If I Loved You

by Leigh Riker

Molly’s father scowled at all the parts on the floor. “Now we’re thinking of rebuilding this whole kitchen.”

  “This sink is a relic. It’s also an amazingly complex piece of...metal.”

  Molly rolled her eyes. Men. She assumed Brig had been about to say junk, but he didn’t want to offend her father, who took pride in his home. Strangely enough, he and Pop continued to enjoy a détente. Certainly Pop had been happy to see him when she and Brig had driven in a few nights ago from Indiana.

  Already Thomas had had a project waiting. Molly suspected her dad welcomed a bit of male companionship, something she never would have imagined he might find with Brig.

  The baby had been sound asleep in her car seat when they’d arrived. Brig had produced the new key his parents had given him to the house, but silently they’d agreed there was no reason to wake Laila. Moving to the Colliers’ could wait until the following day.

  Three days later Brig and the baby were still at her place. She knew he was trying to locate someone in Sean’s family who could help with Laila in the short-term, but so far he’d run into a wall. Maybe sharing this household task with her father took his mind off the problem.

  “Laila’s asleep,” Molly informed the two men. “You’ll hear her if she cries?”

  “My hearing is excellent,” Pop said, turning the wrench in his hands. “Why would you think we’d neglect the tyke?” This from the same man who had almost let Laila smother in her blankets while he watched the news on TV.

  On the other hand, he took every opportunity to be with the baby, and their daily walks around the block—by sled this week—had become something of a neighborhood show.

  “Trust us,” he went on. “We’ll have this sink back together in no time. There’s an old movie on tonight—Saving Private Ryan—we might watch. You okay with that one, Brig?”

  “Yep.” He didn’t appear that happy about it, and Molly could see why. The movie was way too much like his job, plus it would remind him of Sean’s death. Nevertheless, to please Thomas, he would sit through the film.

  “We’ll be in the living room,” Pop said. “Soon as we finish here.”

  Molly cast a jaundiced eye at the pile of whatever those things were on the floor. Pop was fiddling with the wrench, tightening or loosening some, uh, bolt.

  She felt another twinge of a responsibility that wasn’t really hers, except her nurturing instincts didn’t end at five o’clock when she left Little Darlings, at least where Laila was concerned. She wasn’t sure about Pop, but Brig would be on high alert. She told herself she had nothing to worry about, save her presentation.

  “I have to go or I’ll be late. I left clean clothes and more diapers on the dresser in your room, Brig. You won’t even need to turn on a light.”

  “I’ve developed an even more awesome dexterity in the dark,” he said with a smile. “All that training for my team has paid off. Go knock ’em dead, Molly.”

  “Break a leg,” Pop murmured, casting another suspicious eye at Brig.

  He was obviously sending Brig a silent warning: We’re okay as long as you stay away from my daughter.

  As if he had anything to worry about. She and Brig hadn’t been alone together since their return from Indiana.

  Tonight, her drive across town through still-snowy streets seemed to take forever. At last she was locking up her car, hoping the mechanism wouldn’t freeze by the time she came out of the zoning commission meeting. When she opened the door to the community center, a different anxiety overtook her concern about a frozen door lock.

  Molly’s already shaky confidence took a sharper nosedive.

  The first person she saw, already seated at the long table in the front of the room, was Natalie Brewster.

  Hey, Collier. Would you believe? Jacoby dropped out today. Second guy to quit the team this year. The rest of us have decided to make the little lady our official mascot. You like? H.

  BRIG LAY ON the bed in the spare room he shared with Laila and glanced at his email. But Henderson’s post didn’t bring a smile. And there would be no movie for Brig tonight. Predictably, Laila had wakened just after he and Thomas put the sink back together. Her face had screwed up like Thomas’s expression earlier when he’d sent Brig that warning glance. And its unmistakable message.

  Molly’s message this past little while was equally clear. In the few days since they’d been back in Liberty, she’d worked extra hours at the center either on day care issues or on her presentation. When she finally came home, she hurried through dinner, then disappeared. Late at night he could hear the small television in her room, the murmur of voices and occasionally a laugh track. Which Brig hated. Like Molly’s renewed distance.

  Those two nights in Indiana had been an interlude, as had the snow angels before his stupid urge to kiss her.

  He should make that move next door as he’d planned. What was keeping him? He had hoped to contact Sean’s father in Kentucky by now, but he wasn’t having much luck. He must have made a half dozen calls to the man, only to get a busy signal each time. The guy must be a real chatterbox.

  Frustrated, Brig snapped his cell phone shut again and gave the baby swing by the bed another nudge. Nope, it didn’t make sense to linger here, keeping out of Molly’s way, remembering what she’d said that night in the snow.

  You’ve been in black ops way too long.

  She’d been laughing at the time, but she had a point. On some level Brig had known for quite a while—certainly since he’d accepted guardianship of Laila—that he would have to make another change sooner or later.

  Right now Laila was showing off her fine pair of lungs again, yelling so loud he could hardly hear himself think.

  From the hallway Thomas called, “Baby okay?”

  “Just shattering eardrums, nothing new.”

  Brig plucked the red-faced baby from her swing. The gizmo wasn’t doing as much good as it had in Indiana; if anything, her colic seemed worse. After a minute he heard Thomas go back into his room, then shut the door.

  “Guess we’ll have to ride this one out,” he told Laila, draping her across his chest. “Tell you what. Let’s try your grandpa once more.”

  Brig didn’t mean his own father. Sean’s dad, the miner in Kentucky, was the baby’s closest blood relative. Brig didn’t like what little he’d learned from Sean about his relationship with his dad, so Brig would size him up on the phone first. Make his judgment. For Laila’s sake.

  He waited until she fell asleep against him, her small body warming his. He ran a hand lightly down her back, inhaling her familiar scent, letting her calm him, too. You know, he wasn’t half-bad at this baby care thing after all.

  Not that the baby caring would last much longer.

  He hit Redial on his phone.

  “Yeah?” a grainy voice demanded at the other end. For a second Brig couldn’t believe someone had actually answered.

  “Mr. Denton?”

  He heard a wheezy cough on the line. “That’s me. Who’s this?”

  Brig braced himself for a difficult conversation. “I’m calling about...Sean.” He hesitated, mindful that he might not be this man’s favorite person. Some people welcomed contact with someone their son or daughter had served with. Others wanted no part of them. Or the reminder. “I’m—I was—his commanding officer.”

  “Collier, right? I got your package.”

  “It wasn’t mine, sir. Our unit sent it.” Sean’s dog tags. All the letters he had written home but never sent because he and his dad didn’t get on. The medals Sean had won, and the old laptop he swore at all the time. The cell phone he’d called Zada on ten times a day, dented and useless after the blast. Brig had included a letter to Denton telling him what an honor it had been to serve with his son. “I’m glad you got his things. I’m sure they must mean a lot.”

  D
enton’s voice hardened. “How well did you know him?”

  “In combat there aren’t any strangers. He was...more than a friend. He was like a younger brother.”

  “Huh.” The man paused for a long moment. His voice had turned hoarse. “What was it? Almost three months ago,” he said, “since some uptight officer knocked on my door. Before that, I hadn’t seen or heard from Sean in over two years.”

  Brig was shocked. He’d assumed Sean at least had notified his father of his marriage. Was their uneasy relationship that bad?

  “Then you didn’t know he was married? You never heard about Zada, his wife, or—?”

  “All I know is he’s dead.” Denton paused. “I’m sorry for that. I am,” he repeated, and Brig could hear the sadness in his voice. “But there’s the end of it.”

  Brig swallowed. And why hadn’t that officer told Denton about the marriage? About Laila? Now Brig was flying blind. He didn’t know how to soften the blow. He waited, then said, “This will probably come as another shock, but Sean and Zada have a child. Her name is Laila.”

  Another long moment followed before Denton spoke. “Say what?”

  Brig looked down at the baby. “Sean named me as her legal guardian, but I’m still on duty, Mr. Denton—except for an emergency leave to bring her to the States. I’m in Ohio now but not for long. As much as I’d like to keep her with me, I won’t be in a safe place. Even if I could take Laila with me, it wouldn’t be fair to her.” He hurried to get this over with, “I was wondering if you...”

  The man started coughing again.

  He sure didn’t have healthy lungs like Laila. She continued to doze against Brig’s chest, his free hand still moving on her back. Denton wheezed again, then cleared his throat.

  “I guess that’s supposed to change things. Since you were like brothers, I suppose he told you my wife died years ago. I’ve been on my own ever since. He was still a kid then. Turned into a wild one. Got into trouble with the local law. I told him—they told him, too—it was either join up if the service would take him or plan on spending time behind bars.” He hacked some more, the sound echoing over the line.

  Brig’s throat tightened. “I wasn’t aware of that, but rest assured, the military made a man of him.”

  “That so? And now you want me to raise that woman’s child?”

  “Sean’s child,” he said.

  The silence stretched again. Brig thought he heard a soft curse over the line and then a sigh. “Let me tell you where I stand. I used to be a strapping guy, big and all muscle. Now I’m a cripple, on full disability—thanks to too many years down the mine. I have enough trouble scraping by. On top of that I just got out of the hospital—again—and the doctors say I prob’ly won’t see sixty.” His voice tightened. “So you tell me. What would I do with a months-old baby?”

  Give her a home, Brig thought, even when that wasn’t going to happen. He laid his cheek against Laila’s silky dark hair, feeling hopeless. And what kind of a home would it be? Unstable in the end and filled with resentment from the start. It would probably be the same childhood Sean suffered. No, Brig thought. Never. No matter what he had to do.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Denton. Hope you feel better. I’ll make other arrangements for your granddaughter,” Brig said resignedly.

  He hung up to the rasps of another coughing spell that wouldn’t quit.

  * * *

  “NATALIE’S GOING TO vote no at the next meeting. I can feel it.” Molly paced the floor of her small office the next day, venting her frustration on Ann. “I liked her, but maybe Pop was right.” The memory of Natalie Brewster’s set face the previous evening wouldn’t leave her mind. “I was so disappointed, so mad on the way home, that on an icy patch I almost spun my car into a tree. I haven’t been able to tell Pop about the meeting yet for fear I’ll end up in tears.”

  Molly stopped. She wanted to bite her tongue. The mention of any accident, or potential for one, would upset Ann. Her sister’s face had paled.

  “Your presentation didn’t go over well with the others?”

  “It went over fine. I guess. There were a few nods and smiles from the rest of the commission, but if you ask me, they’ll give us a thumbs-down.”

  “You won’t know until the next meeting.” Ann gazed out at the parking lot, where parents were beginning to roll in to collect their kids. “Maybe you’re overestimating Natalie’s influence.”

  “Maybe. I doubt it, though. I guess I’ll know when they vote.”

  Ann didn’t quite agree. “I’ve always thought Natalie was okay. She certainly keeps an eye on Pop.”

  “And the rest of this neighborhood.” Molly sank onto her chair, still fuming. She’d stalked into the house last night, looking neither right nor left, then marched up the stairs. She hadn’t even checked on Laila, as she usually did if Brig wasn’t in bed in that room. She hadn’t noticed that the kitchen sink had been repaired.

  “Remember how ‘someone’ reported me for watering the Colliers’ garden during last summer’s dry spell when they were on vacation? Of course I knew about that town ordinance to preserve water. I gave all the plants just enough to keep them alive until Joe and Bess got home.”

  “You are a model citizen.”

  Suppressing a laugh, Molly threw a pencil at Ann, missing her by a mile as she’d intended. But at least Ann’s color had come back.

  “Where is my sister?” Molly said in a teasing tone. “I must have mistaken you for her when I laid my frustrations on you.”

  “Molly, I’m only trying to make you see. You could be wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Natalie who reported you then. Last month I fell on the sidewalk near her house, and she was out the door in a flash asking if she could help.”

  True, and when Brig had presumably burgled his parents’ house, Natalie was almost the first to arrive. Of course, she’d called the cops, too, which reminded Molly now of Jeff Barlow. For the entire time Ann had been in Molly’s office, she’d also been watching the parking lot through the window. He’d be picking up Ernie any minute now, since the center’s half day Saturday session had just ended.

  “Who are you looking for?” Molly asked in a singsong voice.

  “No one.” The answer came too quickly.

  Molly grinned. She welcomed any distraction that might help her stop thinking about the center’s threatened expansion. Teasing her sister or her sister teasing her was a lifetime habit of theirs. “How is our hunky sheriff lately?”

  “Oh, you think you’re so smart. You want to know how he is?” Another swift glance toward the window. “I walked home one night and he met me at my apartment. He had Ernie in the car.” She paused for dramatic effect. “And a bag from McDonald’s with every single thing I love.”

  “Wow. That should be a felony.” Molly grinned again.

  Ann’s eyes shot daggers of suspicion. “Did you tell him what I like?”

  “Fries and a Quarter Pounder? Who, me?”

  “Did you?”

  “No,” Molly said. “I didn’t.” She paused, taking a moment to weigh her words. If she said the wrong thing, Ann wouldn’t speak to her for days. “Did you eat the burger?”

  Ann sighed. “Yes, and that’s how weak I am.”

  “You let him into your apartment,” Molly guessed. Oh, this was good.

  Ann sighed. “Ernie, too. He watched a movie on Jeff’s iPad while the ‘hunky sheriff’ tried to pump me about my accident.” Tears glittered on her lashes. “If he knew me better, he’d probably take Ernie out of Little Darlings, quit his job, and move away from Liberty.”

  “You’re underestimating Jeff.”

  Ann’s voice broke. “I’m a monster, Molly. Because of me, an innocent man’s whole life changed in an instant.”

  “That part is true. And so did yours. You can’t change that,
but, Ann, you can’t keep on like this, either.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk.”

  Molly looked away, remembering that night in the snow with Brig and a past and future she couldn’t seem to reconcile. “That may be,” she said, “but I’m not the one who won’t even get behind the wheel of a car, who won’t drive herself to work even when it’s pouring rain or snowing. How does that approach make your life better?”

  “I can’t hurt anyone,” she said.

  “Well, you can’t move forward, either. And that makes me sad.”

  Ann looked out the window again.

  “Don’t you see?” Molly asked in frustration.

  “I see that one bag of French fries isn’t enough to make me spill my shameful secret to a man I barely know.” She started toward the door. Then stopped. “Speaking of men, I notice Brig is still at the house.”

  Ann had obviously been saving that ammunition.

  “He’s trying to make some arrangement now for Laila.”

  “Nothing more? Come on, talk. You’ve gotten Natalie Brewster off your chest, but you haven’t told me what happened in Indiana.” Ann’s gaze narrowed. “Pretty suspicious, if you ask me, you taking off with him and the baby, staying there for days....”

  “We had to stay. There was a blizzard. It was snowing here, too.”

  “Hmm.”

  Molly didn’t pretend to misunderstand her tone. “Brig and I have a mutual concern for Laila, that’s all.”

  “Even more interesting. And dangerous. I spoke to him, you know—”

  “Ann, I wish you hadn’t. As soon as he finds care for Laila, he’ll be gone.”

  Ann’s gaze returned to the window like some obsessive-compulsive person. “That’s a little too cut-and-dried even for you.” She paused. “You know, years ago I wanted to kick that man for hurting you. Now I have to wonder if you aren’t guilty of the same thing I am.”

  “Ann, that is—”

  “Ridiculous? I don’t think so.”

  Molly sighed. “Let’s just say I don’t hate him anymore and leave it at that.”