by Toni Blake
“Ah gooo.”
And he realized that a while could even be all night. He hoped he could do a satisfactory job of taking care of her if it turned into an overnight thing.
Again, he sort of wished there was someone he could call for help if he needed it. Maybe Holly would check in by phone at some point, and if he had any questions, he could ask her then. But at the same time, he wanted to seem capable here. He didn’t want her to have to worry about anything besides her mother.
An hour later, he’d successfully changed Emily’s diaper, cleaned up the dinner mess, and put the remainder of the pizza in the fridge. He felt like he was doing a good job. So it figured that, just when he was starting to feel comfortable, Emily would break into tears.
He sat on the couch, cradling her in his arms and peering helplessly down into her scrunched up eyes as tears streamed down her little face. “Waaaaaa! Waaaaa! Waaaaa!”
What the hell could be wrong? He’d changed her diaper just a little while ago. And he’d fed her just before that. He wasn’t sure what else to check.
Then he remembered the pacifier Holly had given him on the way out the door. Leaning over, he plucked it up from where he’d set it on the coffee table and gently nudged it into her open, crying mouth.
Silence filled the room as Emily grabbed onto the pacifier with her lips and sucked wildly.
Whoa. Amazing!
Emily closed her eyes and enjoyed whatever comfort the pacifier provided as Derek watched the rapid sucking motions of her mouth, noting how pleased she looked, how suddenly peaceful. He couldn’t help smiling.
“Is that what you wanted?” he asked her.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him, continuing to pull at the pacifier.
“I guess it was.”
It occurred to him then that night had fallen—it was dark outside, and he and Emily were all alone. And all in all, everything was fine. “We do all right, you and me, don’t we?” he asked the baby.
She didn’t answer, of course.
But he thought that if she could, she’d agree.
CHAPTER NINE
Holly squeezed her mother’s hand, then turned to leave the room. Visitors were being admitted one at a time and it was Michelle’s turn.
“How is she?” her sister asked when Holly came out into the hall in the intensive care unit.
“Weak,” Holly replied. “But she spoke to me, asked me where Emily was.” Holly smiled tiredly about her mother’s concern for the baby even in her own critical condition and Michelle did, as well.
“By the way,” Michelle said, “I was too upset to ask you before, but was that the hunk?”
Holly nodded.
Her sister leaned forward just slightly. “And last night, did you?”
Holly nodded again.
Michelle’s eyes brightened amid her worry. “And was it great?”
Holly nodded a third time, but she knew her disheartened expression required an explanation. Only she couldn’t give one now. “It was…beyond amazing—but it didn’t end well. Long story. For another time.”
Michelle nodded and patted her shoulder. “I’m gonna go in now.”
Holly stood outside and waited for her sister, trying to remember everything the doctor had told them. Her mother was in critical but stable condition. Chances for recovery were good, but she wasn’t completely out of the woods yet.
The doctor had suggested that she and Michelle go home after they each visited with their mother for a few minutes, but they planned to stay. Critical but stable didn’t sound totally reassuring and they both wanted to be there if their mother needed them.
Then Holly thought of Emily and Derek. Even after he’d offered, she’d still felt bad accepting his help. Because the more she played his feeble excuse about tomorrow over in her head, the more certain she became that he just hadn’t wanted to spend time with her and Emmy.
Maybe she was just mad at herself. For what she’d wanted. Because wasn’t that exactly what she’d been hoping for—that Derek would want her and Emily both in his life?
But it was a lot to ask of a single man, perhaps more than was reasonable, especially this soon after meeting him. After all, having a baby certainly hadn’t been his decision.
And yet she knew she couldn’t be with a man who couldn’t embrace Emily as part of the deal.
Why did it all have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t she find some happy medium?
Because there isn’t one.
After walking down the hall, Holly took a deep breath and dialed her own number.
“Hello?”
“Hi Derek—it’s Holly.”
“How’s your mom?”
Another deep breath. “Stable.”
“That’s good news,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “How’s Em doing?”
“We’re fine,” he told her. “We ate, we diapered, and now we’re enjoying our pacifier.”
And Holly couldn’t help smiling. This didn’t sound quite like a man who minded spending time with her daughter. “So things are going well?”
“Things are going great.” She thought she even heard a hint of pride in his voice, which softened her heart toward him still more.
And she couldn’t help it—the fact that he was making this so easy on her filled her with affection. It was a difficult night for her, and he could be making it worse—but instead he was making it better. “Derek, I don’t know how to thank you for taking care of Emmy for me tonight.”
“You don’t have to,” he said. “Really.”
She bit her lip thoughtfully, glad he couldn’t see the measure of appreciation on her face. Because, of course, it was more than just appreciation. It was love.
“So…” she began then, “would it trouble you too much…if I didn’t come home quite yet?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “Take as much time as you need.”
“Are you sure? Because I could come home. But I just kind of want to be here, you know, just in case…”
“Holly,” he said, his deep voice enough to weaken her knees even over the phone, “I don’t mind. Honest. I can stay as long as you need me to.”
She sighed, then spoke very softly. “Thank you. Thank you for being so sweet.”
“I can’t help myself,” he said playfully. “It’s just the kind of guy I am.”
And she found herself wishing the distance that lay between them would somehow just magically disappear, the distance between here and home—and other kinds of distance, too.
***
Derek kneeled before Emily on the quilt on the living room floor and watched her still working away on her beloved pacifier. “Ahgooooo,” she cooed, flipping the pacifier out of her mouth.
It made him laugh, and he reached out to tickle her stomach. And when she offered a soft giggle in return, their eyes met. Such little eyes. But still so expressive. He had a strange impulse to pick her up—but he ignored it. She was doing fine where she was.
“You want this back?” he asked, offering the pacifier again.
She accepted it into her mouth and returned to her sucking motions.
In search of some additional way to entertain her, he reached around behind him and found Eeyore. “Here’s Eeyore,” he said, holding the purple donkey up where Emily could see. Maybe he imagined it, but he could have sworn her eyes brightened. “Eeyore loves you,” he said—and then he touched the stuffed animal’s mouth to Emily’s nose while he made a kissing sound.
Wait. Eeyore loves you? Where was he getting this stuff? And he’d be pretty damn embarrassed if anyone else was around. But they weren’t, thank goodness.
Emily sneezed then and the pacifier shot from her mouth like a bullet and whacked Derek in the forehead.
“Hey!” he said.
But Emily just lay below him laughing.
“Oh, that’s funny, huh?” he asked, smiling down at her. Then he tried to picture it in his mind—him getting hit with a flying pacif
ier. “Yeah,” he agreed, “I guess it was pretty funny.”
The two of them played with Eeyore for a little while, then switched off to a white stuffed rabbit he found sitting in her swing. He made the rabbit hop up Emily’s leg and across her stomach before letting it kiss her. She smiled each time. And soon he found himself making funny faces at her—widening his eyes and opening his mouth as if in great surprise. Every once in awhile he stopped and shook his head, though, growing even more thankful Emily was the only person here to witness his behavior.
A little after ten o’clock, she began to cry. He checked her diaper, but it was dry. And then he tried the pacifier—to no avail. Even Eeyore and the bunny had lost their magic. “Maybe you just miss your mommy,” he said, carefully lifting her off the quilt and into his arms. He walked around the room, rocking her back and forth as he’d seen Holly do—and the tears slowed, but they didn’t stop. “I do, too,” he confessed.
It had been nice to hear Holly’s voice on the phone. When she’d reported that her mother was in stable condition, he’d felt almost as relieved—for her sake—as if it had been Aunt Marie. He knew it was still very serious, but it sounded like the worst scare was over.
He sat down on the couch, Emily cradled in his arms. He wished she seemed more comforted by his holding her—somehow it comforted him—but her gentle cries continued. “Shhh, Em,” he whispered.
“Waaaaaaa,” she cried softly.
Derek remembered the time he’d heard Holly singing to Emily and how it had quieted her. But he didn’t know the words to that mockingbird song people always sang to babies. In fact, he couldn’t think of many baby songs at all—he wasn’t sure any had ever been sung to him.
“Rock-a-Bye Baby,” he said then, lifting a triumphant finger in the air as he remembered the lullaby.
Then he began. “Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall…” He let his voice trail off then, though. The cradle will fall? That didn’t exactly sound soothing. In fact, wasn’t it kind of scary? Who made up these things? He wasn’t going to sing the rest of it.
But Emily continued to cry softly, and as he reached a cloth up to dry some of her tears, he knew he needed to try something else. Only he didn’t know any more lullabies. So…maybe he’d just sing her a song he knew. Which meant he had to think of a song he knew.
He knew lots of songs by the Rolling Stones. Aunt Marie had been a fan and it had sort of carried over. So after another moment’s pondering, he began to sing to Emily again, rocking her in his arms. “I can’t get no…sa-tis-fac-tion. I can’t get no…strained pea action. Well, I cry, and I cry…” Thinking that part particularly suitable, he finished the chorus, then moved on the faster verse. “Well, I’m drinking from my bottle, and I think it might be empty, and I’m trying to get some milk. I can’t get no…no, no, no. No strained pea action…no strained pea action…”
***
Holly entered the house quietly. Like the other night when she’d come home to Derek and Emily, the lights were low and all was quiet. A smile found her face when she spotted them—they both lay on the quilt, Emily asleep in the crook of Derek’s shoulder. One of his arms wrapped protectively around the baby and in the other hand he held Eeyore. His eyes were closed, but he was tapping his bare toes on the carpet, so she knew he was awake. Despite what had happened between them that morning, Holly couldn’t help feeling that she couldn’t have left her daughter in better hands.
They looked so adorable that she almost didn’t want to let Derek know she’d come home. But it was past midnight and she supposed she should end his shift.
“Hey,” she said softly.
He slowly opened his eyes, and then gave her a soft smile. “Hey,” he returned sleepily. “Didn’t hear you come in.”
“Sorry I’m so late,” she apologized.
But he shook his head. “I told you, we’re fine. Don’t we look fine?” He turned to steal a glance at Emily.
And Holly grinned. “Yes, you look fine.”
“Your mom’s condition improving?” he asked, carefully sliding out from beneath the baby, gently lowering her head to the quilt.
Holly sat down on the couch, nodding. “She’s much better. She’ll be in the hospital for a few days, but they’re expecting her to be okay.”
“That’s great,” Derek said. “I was worried. For you.”
Holly sighed as the strange, new, helpless love she felt for him coursed through her veins and his sweet concern fell over her like a warm blanket. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Well,” he admitted softly, “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.”
Holly bit her lip. “Have you…lost someone recently?”
He rose from the quilt and joined her on the couch, and she was glad to be closer to him. “Yeah,” he said. “My Aunt Marie. She passed away pretty suddenly—kidney failure.”
“I’m sorry,” Holly said.
“She was kind of like…a mother to me,” he went on. “It happened just a couple months ago.” Then he offhandedly pointed in the direction of his house. “That’s how I ended up next door to you.”
And then Holly suddenly remembered the nice, older lady who had lived in the house before Derek. “Marie next door was your aunt?”
“Yeah. You knew her?” His eyes lit up when he asked.
“Just a little. We’d say hello in passing,” she added, smiling. “And she brought over a casserole when Bill died. I didn’t know what happened to her—I don’t really know any of the neighbors well enough to ask.” Then she shook her head. “I’m really sorry to hear that she’s gone.”
Derek shrugged as Holly knew men were sometimes wont to do in times of sorrow, trying to play it off as no big deal. But then his eyes grew distant, as if he was seeing something she couldn’t, and she sensed a heavy weight about him that she hadn’t just a moment before. She had the urge to reach out, touch him, but she didn’t want to embarrass him. So instead she just whispered, “Are you all right?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, visibly trying to shake off his sorrow. “I guess I just…miss her. I try not to think about it. But I pretty much owe her my life.”
His words caught her wholly off guard. And she didn’t want to pry, but she had to ask. “You owe her your life?”
He simply met her gaze, his eyes filled with emotion she couldn’t read. And she wanted, more than anything in that moment, to know his secrets.
“Holly,” he began then on a deep sigh, “there’s so much you don’t know about me.”
“Well, of course. We just met,” she reminded him.
“But it doesn’t quite feel that way, does it?” he asked with a frank tilt of his head.
“No,” she replied. And finding out he felt that way, too, somehow made all her feelings for him somehow seem a little safer. Like the connection she felt to him was more than one-sided—like it was something real, and important.
“Still,” he went on, “there’s so much you’d be…surprised to know. Things you might not want to know.”
The words made her heart pump faster—with curiosity, and maybe even a little fear. He did have secrets. What were they? On impulse, she reached for his hand. “You can tell me.”
He looked away—toward the window, as if maybe he was considering a means of escape—but then his eyes dropped briefly to Emily, his expression softening just slightly, before he raised them back to her. “I never knew my mother,” he told her.
“Oh Derek,” she breathed. “Why not?”
“She ran off when I was a baby.”
Holly stayed silent, something inside her shriveling as his words sunk in. How could any mother do that to her child? It was beyond her ability to grasp.
“My dad was a drunk,” he added simply then.
And she squeezed his hand, wishing for some better way to comfort him. Seeing glimpses in his eyes of the little boy he’d once been broke her heart all the m
ore.
“And he was the kind of drunk who…well, let’s just say he sort of took out his frustrations on me, used me as a punching bag.”
At this, she lifted her free hand to cover her mouth, trying to hold in her gasp. And she blinked, trying to will away a deeper reaction, but a tear rolled down her cheek anyway. She wiped it away, wanting desperately to hug him, but somehow she knew he wouldn’t want that kind of hug, wouldn’t want her to see him as a little boy who needed that.
“Aunt Marie was my mother’s sister,” he explained. “We weren’t in contact while I was a kid, but then one day she saw my dad somewhere and asked about me. She came over to our house and saw how we lived, which was, basically, in squalor. And she decided to get me out of there.”
“I’m so glad,” Holly breathed.
He met her gaze. “Me, too,” he whispered. Then his voice came back to normal. “Dad didn’t put up much of a fuss—the only reason he regretted seeing me go was not having anybody to boss around anymore. Aunt Marie brought me here to live—” he pointed again, “—to her house. I was twelve and, by that time, a pretty rotten kid. I put that woman through hell when I was a teenager.”
Holly tilted her head. “What did you do?”
He glanced down, seeming unable to meet her eyes.
And she again said, “You can tell me. I’ll understand.”
But this time he shook his head. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but honey, you don’t seem like the kind of girl who…could understand the kind of life I’ve led. That’s not your fault—I just doubt you were exposed to the kinds of shit I was. And no kid should go through the things I did. But…I wasn’t the same guy I am now. I barely know you and I’m still pretty sure our lives were pretty damn different. So I’m…not sure you will understand.”
“Listen,” she told him, “my mom and dad divorced when I was ten years old, and that’s rough on any kid. By the time I was fifteen, we never even saw him. So it wasn’t all wine and roses for me, either. And I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as bad as what you went through, but…just try me. I might understand more than you think.”
