by Cathie Linz
He knocked on her door. She opened it. The noise was not coming from any TV, but from the crying infant in her arms.
Four
“What are you doing with a baby? Are you baby-sitting? Is the kid dying?” Michael demanded as the baby continued to scream loudly enough to wake the dead. “Can’t you get it to stop screaming like that?” he tacked on rather desperately.
“I’m doing my best,” Brett replied, her voice and expression frazzled.
“Well, obviously it’s not good enough.”
“Fine,” she said in exasperation. “If you think you can do better, then you get her to stop crying.” With those words, she handed the baby over to him.
Michael’s protest was immediate. “I’m no good with. ba—” Before he could say another syllable, the baby stopped crying. She beamed up at him as he gingerly held her between his two hands as if she were an explosive device that was liable to detonate at any time.
“You were saying?” Brett noted dryly.
“How about that? She quit crying.” Michael looked and sounded utterly astonished. “So whose is she?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re baby-sitting a kid and you don’t know her parents?”
“I’m not exactly baby-sitting her.”
“Then what are you doing, exactly?” he asked.
“Um, I…I’m taking care of her.”
“For how long?”
“I’m not sure.”
Cautiously.shifting the baby so that she was perched in the crook of his arm, Michael turned his attention to Brett while the baby grabbed a handful of his T-shirt and stuck it in her mouth. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.
“I found her,” Brett reluctantly admitted. “In the building foyer this morning. You know I was working on the mailbox thingamajig, stabilizing it with some patching cement where it had come loose from the wall. Anyway, I was in and out of the foyer all morning so I know she hadn’t been there long. I was gone for a few minutes looking for a tool, and when I came back there she was. Sitting in a car seat, sound asleep.”
“Maybe she was left there by mistake?”
“Who would leave a baby by mistake?” Brett retorted. “It’s not like leaving a bottle of milk in the grocery cart. Besides, no one in this building had any visitors with a baby—I already asked. And there was a note stuck to her blanket that said: ‘Please take care of my baby.’“
“Somebody abandoned this baby? Then we’ll have to call the authorities right away.”
Brett’s response was immediate and intense. “No!”
“Why not? Have you called them already?”
“No,” she said, more quietly this time. Reaching out, she gently removed his T-shirt from the baby’s mouth. “Look, I know what the authorities would do to this baby. I’ve been there. They’d put her in a foster home. She’ll go through the child-welfare system as another statistic. She’s just a little baby.”
“Lots of people are looking for little babies.”
So am I! Brett wanted to shout at him, giving the little girl a look of unconcealed longing.
Seeing it, Michael said, “Oh-oh. I see what’s going on. You’re feeling that old biological clock ticking, huh?” Seeing Brett’s stricken look, Michael immediately knew he’d said the wrong thing. But Brett wasn’t the kind of woman to get touchy about a comment like that. She also wasn’t the kind to show her pain so clearly. Something was obviously very wrong here.
“What is it?” he murmured. “Come on, talk to me.”
Brett held out her finger to the baby, who cooed and wrapped her tiny fingers around it. “I don’t have a biological clock,” she said so softly he had to bend his head to hear her. “I had to have emergency surgery a few years ago. A hysterectomy.”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry:”
“Yeah, so am I. I was engaged to be married at the time. My fiancE, Bill, was a brick about it, visiting me in the hospital, even had me stay at his place during my recovery. But I knew that things had changed. He wanted children. That’s why he wanted to get married. It’s why any man wants to get married. To have children.” Even two years later, she could still hear Bill’s voice saying I can’t marry you, Brett. I need a woman who can be a real wife. You know what I mean. I want kids. Every man does.
She’d heard Michael say enough Hungarian curses to recognize one when she heard it. “Bull,” he ended in English.
“Watch your language in front of the baby,” she chastised him, taking the little one from his arms, only to return her seconds later when the infant yodeled in protest at being taken from Michael’s arms. Brett could empathize. She knew firsthand how incredibly good it felt to be in Michael’s arms and how hard it was to leave his embrace.
“This is really weird,” Michael noted. “I’ve never been any good with babies before. Whenever I got near one, they’d fuss and scream. Not that I’ve actually been around that many babies. I don’t have any nephews or nieces. My younger sister and brother aren’t even married yet, although a friend or two has had a baby. But enough about me. Let’s get back to this bastard of a fiancE you had.”
“He wasn’t a bad person,” Brett protested with a reprimanding look at his choice of word. “He took very good care of me after the operation.”
“And dumped you after that.”
“Not dumped. Let me down gently.”
“And broke your heart in the process.”
“Now you’re being dramatic.”
“It’s my Rom blood.”
She smiled at his wry words.
“That’s better,” he noted approvingly. “Now tell me what we’re going to do with this baby.”
“Maybe if you sit with her on the couch, she’ll fall asleep,” Brett suggested.
He nodded his agreement. “Sounds like a plan. Do you have a couch? I didn’t notice one when you first moved in.”
“Well, actually it’s a daybed but it works as a couch.” She pointed to the piece of furniture, with its calico-heart quilt and blue pillows. Passing by the scarred pine table on his way over there, he noticed all the baby paraphernalia she had piled on top of it.
Seeing his gaze, she said, “I don’t suppose you have much experience changing diapers?”
“No.” He looked as if she’d asked him if he’d ever performed brain surgery.
“Me neither. I’m hoping Tyrone can give me some pointers when he gets home from the hospital in the morning.”
“Why would he give you pointers?”
“He’s a nurse.”
“On the psychiatric ward. Didn’t he tell you that?”
“I haven’t actually gotten to talk to him directly yet,” Brett admitted. “Mostly I speak to his wife, Keisha. The psychiatric ward, huh?”
Michael nodded. “We may need to check ourselves in,” he noted ruefully. “You do know what you’re considering is crazy, don’t you?”
“What am I considering?”
“Keeping this baby.”
“The mother asked me to take care of her.”
“For how long? And what if the mother comes back?”
“Then I’d give her baby back, of course. Providing she’s able to take care of it properly.”
“What kind of mother could abandon a baby?”
“One who knew she couldn’t take care of it anymore.”
“Then why didn’t she drop it off at an adoption center or orphanage or something?”
“Because it might have been too hard to go through with it then. Maybe she had to do it quickly.”
“Why pick the foyer of this building?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.”
“And what did you come up with?”
“That the mother might know me. I work with a lot of kids at the youth center. They know I was a foster child. They also know that they can depend on me to help them out if they get into trouble.”
“So you think one of those kids left their baby for you?
But they’re practically babies themselves.”
“Old enough to get pregnant. One of the girls who helped me move in here had a baby last year.”
“Wait a minute. There was a girl helping you move? I thought those kids were all boys.”
“With the grunge look it can be a little hard to tell sometimes,” Brett acknowledged dryly.
“But you’re sure this baby is a girl?”
“Absolutely. I’ve had to change her diaper a couple of times already. I think I’m getting better at it. This time the diaper actually stayed on. The first few times she wormed and squiggled right out of it. And the directions on the box aren’t much help. I’ve seen better directions on a faucet.”
“Speaking of faucets, I think she’s wet.”
“Oh-oh.”
“Here.” Michael automatically went to hand the baby back to Brett, but the infant had other ideas—grabbing onto Michael’s T-shirt and crying.
“You’re clearly going to have to help me change her,” Brett said. “She won’t let you leave her.”
“Usually when I have that effect on females, they’re a little older,” Michael noted ruefully. “But even then, it’s nothing like this.”
“Bring her over here to the table and then lay her down…that’s it. Now keep her busy while I change her.”
“Did the note say what her name was?”
“No.”
“You can’t just keep calling her ‘Baby.’“
“I thought I’d call her Hope.”
The little girl let out a gurgle as if confirming Brett’s choice. “Sounds like she likes it,” Michael said. “Isn’t that right, Hope?” He shook a little rattly teddy bear that Brett had sitting on the table. The baby reached out and gurgled in delight. “Look, she smiled at me. Is she old enough to do that?”
“Obviously she is.”
“How old do you think she is? Did the note say?”
“No, the note didn’t say anything other than what I told you. As to Hope’s age, I’m no expert, but I did buy a book while I was out. According to her weight, I’d say she’s probably about six months old.”
“Did you see how blue her eyes are?” Michael asked as he stared into the baby’s face.
“She’s gorgeous, isn’t she? Although I confess that at the moment, you’ve got the better view,” she noted dryly, removing the wet diaper.
“You’ve got that right,” he agreed with a grin.
Her eyes were caught by his. The ensuing jolt of electricity that shot through her was a familiar one. She’d felt it when, as a ten-year-old, she’d tried to fix a broken light switch without first turning off the electricity at the junction box. She hadn’t felt it again until the first day she’d met Michael. Now she experienced it each time they were together. At some point their eyes would meet, communicating in a visual shorthand that was heavy with anticipation and hot with dark promises.
This time, their visual communication was disrupted by the gurgling of the baby, who scooted sideways to get their attention.
Flustered, Brett looked down. “I…ahh…I didn’t think it would be this hard diapering a baby. Look at how she moves around. She almost kicked me in the eye earlier when I was trying to figure out how the sticky tape fastened on the sides of these dumb diapers.”
“Maybe she’ll be a kick boxer when she grows up,” Michael said. “How ‘bout it, Hope? Is that one of your career goals?” The baby squealed and waved her hand, almost smacking him in the eye. “Hey, she’s got a great right hook.”
“There,” Brett said, patting the fastening tape into place. “That should work.” She added a prayer just in case. “Hope doesn’t look sleepy anymore, does she?” It was more a resigned observation than a question.
“Maybe she’s hungry? What have you fed her?”
“She drank apple juice and formula, but wouldn’t eat much. I did buy baby food but she wasn’t very interested in it. I sampled some of the apricot with tapioca myself and I have to say, it wasn’t half-bad.”
“Maybe we should put her in the car seat and see if she’ll eat something now.”
“It’s worth a try. Okay, Hope, for tonight’s entree we have a selection of strained carrots and turkey with rice or creamed corn and beef with egg noodles,” she said, reading the labels from the glass jars of baby food.
“If I were you, I’d go for the carrots and turkey,” Michael advised Hope as he settled her in the seat and fastened the harness around her. “Look, she nodded at me. Smart move,” he congratulated the baby, who was clinging to his finger. “I can’t get over how much she seems to like me. There must have been something wrong with those other babies,” he declared.
“Okay, here’s dinner, Hope. Yummy.” Brett held the spoon up to the baby’s mouth, which was harder to do than it sounded since the baby was suddenly as slippery as an eel—trying to slide out of the car seat while turning her head from side to side. A second later, Hope put her hand smack dab in the spoonful of baby food. Strained carrots dripped from her little fingers as she immediately reached for Michael’s chin. “Maybe she wants you to eat some first,” Brett said.
“What do I look like, a food tester?” he demanded. When Hope’s face screwed up as if she were about to cry, he relented. “Okay, okay, look, I’m eating it, too.” At the first taste, he made a grimace.
“Oh, right,” Brett mockingly congratulated him. “That’s the way to make her want to eat some.”
He took another spoonful, this time smiling as if it killed him, while saying “Yummy.”
“It would help if you said it as if you meant it,” Brett added as Hope continued to look unconvinced.
“Listen, kid, eat this food and you’ll grow up to be smart and beautiful like Brett here,” Michael declared.
The baby stared at him a moment before letting him put the spoonful in her mouth.
“Sure, she lets you feed her but won’t let me do it. Do you think there’s something about me she doesn’t like?” Brett asked. “She was good all afternoon, but tonight she started crying and wouldn’t stop. I got worried that she might be sick, but she didn’t seem warm or anything.”
At that moment, Hope leaned forward and held out her arms to Brett.
Delighted, Brett leaned down to kiss the baby, getting baby food on her own face in the process.
“I guess that answers your question,” Michael noted. “She likes you just fine. Who wouldn’t?”
“You didn’t when I first met you,” Brett reminded him as she wiped off the baby food with a paper towel.
“I wasn’t in the best of moods,” he admitted. “But that was my fault, nothing to do with you. You’re a huge hit with the tenants, surely you know that?”
But am I a hit with you? That’s what Brett wanted to know, but was afraid to ask.
Instead, she watched while Michael fed Hope. He looked adorable with baby food still on his chin. She loved the way he bit his lip while feeding the baby and had to laugh at the way he got into the assignment—right down to making propeller noises as he moved the spoon toward the little girl’s mouth.
Seeing her look, he shrugged self-consciously. “My sister did that for our younger brother when he was a baby. He seemed to like it.”
“So does Hope. I can’t believe you thought you weren’t good with babies.”
“Trust me, this is definitely a first.”
“Then I’m honored to be sharing it with you.”
His answering smile warmed her clear down to her toes. In that moment it was easy to imagine that they were a family, that Hope was their baby and that Michael was her…
Stop right there, Brett ordered her thoughts. She’d never been the type to daydream like this before. Well, okay, as a kid she’d daydreamed that there was a family out there who’d want to adopt her. But that had passed by the time she was nine. Since then she’d always had her feet on the ground, in her own way. She and Bill had planned their future right down to how many years apart they’d have their
children. But all those plans had gone down the toilet when fate had stepped in, depriving her of the ability to have babies of her own.
Brett had tried to accept reality, had focused her attention on helping others, had worked toward getting her degree in psychology. But deep down inside her there remained a cold darkness that had never gone away. Until Hope had come into her life that morning. When Brett held the little girl, she finally acknowledged how very much she’d still wanted to have a baby. It isn’t fair, she’d raged inside…only to hear her calmer side saying Since when is life supposed to be fair?
“You’ve gone awfully quiet all of a sudden,” Michael said. “You okay?”
“Sure. I was just thinking, that’s all.”
“About what?”
“Stuff.”
“Ah, yes. Stuff.” He nodded his head in teasing understanding. “I often think about stuff myself.”
“You do?”
“Sure. Like how do they get the stripes into those striped toothpastes?”
She smiled at his attempt to cheer her up and got into the spirit of things. “Or bubbles in soda. How do those get in there?” “What about neckties? Whose bright idea were those?”
“Or fireflies? Ever wonder how they light up that way?”
“And the phone. Why does it always ring when you’re in the bathroom?”
“I know the answer to that one,” Brett replied. “Murphy’s Law. Whatever can go wrong, does.”
“Not always.”
“More often than not,” she said with the matter-offactness of someone who’s had more things go wrong than right in her life. “There, Hope finished off the entire jar of baby food. Good girl!” Brett congratulated her with a kiss, which left the baby giggling.
“Okay, what’s next?” Michael asked.
Brett paused, trying to remember if you were supposed to burp a six-month-old after they ate. Or was that only for younger babies? She’d tried burping Hope after feeding her the liquids. One thing she knew for sure, it was safer keeping a towel on her shoulder for emergencies. Since the little girl wasn’t fussing, she opted for skipping the burping this time.
