The Seal’s Baby

by Rogenna Brewer

  “Well.” Mary Margaret broke the ice. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m ready for dessert.”

  THE FLOOR DIDN’T OFFER Mike any comfort from his thoughts tonight. Hannah had been quiet the rest of the evening and shunned his advances once they were alone in the room. The crash, Holden, it had been just a few days ago in a whole other world and the event was probably still sinking in. He’d tried to talk to her about it, but she’d shut down on him.

  Fallon stirred, then whimpered.

  He was up in a heartbeat and standing over her.

  Changing his daughter’s soggy diaper, he comforted her with soft-spoken words, then carried her out the door while Hannah continued to sleep.

  “I suppose you’re hungry,” he whispered when he reached the hall.

  In answer to his question, she latched on to his bottom lip with her chubby fist. Together they made a buh-buh-buh sound. “Can you say, ‘da-da’?” He tried to coach her into trying out the new syllable, but she wasn’t having any of it. “Da-da?” he repeated, following the soft glow of night-lights to the kitchen. His daughter rewarded his efforts with a bright smile.

  Mike snagged a premade bottle from the refrigerator. While that heated, he poured himself a bowl of cereal. The idea of interacting with this tiny human being he’d created still seemed impossible to him.

  They settled on the couch in the living room. He turned the TV on, keeping the volume low. They ate by the soft glow, but he spent more time watching his daughter than the tube. He loved the way she kept her eyes focused on his face, even as she sucked.

  His parents’ marriage had started with little more than this. Maybe he and Hannah had a chance. Fallon was worth the effort. What would it take to convince Hannah?

  Taping his sister’s mouth shut might be a start.

  HANNAH’S INTERNAL body clock went off some time after 0400. When she woke to total silence and an empty crib, cries of alarm went off in her head. She craned her neck to get a look over the opposite side of the bed, but McCaffrey was gone, too.

  Logic told her he had the baby. But that didn’t stop her need to make sure her daughter was being cared for.

  She threw back the covers and grabbed one of Mike’s discarded shirts, which she threw on over her pajamas.

  On the landing, she paused.

  Fallon and Mike were in the living room. Fallon rested against Mike’s shoulder, and he was patting her back. “On the count of three,” he said. “One, two…” Father and daughter belched in sync. “Good girl!”

  The baby obviously thought he was some kind of belching god. Her little movements became animated, and she laughed out loud.

  “Should we do it again?” he asked Fallon.

  “I would have fed her.” Hannah took those last few steps. “You should have woken me up.” It came out sounding like an accusation.

  Mike looked up self-consciously. “The baby and I wanted some chow. Thought you could use the rest.”

  He handed Fallon over, then tucked his hands in his armpits as if he didn’t quite know what to do with them now that they were empty.

  For some reason it irritated Hannah to realize Fallon had been spending quality time with her father.

  What was the point of all this holding and changing and feeding? Did he feel duty-bound? Hannah had no reason to believe that McCaffrey’s sudden interest in parenting was anything more than a passing fad.

  The first time he was away for six, or more, months at a time, he’d come back a stranger. And when the novelty wore off, he’d start to find other things to do with the time he was home.

  Fallon would suffer for the prolonged estrangement. Not Mac. And Hannah’d be damned if that would happen. There would be no butterfly kisses and absolutely no belching on her watch. He made early-morning feedings into playtime, while she was lucky to stay awake through those few precious moments.

  What about her quality time with her baby?

  She stifled a yawn while McCaffrey looked ready to take on the day. “Coffee?” he asked.

  The aroma was already coming from the kitchen. She nodded only because she knew she wouldn’t be going back to bed anytime soon.

  Fallon reached for Mike as Hannah followed him into the kitchen. The awful truth was, she was jealous of her baby’s father. Fallon smiled more for him, laughed out loud for him, and Hannah didn’t even know if she’d ever done that before. One of many firsts she’d missed out on.

  It was all fine and good that he could get up and play with the baby, then just hand her back. In the end Hannah would be the one left holding their daughter.

  He poured her a cup and took his usual sip. It was just too much for her.

  “Stop doing that!”

  “What?” He looked confused, leaning back against the counter to sulk into his own cup.

  Hannah sat down at the table, trying to regain control of a restless baby and her own jealousy and resentment.

  McCaffrey set his cup on the countertop behind him. “Want me to take her?” He held out his arms.

  Fallon almost dived for him. “I’ve got her,” Hannah snapped, fumbling to get a better hold on her bundle.

  Mike frowned. Hannah scowled, and Fallon cried despite Hannah’s best efforts to coddle her.

  “Good morning,” Maude said, tying her robe as she stepped into the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry. I hope we didn’t wake you.” Hannah remembered her manners and apologized.

  Maude shrugged it off. “I’m always awake this early. Who do you think set the coffee timer for five o’clock? Why don’t you go catch up on your sleep, Hannah. I know I never got enough as a new mother. Mike and I’ve got the baby,” she said, neatly extracting Fallon from Hannah’s arms.

  Hannah had been outmaneuvered by a pro. Hannah had the feeling Mrs. M. had heard much of their conversation and had guessed at the source of Hannah’s motives and irritability. She’d been given no choice but to be rude to Mike’s mother or retreat.

  McCaffrey entered the bedroom a few minutes later without their daughter. Hannah was in the bathroom with the door open. She put her toothbrush away and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Catching a glimpse of him in the mirror, she hesitated before drying her hands on the hanging towel.

  She turned out the bathroom light and stepped into the bedroom all without saying a word. Moving to her suitcase, she put away her toiletries.

  And that’s when he finally realized she was packing. “What’s up,” he asked.

  She turned to face him. “What’s the point to all this, Mike? I’m tired of acting the part of the happy family. And quite frankly, I can’t see you as a father.” In truth, the glimpse she’d gotten scared her. All her old insecurities surfaced in that instant. “Even if I’d had the chance to tell you about Fallon, you would have missed her birth. How many birthdays and milestones are you going to miss?”

  “Don’t do this,” he pleaded. “Don’t make me choose between duty and my daughter.”

  “Dammit, McCaffrey! I’m not asking you to choose. I’m asking you to let us go. Fallon’s just a baby. You might miss an occasional birthday, but she’s going to spend her life missing you.” She could see she was tearing out his heart. She was tearing out her own. She turned back to the suitcase and zipped closed the lid with a finality that ripped through the room. “I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough to do this. I want to go home.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  NAVAL AMPHIBIOUS BASE

  Coronado, California

  MIKE TOWELED OFF, then tossed his towel to the bench in the Team’s locker room. He stood naked in front of his open locker. His Chase-Durer waited for him on the top shelf, along with the rest of his personal effects, and he felt the overwhelming desire to see a gold band beside it.

  He brushed the inscription with his thumb before strapping the watch on. What would that be like, piecing himself back together after a mission, knowing he had a wife and daughter waiting for him at home?

  He’d al
ways been a little bit afraid to want that.

  Now that he had a daughter he was afraid the reality wasn’t as simple as what he might have wanted it to be. Hannah didn’t need him and she didn’t want him. She’d made that clear the other morning when they’d wound up leaving the farm a day early.

  He didn’t know what Hannah wanted.

  Hannah didn’t know what Hannah wanted. And that was the real problem. She’d said she needed time and space—away from him. So he’d left her, and his daughter, alone all week, hoping Hannah would be able to figure out exactly what she should do.

  He’d kept himself busy during the day. At night he rotated through the take-out menus on his refrigerator.

  He thought maybe what she really wanted was to stay home with the baby. She could do that and still be in uniform with just one phone call to Petrone.

  Where would that leave him?

  Separated from his daughter by fifteen hundred miles. But Hannah would have what she wanted. His daughter would have what she needed—her mother. And Petrone would have everything Mike could ever hope to have.

  Mike picked up his cell phone and hit the speed dial, filtering out the sounds of the locker room.

  “Hall-Petrone Aerospace Tech,” a woman answered.

  “I’d like to speak with Peter Petrone.”

  “May I ask who’s calling, please?”

  “McCaffrey. Tell him it’s Commander Mike McCaffrey, and I have a favor to ask…”

  “Hold one moment, please.”

  He wrapped the towel back around his waist and switched ears as easy-listening music began to play in the background.

  A guy Mike recognized from the Leap Frogs, the Navy SEALs parachute jumping team, walked in calling his name. “Commander McCaffrey?”

  “Yo.” Mike waved him over while he was still waiting for Petrone.

  The guy stepped up to him. “Sir, is your full name Sean Michael McCaffrey?”

  “Yes,” Mike said with a touch more caution. He lowered the phone from his ear, just now realizing this Frog moonlighted as a process server because his day job gave him access to the Naval base and its personnel.

  “Sorry, Commander. Consider yourself served.” All conversation around them ceased as the guy slapped legal papers into Mike’s palm.

  NAVAL AIR STATION NORTH ISLAND

  Coronado, California

  “SORRY, MA’AM,” her yeoman apologized from the door as McCaffrey pushed his way into her office.

  Hannah stood. “It’s all right. Just go ahead and close the door behind the commander.”

  McCaffrey took the court order in his back pocket and tossed it to the desk. “One weekend a month, two weeks a year? Sounds like reserve duty to me. I’m an active duty dad. Nothing less than joint custody, Han!”

  Crossing her arms, she took a deep breath. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t expecting this. “You’ll be lucky if you can find one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer to spend with your daughter. I have no objection to Fallon spending that time with your family when you’re not available, but I’d like your parenting plan as soon as possible. This isn’t easy for me, either, Mike. She’s just a baby—”

  “And you have so much more time to spend with her than I do.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “This—” he stabbed his finger to the document “—isn’t fair. I stopped by legal on the way over. They said one-sixth of my base pay per child.” He reached into his back pocket again and this time pulled out his checkbook. He ripped off the top check and handed it to her. “Six months back child support. I’ll arrange to have monthly payments deposited to your account—”

  “It’s not about the money, Mike. I don’t even need your money… Thank you,” she apologized, realizing it wasn’t about the money for him, either. She caught a glimpse of the check design. Smiling at his neat signature and the whimsy that made him pick Snoopy the Flying Ace, she relented. “What do you propose we do, Mike?”

  He removed his ball cap, combed steady fingers through his hair, then stood on the opposite side of her desk with his legs spread and his arms folded. “Move in together,” he said, looking her square in the eye.

  She must have stared for a full minute, trying to figure out the meaning behind his words. “Marriage isn’t the answer.”

  “I didn’t ask you to marry me,” he countered. “Or to sleep with me.”

  Embarrassed by her own presumption, she felt heat creep up her neck. “There are only four bedrooms. And I was going to make one over into Fallon’s nursery.”

  “We kick your mother out. I plan to keep my place, and she can stay there for as long as our little arrangement continues.”

  “And what about Sammy? Are we going to kick her out, too?”

  “I think we both know that as duel military parents, we need your sister. You may not get more time with Fallon if I move in, but with both of us sharing full responsibility you’ll get more quality time with her.”

  “It’ll never work.”

  “It’s going to work because it’s the grown-up thing to do. We can split our kid. Or we can split our time. The way I see it neither of those two options is really ideal. So we combine forces as one family unit.”

  “You make it sound so simple, yet I know this is going to be complicated.”

  “Is that a maybe?”

  She caught the twitch at the corner of his mouth and smiled. Still she hedged.

  “I can’t be your roommate, Mike. I mean it’s not realistic to think that we could just live together, and not live together. It would be like kids playing house where everything is just pretend. Real people have real relationships, real feelings and real fights.” Her hand gestures became animated. “I fight with my mother and sister all the time, but I still love them and forgive them. What would we be basing this relationship on?” She held her palms up, waiting for his answer.

  He perched on her desk. “Okay, if you insist I’ll sleep with you.”

  EARLY SATURDAY MORNING McCaffrey showed up at the house just as Hannah returned from taking Fallon for a ride in her new baby jogger. She unlocked the door and there he was sauntering up her walkway.

  His visit wasn’t all that unexpected. What was unexpected was the brand spanking new Jeep Cherokee parked at her curb. A Ford Bronco and an eighteen-wheeler pulled up behind the Jeep.

  “Come in,” she invited, leaving the door open. “What’s with the new SUV?”

  “No kid of mine is riding in a vehicle with a roll bar. Samantha—” he tossed her sister a set of keys as soon as he stepped in the door “—title’s in the glove box. The old Jeep is yours. Catch a ride with Itch and pick it up. Go have some fun. Stay out as late as you want tonight.”

  McCaffrey was really moving in!

  Mac, two of his brothers-in-law, Itch and Buddy were moving things in and out of her house. Her mother’s things were loaded onto the eighteen-wheeler while Mac’s stuff was unloaded in their place, though he didn’t have as much as her mother.

  Hannah’s furniture, which had been stuffed into her bedroom and the nursery, was brought out. All she had to do was carry Fallon around on her hip and point and someone put things where she wanted them. Her bed was assembled. She could actually move around in her bedroom. The nursery was completely emptied and readied for the paint she’d purchased earlier that week.

  Okay, there were some benefits to having a man around. Mike had kicked her mother out and in such a way that her mother was agreeable to it!

  “That’s everything,” McCaffrey announced, after he and Itch hauled his mattress and box spring to her mother’s old room.

  She stood in the doorway eyeing him warily as they finished assembling the bed. Itch took his leave and McCaffrey backed her out the door.

  “No crossing this threshold.” He drew an imaginary line with his toe, then took the baby from her. She’d agreed to let him move in on the condition that their situation stay platonic. She was afraid any other kind of relationship with M
cCaffrey would spell disaster for their daughter. They were as separate as the oil in her Seahawk and the water Navy SEALs thrived in.

  The house had grown quiet now that the three of them were alone and she stated her doubts out loud. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “What’s not going to work? If you’re right about me being good at leaving and staying away, then you’ll hardly notice I’m here. I’ll just be the guy who writes a check once a month.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  “What do you say we go pick out some baby furniture.”

  There was something backward about his logic, but she’d been too shocked to figure it out.

  “Almost forgot—” He picked up an envelope from his dresser. “You might want to put this in a safe place. It’s my new will. Death benefits and everything goes to Fallon, except provisions for Buddy and a flame-out party for the guys. There’s a letter to Fallon, too—just in case. Thought I’d add a few pages every year.”

  “This whole conversation is making me uncomfortable.”

  “Then you’re really going to hate that there’s a letter for you, too.”

  “I don’t want it.” She pushed his hand away. “Just put it all somewhere safe.”

  “Accepting this letter doesn’t mean I’m going to die. It just means I’m putting my affairs in order. We should talk about that—”

  “My affairs are in order—”

  “I don’t want to leave anything unsaid. It’ll be here, on my dresser when you’re ready to accept it.”

  Her throat burned. “I won’t ever accept it.”

  MIKE DIDN’T PUSH the letter issue. Furniture shopping took less than an hour because she agreed to the set he’d already picked out. When they got home, Hannah started painting while he assembled the crib in her bedroom. They’d wait until the fumes died to move the baby into the nursery.