named him yet?”

  “Caleb.” Will smiled even though he was only looking at the parking lot. “Caleb Graham.”

  “For me.” He made a choking sound. “Damn.”

  “We should be home by tonight if you’d like to run over.”

  “You’re okay with that?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? You know Moira will want to see you.”

  “Yeah. Damn.” Gray’s vocabulary seemed to have deserted him. Will hoped he didn’t have any important meetings scheduled in the next few hours.

  Him, all he wanted to do was get upstairs.

  Once there, he found that Caleb had been taken away for further assessment and to give Moira a chance to rest. She was sound asleep. Knowing she’d expect it, he backtracked briefly to the nursery and stared through the glass at his son, bundled like a burrito in a thin, pale green blanket, his spiky dark red hair covered by a tiny blue knit cap. As Will watched, Caleb’s mouth moved and his face momentarily scrunched up in a frown, then smoothed out as he relaxed into sleep. Will stood there for ten minutes or more, unable to tear his eyes from this small person he’d barely met and yet loved so much. Nature in all her mystery, he thought ruefully.

  Realizing suddenly that he needed to be with Moira, he returned to her room. She lay on her back clutching the white cotton blankets to her neck, as if she’d been cold when she fell asleep. He pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat looking at her with much the same wonder he’d felt watching his newborn son. Between the books he’d read and the class, Will had thought he’d had a pretty good idea what childbirth involved, but he’d discovered that he hadn’t known at all. Now, he was in awe of what Moira had endured. He flexed his hands—they still ached from the strength of her grip as she struggled to ride the ebb and flow of contractions too powerful to be mastered.

  Her eyelids were near translucent and her copper lashes lay against purplish bruising beneath her eyes. He doubted she’d had a good night’s sleep in weeks. But…they had their son. Will felt exultation so fierce, he couldn’t remember why he’d even hesitated about changing his life so that he could be here with her and Caleb.

  Her breasts rose and fell; her lips were softly parted. A great bubble of emotion swelled in him as he fought the hunger to touch her: to smooth back the damp strands of copper hair plastered to her high, curved forehead, or to caress her cheek. He could hardly wait until tonight, when he could hold her.

  I love her, he thought, waiting for that painful, glorious pressure in his chest to ease, although he wondered if it ever would entirely. And if what he felt was really love, or only the by-product of what they’d gone through together. It was logical that nature would want to ensure that he stay to protect and raise his child. What he felt, maybe this was the male version of the hormones that had a pregnant woman at their mercy.

  But he didn’t think so. He was pretty sure he’d started falling in love with Moira Cullen one week shy of nine months ago, and had kept tumbling ever since.

  And now that love was all tied up with what he’d felt the moment the nurse laid baby Caleb in his arms and he gazed into those unfocused, bewildered eyes and known that nothing would ever be the same.

  This, he thought with bemusement, is what his father had felt when he was born. He wished like hell Dad could be here. Wanted to think Dad was here, in some sense.

  Right this minute, it was almost impossible to imagine how Moira’s father could have failed to feel this savage certainty that he would do anything for her, give anything at all to make her happy, to keep her safe. Did the son of a bitch ever give his daughter a passing thought? Would he give a damn if he knew how his absence had damaged her?

  Maybe, Will thought, he was wrong in suspecting that half the turmoil he sensed in Moira had to do with a childhood devoid of a father. She wanted her own child to have one, but maybe on another level she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t believe in fathers at all, or at least not their staying power.

  The hospital sounds outside this room hardly made an impression on him. Will only smiled an absent thanks when a nurse brought a freshly warmed blanket to cover Moira, who gave an unconscious sigh of pleasure when it settled over her. He just kept looking at her and wishing their marriage was different, that she felt any faith at all in him.

  MOIRA WAS SITTING ON THE SOFA nursing Caleb when Will walked into the living room. Surreptitiously, she adjusted her blouse, knowing it was silly when he’d seen all of her at one time or another, but feeling shy anyway. His gaze flicked to Caleb, greedily suckling, lingering either on his son or the swell of her now overabundant breast, she wasn’t sure which, before settling on her face.

  “He’s hungry again already?”

  “I’m hoping to get him down for the night,” she said.

  “Greedy little bugger,” Will said fondly, then sat in the easy chair facing her. He stretched his legs out, crossed them at the ankles and relaxed, but didn’t pick up his book. Apparently he was simply going to watch her.

  After a minute of pretending he wasn’t, she said, “I should have driven Mom to the airport today.”

  “She understood why you didn’t.”

  Her mother had come onl
y for a few days instead of the couple weeks she’d offered when Moira thought she’d be on her own with a newborn. Mom and Will had gotten along splendidly, as far as Moira could tell; they’d taken turns cooking and cleaning the kitchen, and had had several long, quiet conversations Moira wished she’d overheard.

  As dearly as she loved her mother, though, it was almost a relief to have her gone now. With Will still not working, they hadn’t needed the help, which had made Mom really a guest who had to be entertained. Will had made an effort to leave them alone sometimes, but Moira was too confused about how she felt about him and their marriage to have any desire to confide even in her mother.

  They’d decided last night that Will would take her to the airport, because it was up to a two-hour drive each way, depending on traffic. Too long for Moira to leave Caleb, since she was nursing, and Will had quietly said, “I’d rather we not take him, with it so cold out there and the roads icy.”

  Still, Moira felt a little bit guilty now. She frowned, thinking about it. No, that wasn’t really what was bothering her. Mom hadn’t minded. It was more complicated, she thought. Things had changed without her realizing how much it would affect her relationship with her mother. Some of it was little stuff. Already she and Will had developed a kind of verbal shorthand, an ability to read each other’s minds, that sometimes had left Mom excluded; a couple of times Moira had caught a fleeting expression on her mother’s face that in retrospect Moira realized was sadness. This visit was the first time Moira had ever kissed her mother good-night then gone off to bed with a man, and that was different. It just…had felt as if they’d lost some closeness that they’d both always taken for granted.

  It was the first time she’d found herself speculating about her mother’s choices, too. Moira didn’t remember her dating very often, and never seriously. Had Mom not wanted to remarry? It had always been her and Moira against the world, although—to her credit—she hadn’t tried to cling when the time came for Moira to leave for college.

  Moira frowned, forgetting that Will was watching her. Was it an accident that her own life was ending up an echo of her mother’s? Or would have, if not for Will’s stubborn refusal to take no for an answer?