Heard It Through the Grapevine

by Teresa Hill

  The baby made a squeaky sound, like she might be trying to clear her throat before she really let him have it. Not that she could raise much of a fuss, as scrawny as she was. Which reminded him—she’d never make a placekicker.

  “I don’t know who was raising hell inside your mother all these months, but it sure wasn’t you.” He didn’t think she could fight her way out of a wet bag.

  The nurse came over and took the baby’s tiny wrist, which held a tiny plastic bracelet. She turned it over so he could read what was written on it. Baby Girl Monroe.

  “We tag them the minute they come out. She’s yours. Now, if you don’t want her, just let us know. We can find someone who does.”

  Want her? Matt scowled at the nurse, thinking he was surely close to getting himself kicked out of the nursery.

  “Sorry. My wife almost….” He couldn’t even say it, didn’t ever want to think about it again.

  “It’s not the baby’s fault.”

  “Okay.” Rationally, he knew that. But he wasn’t quite rational at the moment.

  The nurse slipped away. He could feel her watching him from across the room, glaring at him. So was the baby. He studied her some more, remembered Cathie’s father saying a man didn’t truly know what it was to be frightened until he had a child.

  Not that he had a child.

  Matt would provide for her and her mother. He’d make sure they never needed a single material thing, and he could be understanding and helpful and probably even kind, once he wasn’t scared half to death.

  He could be stern when she needed it, could explain to her all about the hazards of adolescent boys, and maybe shield her from most of the cruelties of this world. He’d been absolutely sure at one point that he could be a better father to her than having no father at all.

  But that suddenly didn’t seem good enough.

  He took a step back, scared all over again, wondering how in the world all of this was going to work. It hadn’t sounded that hard at first. Cathie needed a husband, a name on a marriage and a birth certificate, a place to live, some money and a decent car. Someone who could lie like a pro, and owed her big time, and that was him.

  But everything had started to get so complicated from that point on, and he was starting to think he’d made everything worse instead of better for her and this tiny thing stretched out before him.

  The baby made a disgusted sound, a half cough, half grunt, like she knew exactly what a worm he was.

  Why had they left her here naked under the lights, like they were trying to bake her or something? Father or not, he could surely save her from that. He complained to the nurse, who said something about needing to warm her up, standard procedure, baking them this way. He pointed out that her skin was all red, and the nurse said that’s what color newborn babies were. She was probably going to call someone down from the psych ward to haul him off, if he didn’t shut up soon.

  Matt stood there and stared at the baby some more.

  “I just don’t know about this,” he said finally.

  “Fine time to think of that now,” the nurse muttered behind his back, not too quietly, either.

  “Can’t she have some clothes and a blanket, and one of those silly pink hats?”

  “She will. She’ll have everything she needs. I will make sure of it.”

  No, that was supposed to be his job. Which he was afraid he was going to botch badly. He reached out a hand and touched the side of the baby’s head with the tip of one finger. She was absolutely bald, and Cathie had such pretty hair. The baby’s little nose wrinkled up. Her tiny mouth, too. One of her fists went flying wildly, and she hit herself on the nose.

  “Hey,” he said, grabbing her little fist and hanging onto it. She looked up at him like she thought he was the one who’d hit her. “No, this thing is attached to you. See how tiny it is? It obviously didn’t come from me.”

  He didn’t think she believed him. She still looked all put out with him.

  His chest hurt again, the way it had when those alarms started going off when Cathie started hemorrhaging. He couldn’t help but notice the baby was impossibly soft. It was like touching a whisper. Her fist was maybe as big as his thumbnail.

  She pulled against his hold on her hand, working herself up into a good, long howl, he feared. But at the last minute, she dragged his hand toward her mouth. Her even softer lips pressed against the side of his pinkie, and she started sucking furiously.

  It felt so odd. Like being licked by a kitten, kind of, but she was a strong little thing, too.

  “You are really confused.” Matt frowned down at her again. “I am not your mother.”

  She didn’t seem to care, just sucked away. He’d seen newborn kittens. She wasn’t much bigger than that, and he supposed she should know right away exactly where she’d landed in this world.

  “Look, your mother is…she’s the best, and if you ever scare her like this again, or hurt her…” What? What was he going to do to a baby? Lay down the law? Like that would ever work. “She loves you so much already, and she’s going to be a wonderful mother.”

  The baby looked quite content, finally, sucking away on his finger, those striking blue eyes fixed on him like he was the only thing in her world at the moment.

  He felt, in a way, as if she’d laid him bare, all the way down to his soul, with just a look.

  “Don’t do that to me,” he whispered fiercely. “It won’t work. And it’s not you. It’s me. I’ll give you everything I can, everything I have to give. But there are some things I just can’t do.”

  And that was the problem.

  All those things she deserved that he feared he simply didn’t have to give.

  Cathie woke up feeling like she’d been flung around by a tornado or something. Her whole body was one big ache.

  She glanced around the room. It was different from the one she was in before, when she was having…

  She spotted Matt standing by the window, with his back to her. There was no light coming in the windows, which wasn’t right. The last time she remembered, it had been morning, and Matt had been so worried.

  She was afraid to call his name, afraid to ask him to turn around and tell her what had happened.

  Her hand went to her belly. It was soft and spongy. There was no baby inside of her.

  When he turned around, he looked worse than she’d ever seen him. Rumpled hair, rumpled clothes, the harshest expression on his face, eyes wild and stormy. Was that a tear on his cheek?

  He looked scared. Had she ever seen Matt scared?

  “Hi,” he said.

  She spent so long staring into his troubled eyes that it was a long time before she figured out he was holding something, a tiny bundle that was moving. Cathie sucked in a breath, and it hurt. She winced, groaned.

  “Hey, take it easy,” he said, coming to her side and sitting down on the edge of the bed. She went to raise herself up off the mattress, but her body felt like it weighed five times more than it ever had. Matt hit a button on the side of the bed and raised her head. “Look who came to see you.”

  Her head came up slowly, and as it did, she could see more and more of what he held. Inside that blanket was a baby.

  Cathie started to cry. Matt was sitting close beside her, facing her, the baby cradled between them. Tentatively, she reached out and touched the baby’s cheek. It was like silk, and those were tears on Matt’s cheek. She brushed his away, and he brushed hers. One of his hands cupped her neck, and he kissed her cheek and then stayed close, the side of his face pressed against hers.

  “The baby’s okay?” she said, nearly sobbing.

  “She’s bossy, hungry, scrawny and bald,” he said, backing away just enough that she could see him looking down at the baby, “And she’s perfect.”

  The baby started to squirm. She made the funniest sounds, squeaking and cooing, gazing up at her with what looked like wonder and so much joy.

  Cathie let her head fall to Matt’s shoulder. He kissed her
forehead, as she held onto him and stared at the baby and cried some more. “I was so scared for her.”

  “God, Cathie, I was terrified for both of you. You are never doing this again. Not ever. Promise me.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You were bleeding badly, and they just had to get the baby out fast. But don’t think about it now. It’s over. It’s all over.”

  “But she’s okay?”

  “They swore to me that she is.”

  And he’d been scared, too. Cathie could tell.

  She felt a rush of love for him that was so sweet and so pure. He’d been so good to her, and if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t be here, and she would probably be trying to talk herself into giving up this baby or worrying about how in the world she’d be able to keep it, how things would ever work out.

  And the baby…

  Oh, she loved this baby, from her very first sight, from nothing but those pictures she’d carried of the baby in her head for so long and all the one-sided conversations and worrying and dreaming she’d done already.

  Her tears fell faster, and Matt held onto them both.

  Don’t let us go, Cathie thought. Don’t ever let us go.

  Cathie was out of it most of the day. Between the delivery and lack of sleep and the medication they were giving her, she dozed constantly, it seemed. She was only half-awake when the baby wanted to nurse—something she insisted on doing over the objection of her doctor and Matt. They both argued she was too tired and needed to sleep, but surely she could feed her baby.

  Plus, her little girl made it easy. Cathie didn’t do much more than hold her and bare a breast. They dozed together afterward. It was sweet, sleeping with the baby pressed against her, Matt standing guard over them from his spot by her bed.

  She knew her mother and father were there and thrilled. Her brothers called, and she vaguely remembered speaking to them. But that was it.

  She was more alert the second day. That afternoon when the baby was asleep, her parents left her and Matt alone with the doctor, who explained as gently as possible that the delivery had been more difficult than Cathie realized.

  She’d thought she was simply exhausted and had gotten dizzy at the end, remembered a lot of things happening very quickly. The doctor telling her she had to push. Matt telling her she could do it. Maybe the baby’s first cry. Then everything went blank.

  Matt held her hand tightly as the doctor told her that she’d feared for a moment she might lose both Cathie and the baby. That the bleeding had been severe, and the placenta had partially broken away from her uterine wall, interfering with the baby’s oxygen supply. Both their heart rates had dropped dramatically. Cathie hadn’t been tired. She’d slipped into unconsciousness.

  The doctor talked for a long time. Cathie tried to take it all in, nodding when necessary to indicate that she understood, and hanging onto Matt.

  They were quiet for a long time after the doctor left. It was hard to take in. Matt held her while she cried. She kept thinking of how scared she’d been so many times to want too much. That life could only be so good, and asking for more seemed like inviting trouble. Was this her punishment for all the lies she’d told? For sleeping with another woman’s husband? It was easy to forget, when she was so happy with Matt, but she’d done so much that was wrong, and wrongs didn’t make rights. A woman didn’t get rewarded for screwing up and then lying to her family about it.

  Her mother and father came into the room, all smiles, her father carrying a huge teddy bear and an armload of flowers. Their smiles faded quickly as they saw the tears on her face, and she was suddenly so tired, she didn’t think she could even tell them what had happened.

  “Will you tell them?” she asked Matt.

  “Sure.” He kissed her cheek and pulled the covers up around her, then took her parents into the hall.

  Cathie curled up into a miserable ball and tried to figure out what to do.

  She could have died? Her baby could have?

  And the doctor had warned her, while the complication was a rare one and they didn’t really know what caused it, they did know one thing. If it happened to her once, the chances of it happening again would be much higher in any future pregnancies. Her doctor urged her to weigh that fact carefully before she considered ever getting pregnant again.

  But there were dreams in her head, so many images of her and Matt and now this precious baby girl and other babies, too. Babies she would have with Matt. A big, big family of their own. A happy one.

  Too much to ask?

  It seemed to be.

  Her mother came into her room, tears on her face. She took Cathie in her arms and the two of them cried some more.

  “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. I had no idea it had been so serious or so scary. I thought Matt was just all shaken up after the baby was born. Your father always was, after I had each and every one of you.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” she cried.

  “I’m so thankful you’re all right. And that the baby is, too.”

  “Me, too,” she said miserably. Truly, she was thankful.

  “This is a blow, but your baby is so precious, and she’s perfect. You have her and Matt, and he loves you so much, darling—”

  “Oh, Mom.” She didn’t have the strength to lie about anything. Not today. The price seemed too high.

  “I know everyone thinks men want sons, but he loves this little girl so much already, Cathie.”

  “I hope he does.”

  “Of course, he does. All you have to do is take one look at them together. It’s so obvious. Just like when he looks at you, and you look at him.”

  “I do love him, Mom. I love him so much.”

  “Then everything will be okay. You’ll see.”

  “No. You don’t understand.” It was like the weight of every lie she’d told, every mistake she’d made, was pressing down upon her, and she just couldn’t do it anymore. She told her mother, “I wish Matt loved me. I’d like to believe he does, but he only married me because I was pregnant, and the baby isn’t even his.”

  Cathie was quiet that day, sleeping and holding the baby, not saying much of anything. Matt was dying to make her promise to never risk another pregnancy.

  The doctor’s warnings echoed in his head. He’d insisted on odds, because numbers were something he understood. One in eight that she’d develop the same complication again. Not bad odds, unless you were talking about risking a woman’s life. Matt would have taken the risk, if it had been anything to do with business. Hell, he wouldn’t have a business if he hadn’t been willing to take risks like that. But with Cathie? No way.

  He’d have to make her understand. Not now. It wasn’t the time. But later, he’d make her promise. He’d decided to get a vasectomy, when he remembered that she wasn’t supposed to stay with him, that even without the problems she’d had with this baby, any she might have in the future would not be his. So it didn’t matter what he did.

  Okay, he’d talk her into getting her tubes tied. Right away. He could convince her that she had to, for the sake of the baby girl she had. That would work. Cathie would do it for the baby.

  And if some man came along later who didn’t understand that, who wanted her to have his babies, well…to hell with him. If he understood the risks and still wanted her to do it, he was obviously a selfish jerk, and Cathie and the baby didn’t need him.

  Problem solved.

  If she wanted more children, she could find them. He’d help her. Cathie would love them, no matter how they came to her.

  Okay. He felt better.

  Her mother came into the room that evening, and Cathie opened her eyes, smiling sleepily. The baby was nestled into the crook of her arm, sleeping contentedly. Matt could spend hours just sitting there staring at them both.

  “Going home?” he asked Mary.

  “I think I should stay, and you should go home,” Mary said, coming to the side of the bed and bending over and kissing th
e baby’s head. “You’re exhausted.”

  “I’m fine,” he insisted.

  “No, Matt. Go on,” Cathie said. “We’ll be fine here.”

  “You’ll have plenty of sleepless nights ahead of you, I promise,” Mary said. “You should rest while you can.”

  Matt didn’t want to go, but from the looks going back and forth between Cathie and her mother, he thought maybe Cathie had some things she wanted to talk to her mother about. Women things. Baby things. So he decided he could give them that time alone, no matter how hard it was to leave them.

  “Look after them,” he told Mary, kissing Cathie and the baby before he left.

  Mary grinned and kissed him, too. “I will not let them out of my sight. Promise.”

  He ended up taking her father back to his house. They got takeout for dinner on the way, and Matt came to realize Cathie’s dad had something on his mind, too. So, it was a night for serious conversation, it seemed.

  Jim didn’t say anything until they’d eaten and were sitting in Matt’s study having a drink. He settled into a chair in the corner and finally said, “Cathie told Mary everything.”

  “What?”

  “Everything,” he repeated. “About that jackass of a professor of hers, about thinking of giving the baby up for adoption, about worrying what we’d think or that the stress would be too much for my borrowed heart. How you offered to help. All that you did.”

  Stunned, Matt asked, “Why?”

  “It’s just not in her to lie about anything, Matt. I can’t believe she managed it for this long.”

  Matt closed his eyes and took a breath. Shaking his head, he said, “And what did you say to her?”

  “I told her I loved her, and that I wished she’d come to me and Mary with this. That we would have helped her, of course. How could she think that we wouldn’t?”

  And then Matt got at least part of it. If Jim was mad at anyone, it was himself. “She knew you’d help her. She just didn’t want to disappoint you, and she worries about you.”

  “Well, it’s not supposed to be that way. I’m the one who’s supposed to worry about her and protect her. When I find the jackass who did this to her—”