The Black Sheep’s Baby

by Kathleen Creighton

  He said it lightly, but thanks to the nature of her profession, Devon’s emotional intensity radar was acute. Issues, she thought.

  Moving abruptly away from the photo wall, she caught sight of a snapshot on the mantelpiece, similar to one she’d seen upstairs, of a laughing young man standing under a huge tree, one knee on an old-fashioned wood plank and rope swing, holding on to the ropes. “Oh, my God,” she cried, snatching it up, “please don’t tell me-this can’t be President Brown!”

  Mike chuckled; it was the first time Devon could remember hearing anyone actually make such a sound. “Oh, that’s Rhett, all right. I suppose we should have something more dignified-an official presidential portrait, at least, but Lucy likes that one. She’s always thought Rhett is inclined to be a little too full of himself, and she wants to make sure he doesn’t forget where he came from.” Devon was staring at him, speechless. He laughed. “You didn’t know? Rhett Brown is Lucy’s brother.”

  Realizing her mouth was open, she hurriedly closed it-and then her eyes as well. “I had no idea,” she said faintly, “Until I saw the picture upstairs.” And then, in a burst of candor brought on by chagrin, snapped, “I can’t believe this. Yesterday I thought your son was just some homeless unemployed bum my drug addict sister picked up on the street. Today I find out he’s the nephew of the former president of the United States.”

  A husky voice, dry and amused, responded from the doorway, “The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, are they?”

  Devon jerked toward the voice.

  “Hello, son,” Mike said mildly, “did you find your breakfast?”

  “Not yet, but I will.” Eric let his eyes slide past Devon as he moved into the room. Okay, so he was deliberately-perhaps childishly-ignoring her. And yet, so acutely attuned to her he could hear her breathing, quick and shallow like his own. “Baby still asleep?”

  “Your mother’s up there with her,” his dad said. “Haven’t heard a peep out of either one of ’em.” He ran a hand over his chin, looked from Eric to Devon and back again. “Uhh, guess I’ll go see what they’re up to…”

  “I’ll go. She’s my kid.” Eric wanted to kick himself for the surliness in his voice.

  He felt like even more of a jerk when his dad merely said, touching his arm as he moved past him, “You’d better get your breakfast first-you know your mother, she’s not going to want to see your face upstairs until you do. And,” he added with a chuckle on his way out the door, “you’d better change out of those pants before she sees ’em, too.”

  “Some things never change,” Eric growled into the silence his father’s going left behind.

  Devon laughed, a light but artificial sound. “Sounds like you might have a few issues with your father.”

  He let himself look at her then, having had time to prepare himself for the shock that always came from seeing her, time to school his features so as not to let it show. Though…he felt the jolt a lot less this time. Maybe he was getting used to her. Beginning to see her as Devon, instead of Susan’s Ghost.

  “What is this…issues?” he drawled as he studied her. “We don’t communicate. We’re father and son. So what else is new?” His voice was edgy because he was thinking that if the woman could look as beautiful as she did wearing his dad’s castoff bathrobe, somebody’s old chore coat and his high school sweatshirt, he sure would like to see what she looked like in her own clothes. What would they be, he wondered-gray flannel suits for the courtroom, maybe? Something softer, more feminine for the evenings. Royal-blue, or a deep forest-green, he thought, dressing her with his photographer’s eye.

  “I don’t know,” Devon drawled back, mimicking his own tone as she touched the computer monitor that was sitting on his dad’s old desk, “your father seems like a pretty good communicator to me. I didn’t find him hard to talk to at all.”

  Eric snorted. “Yeah, well, maybe that’s because you’re not his son.” He added under his breath as he turned away from her, “And you haven’t let him down as many times as I have.”

  “What?”

  He watched his fingers trail lightly over dusty piano keys, making no sound. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she persisted, moving closer to him, “what do you mean, you ‘let him down’?”

  He lifted an eyebrow at her and smiled without humor. “Take a guess.”

  But he saw that she was frowning, and genuinely perplexed. He let out a long slow breath while he thought about whether to answer her or not. It wasn’t his problems-issues-with his family he wanted to talk about, and certainly not with her. What he needed to do was get her talking about her family, her issues. On the other hand, maybe one way to get her talking and remembering was to start the ball rolling himself.

  For a few more seconds, though, he didn’t say anything; not being used to personal confidences, it was hard to know how to begin. Finally, he reached up and took down a photograph-the biggest one-from the top of the piano. Smiling because that particular one always made him smile, he handed it to Devon.

  She gave him a curious glance. “Who is it? Looks old-the picture, I mean, not-”

  “It’s my great-great-Lord knows how many greats-grandmother. Lucinda Rosewood.”

  “She looks a lot like your mom.” Devon was holding the portrait like an open book in her two hands, her normally flawless forehead marred by a tiny frown.

  Eric nodded. “She’s named for her.”

  Her eyes flew wide, colliding with his, and he felt himself start as if he’d been splashed with cool green water. “Oh-she’s much prettier, of course. Your mom is, I mean. This lady-God, she looks so severe.”

  Eric laughed and shifted so he could look at the portrait of his ancestor with her. He caught the faintest whiff of something from her clothing…could it be mothballs? “Those pioneer women always do, don’t they? Like they could lick their weight in wildcats.” His throat was husky. He cleared it, and as if it were a signal of some kind, Devon looked up at him and handed the picture back.

  Instead of returning it to its place, he held on to it, and said hoarsely, “There’s a legend in our family about Grandma Rosewood-I must have heard it a thousand times at least, growing up.”

  “Legend?” Her voice was hushed, and…was it his imagination, or did there seem to be a catch in her breathing?

  He didn’t look to see why. He was too close to her…the heat from her body was seeping through the weave of his shirt, soaking into his skin. Her scent was in every breath he took-a warm, woman’s scent, without even a lingering hint of mothballs.

  He cleared his throat again. “Yeah…according to this legend, Grandma Rosewood saved herself and her baby from a Sioux raiding party by setting fire to her own house and barn. Then she tied her baby up in her apron and climbed down the well and hid there while the fire burned all the way to the river.”

  “Looking at that picture of her,” Devon said in a light, laughing voice, “I can easily believe it.”

  He reached up to set the portrait in its place. “That’s how long this farm has been in our family. Handed down from generation to generation, for more than a hundred and fifty years.”

  “Wow…some legacy.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a legacy that’s going to end with my mom,” Eric said, and his voice was neither light nor laughing, but hard and heavy, like the weight that had come to be in the middle of his chest.

  Chapter 7

  “W hy?” She was frowning, her eyes sharp and intelligent, clear and green as glass.

  He felt a wild little ripple run through him, a reprise of what he’d experienced in the kitchen this morning during his first run-in with her. There was something about the woman that got to him. Excited him. Turned him on. It wasn’t the way he wanted it, but what could he do? The only thing he knew for sure was that he couldn’t deny it.

  “Why?” he croaked, angry with himself for many reasons. “Because I sure as hell am not cut out to be a farmer. I never wanted to be a
farmer.” He jerked away from her and paced to the fireplace, ramming the fingers of one hand into his hair as he waved the other at the array of faces looking back at him from the mantelpiece. “Who does that leave? My sister? Okay, Ellie’s nuts about animals-she always planned to be a vet-but then she got involved with Save the Whales and Orangutan Rescue, and became a government biologist instead. She and her husband work together now. They go all over the world saving endangered wildlife-important stuff. You think she’s going to come back here to Iowa and run a farm?

  “Who else? My mom’s brothers?” He snorted derisively as he touched their portraits in turn. “You’ve already ‘met’ my uncle Rhett, here, the former president of the United States. His kids…my cousin Lauren, she’s a lawyer, married to a Native American sheriff. They live on a reservation out in Arizona. My cousin Ethan’s a doctor. He’s married to Joanna Dunn-you know, the rock star, Phoenix? Can’t see either of them coming back here to take up the family business, can you?” Devon shook her head, but he wasn’t looking for an answer.

  “Then there’s my cousin Caitlyn…” He paused. Small seismic tremors were rippling through him, the beginnings of something of too great a magnitude to be called an idea. More like an inspiration.

  Caitlyn. Of course.

  He cleared his throat and glibly continued. “She’s a social worker-works for a non-profit human rights organization of some kind. Nobody really knows exactly what Caty does…” Which was a lie. He did, actually, and was probably the only member of the family other than Caitlyn herself who did. “Except that she travels a lot. Definitely not the type to sit home on the farm.

  “Her dad, my uncle Earl-better known as Wood-teaches school in Sioux City. He’s a great guy, but he abdicated years ago. After my grandparents died, both of my uncles left my mom to sink or swim here on her own-and she might have sunk, too, if my dad hadn’t come along when he did. Gwen always said it was Providence…” He stopped, because a lump had come unexpectedly to his throat.

  He was trying to swallow it when a voice close behind him softly prompted, “Gwen?”

  She’d startled him; he’d almost forgotten he had an audience, he’d had this discussion with himself so many times. He turned with Gwen’s portrait in his hands. Frowning at it, he said thickly, “My mom’s great-aunt, I think. She lived with us when I was growing up.” He took a deep breath and looked around the room. “This was her sitting room-Gwen’s parlor, we called it. Come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve been here since she died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  It was the standard, automatic response. Eric shrugged it off. “She was over a hundred years old-I’m not sure exactly how much over, but quite a bit. Hey-it had to happen.”

  “Is that her picture?” She held out a hand, and Eric, nodding, handed it over. “One of yours?” He nodded again, wondering how she knew. “She looks like a neat lady,” Devon said, making what might have been an inane comment sound as though it came straight from the heart.

  Eric said nothing for a moment, gazing down at the face he’d photographed so many times…this one a favorite of his, the lovely aged face turned slightly away from him and lifted joyfully to the sun. “She had the most incredible voice,” he said, trying again to laugh. “Like music…always just a grace note away from laughter.”

  “But,” said Devon thoughtfully, “her eyes seem sad.”

  The observation both surprised and touched him. Looking over at her, standing almost shoulder to shoulder with him, shorter than he was though not by much, his eyes on a level with the top of her head, he felt a sudden and intense wave of longing, and had no idea what it was he was longing for.

  “I always thought so,” he said gruffly. “Mom said it was because her husband was killed in the Second World War. Anyway, she never remarried.” He paused, looking around him at the room he’d never before seen without Gwen’s presence in it, hearing in his mind’s ear the music of her laughter. Regret made his voice even harsher when he added, “I didn’t make it to her funeral.”

  She looked up at him, and he forced himself not to waver under the impact of that intent green gaze. Reminding himself that it had been his own idea, this sharing of the secrets of his soul. “Why not?”

  He shrugged and looked away again. “I was in Africa at the time. There was a famine…”

  “There’s always a famine in Africa, isn’t there?”

  “Yeah,” Eric said dryly, “and that’s apparently what the whole world’s attitude was at the time, because this particular famine didn’t even make the evening news here. Just stuck away somewhere on the back pages of the international section of the newspapers. Old news.” Except to the children who were dying, he thought bitterly. “It was a story I thought needed telling.”

  He feels things more deeply than most people…and not only that, unlike most people, he also gets involved. Devon was experiencing disquieting stirrings, the awakening of new impressions and perspectives. She was surprised to identify one of those as respect.

  “Were your parents upset with you for not coming home for the funeral?” she asked in a careful, gentle tone, as she would if she were interviewing a particularly fragile witness.

  Eric considered a moment, then let out a breath. “No,” he admitted almost reluctantly, “they pretty much understood.”

  Devon let the words lie there in the fertile silence. She watched his face as he gazed down at the portrait of the old woman in his hands, then let his eyes travel slowly across the mantelpiece, touching each photo there in turn. Finally, bringing his gaze back to her, he muttered it again, as though in awe, “They understood.”

  There was silence again, and it became too hard to maintain contact with those eyes. She jerked hers back to the family photo gallery. “Well. You do have quite a family.” It sounded lame. It wasn’t what she wanted to say. She felt a new burning in her belly and identified its source with a small sense of surprise.

  Envy. I envy him. You have a wonderful family, she wanted to say. Even scattered all over the world, you can feel their warmth, their love. I envy you.

  “Not what you expected?” His voice had a cool and bitter edge. Jerking her eyes back to him, she saw that his smile had slipped off center, and knew what he was thinking even before he said it. “That’s what you get for prejudging people.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, wanted to deny it, to explain. A soft snort forestalled her.

  “You know what’s funny?” Eric said, and there was no rancor in his voice. Only wry amusement. “You’re probably still doing it. Right this minute. Right now you’re probably thinking, Wow, what a great family, right? From one extreme to the other. But you know what? The truth is generally somewhere in the middle. Hey, I love my family, but they’re not perfect.” He snatched up a photograph, a black-and-white wedding picture she thought might be his grandparents’. “It’s like this photograph. We’d call it black-and-white, but if you look closely, it’s actually a whole bunch of different shades of gray.” He thrust it at her, a little self-consciously; she thought he wasn’t comfortable on the soapbox.

  Cautiously smiling, she said, “Does that mean you no longer believe I’m a complete one hundred percent ogre?”

  He paused, obviously caught off guard. Then a smile flickered behind his eyes as he said somberly, “Not a hundred percent. Maybe…fifty.”

  “Okay,” Devon triumphantly breathed, “we’re making progress.”

  There was another pause before he answered without the smile, a wary and thoughtful, “Are we?”

  And she couldn’t answer him, not the glib and confident affirmative she’d planned. Where is this going? she wondered with a stab of panic. Last night she’d set off in a blizzard, full of self-assurance, certain of her path. Today, in a warm house, safe from the storm, she felt lost, afraid to put a foot forward or say a word lest it lead her into hidden peril.

  What had changed? This man, Eric Lanagan, with his gentle eyes and hollow cheeks and fierc
e hawk’s nose…he was still her adversary. That much hadn’t changed. What was different, she realized, was the battlefield. She was accustomed to seeing every contest in terms of…yes, black and white: me-my client-against them. But like the photograph in Eric’s hands, this landscape seemed to be all in shades of gray. She was like a lander on a new planet, picking her way over unfamiliar terrain, never knowing when or from where the dangers might come.

  He was waiting for her answer, she realized, watching her with unreadable eyes and lopsided smile. She murmured something ambiguous, but even before she finished she could tell he’d stopped listening. His head tilted, and his eyes lifted toward the ceiling.

  “The baby’s awake,” he announced, returning the wedding picture to the mantel and heading for the door. Halfway there he paused and gave a jerk of his head, inviting-no, ordering-her to come along.

  Devon’s heart thudded; she opened her mouth, words of panicked protest already tumbling from her tongue. But he shook his head and made an imperious gesture with his hand, reminding her suddenly, remarkably, of his mother. “Come on,” he said gruffly, a masculine version of Lucy’s rusty voice, “it’s about time you met your niece.”

  Mike had found Lucy sitting on Eric’s bed, holding the baby up in front of her, rather the way she’d hold a hymnal, even though she couldn’t sing a note.

  “It’s the ‘Looking Over,’” she explained in response to his amused question, watching the baby’s murky blue eyes flick across her own face. “You know, like in The Jungle Book? We humans do it, too, you know. Sort of our way of saying welcome to the world…” She caught her breath in wonder as the baby’s tiny mouth suddenly popped open in a smile-a real one, she was sure of it. “I’ve been looking for Eric,” she said when her awed and tremulous breathing had gotten back to normal. She paused, and then… “Do you think she’s really our grandchild?”

  Mike coughed and shifted around the way he did when he was trying to avoid answering her. Which was generally when he knew she wasn’t going to like the answer he had to give her.