His Unexpected Family

by Patricia Johns

  “Completely out?” There was humor in Greg’s voice.

  “Yes.” She fought back her rising irritation. She really did think she had it all under control, and suddenly she was faced with the frank reality that when problems came up, she was the go-to girl to take care of it. All of it.

  “Do you need a hand?”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll do this on my own.” She pushed herself up and looked around. “I guess I’ll just have to put her back in the wet diaper and go pick up a new package. I’m sorry, sweetie,” she cooed softly to the baby.

  “Am I the sweetie?” Greg joked.

  Emily just laughed.

  “Let me pick you up some diapers,” Greg said, serious now.

  “I need to do this stuff on my own,” she said. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “Says who?”

  Emily blinked at that. “I don’t know.... My own stubborn pride?”

  “Diapers come in different sizes, right?”

  Emily smiled and shook her head. “She’s just graduated to size two.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said. “Can your pride take it?”

  “It’ll have to.” Emily silently grimaced. “Thank you, Greg.”

  “No problem.”

  As she hung up the phone, Emily looked down at little Cora, still happily kicking her legs and enjoying the breeze.

  “He’s nice,” Emily said in the singsong voice she often used with Cora. “Isn’t he? He’s a nice man....”

  Cora seemed to agree.

  Chapter Seven

  By the time he arrived at Emily’s house with a box of diapers in one hand, the moon loomed high and the air had cooled. Ringing the doorbell, he stood back to wait.

  This is not professional, he told himself frankly. What were you thinking?

  There was some rustling inside, then the door opened. Emily stood there with Cora on her shoulder, a washcloth covering the little bottom in a makeshift nappy.

  “Hi.” He felt a self-conscious smile come to his lips. “You look a little...um...wet.”

  “I am.” She shot him a wry grin. “Thanks for coming, by the way.” She stepped back to let him in. “Can I pay you back?”

  “No, no.” He carried the box in one hand and glanced around the living room, spotting her changing area.

  “Really, I insist.”

  Greg glanced over at her. “No, don’t worry about it.”

  She paused, and for a moment he thought she might argue the issue with him. Then a little smile tickled the corners of her lips. “Thanks. You know what?”

  He raised his eyebrows inquisitively.

  “I think we’re officially friends.” She laid Cora on the blanket while he opened the box for her. “Don’t you think?”

  Greg laughed softly and shook his head. “It seems like it, doesn’t it?”

  Her response was a sparkling smile. “Thanks.” She took the diaper he offered her.

  After both the baby and Emily were changed, Emily led the way into the kitchen. She flicked on an electric kettle and pulled a tub of chocolate ice cream out of the freezer.

  “I think we deserve a reward, don’t you?” she asked.

  Greg couldn’t think of a reason why not, so he settled onto a stool by the counter and waited.

  “So what do you do when you aren’t working?” she asked.

  “As in, for fun?” He grinned.

  “Exactly.” She dropped a spoon into a heaping bowl of ice cream and slid it across the counter toward him.

  “I run five miles every morning,” he said. “On days off, I like to golf, read...box.”

  “Box?” She turned around, eyebrows raised. “Seriously?”

  He felt the heat rise in his face. “Is that completely Neanderthal?”

  “Yes.” She laughed softly. “When did that start?”

  “When I was about ten, I got picked on a lot. I took an interest in boxing to protect myself at first, but I ended up really loving the sport.”

  “So...” She eyed him curiously. “You end up with black eyes and stuff?”

  “No, no.” He laughed. “We use helmets and gloves. It’s a point system. I know how to hurt someone, but I don’t want to actually do any damage.”

  Emily dropped a spoon into her own bowl and leaned against the counter as she took her first bite.

  “What about you?” he asked. “What do you do for fun?”

  “Well, I don’t box.” She shot him a grin. “I actually enjoy stargazing.”

  “Stargazing?” He eyed her in equal curiosity. “I didn’t see that coming.”

  “My dad used to take me outside to look at stars when I was a kid. It started there. I like watching for meteor showers, or catching eclipses, just as a novice. I enjoy it. It reminds me how tiny I am.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “I get that reminder a lot.”

  “Are you a Christian, Greg?”

  “I am. Are you?”

  She nodded. “So maybe you’ll get it, too. I like to try to understand what’s up there. It’s almost like you can see God still creating when you see a star nebula. It’s amazing. When you understand just how far apart stars really are, just how massive a tiny pinprick of light really is—it’s staggering.”

  Greg took a taste of the creamy dessert, watching her thoughtfully. Her dark eyes stayed focused on her bowl as she swirled the spoon around, collecting the perfect bite. Her creamy complexion was set off by her dark hair sweeping her cheeks, and for a moment, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. Emily Shaw was a deeper woman than he’d realized—and that intrigued him. A woman of intellect and faith...how often did one of those come around?

  “Do you mind if I ask you something?” she said, raising her dark gaze to meet his.

  “Sure.”

  “Why is it that you don’t ever want kids of your own?”

  There it was. This was the question that came up with pretty much every woman in his life, from his grandmother to women he was dating. They all wanted to know the same thing—why?

  “In my experience, this never goes well.” He eyed her cautiously. “I either sound heartless or stupid.”

  Emily’s eyes crinkled up into a smile, and she turned toward the kitchen. “I find that hard to believe.”

  He frowned and looked down, trying to decide how much to say.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” Emily said. “If you don’t feel comfortable talking about it, that’s okay. I was only curious.”

  “It’s okay. My dad was a police officer, and he died in the line of duty.”

  “Oh, that’s horrible. I think I remember that, but I was really young. What happened?”

  The images came back, fuzzy memories from that fateful night. He’d been in bed, unable to sleep. The phone rang downstairs and he remembered the sound of his mother answering it, but something was wrong. Her tone changed, and she sounded frightened. He got out of bed and came downstairs to find her standing in the kitchen, the phone still in her hand and her other hand covering her mouth. That image of his mother—stunned, horrified, afraid—stayed with him.

  “He was shot during an armed robbery. He stopped at a corner to pick something up and stumbled upon a robbery in process. The robber turned and shot him in the chest. The bullet entered just at the side of his bulletproof vest. He died at the scene.”

  Emily’s expression was filled with sympathy. “How old were you?”

  “Eight.”

  He’d been old enough to suspect that the reason his father stopped at that corner store was to pick up a candy bar for him. Greg had done well on his report card, and his dad had promised a chocolate bar as a reward. That report card still haunted him.

  “I have my father’s jo
b, and it’s dangerous,” he said. “Haggerston isn’t exactly known for its staggering crime rate—” Greg shot her a wry grin “—but with a job like this, danger is part of it.”

  “So you’re afraid that something would happen to you and you’d leave a family behind.” Emily pulled her glossy, dark hair out of her eyes.

  “That about sums it up.” He shrugged.

  “It must have been tough growing up without your dad.”

  Tough didn’t even begin to cover it. Greg had drawn the attention of a school bully. It was that bullying that sent him in search of some boxing lessons—a successful way to stop the bullying, once he learned what he was doing, but every miserable day of that year, he’d wondered what advice his dad might have given him. He had a feeling his dad would have had the solution—one that involved less fighting. He’d just died too soon to be of much use. Instead, Greg learned to use his fists more effectively than the bigger boy.

  “Yeah, it was tough,” he agreed, keeping his tone neutral. “School can be hard on a kid.”

  A flicker of understanding passed over her face. “Were you picked on?”

  “Remember Richard Pike?”

  She frowned. “Big guy, football team?”

  “That’s him. He made it his personal mission to make me miserable.”

  “Oh, Greg, that’s awful.”

  He chuckled bitterly and waved it off. “I survived, but sometimes a kid just needs a dad to help out with these things. Bullying can crush a person, and childhood is hard enough without trying to take care of those kinds of problems alone. I learned how to box, and it helped, but I wouldn’t want to leave some vulnerable kids behind if something were to happen to me in the line of duty.”

  She nodded. “I get it. I was close with my dad, too. Still am.”

  “Daddy’s girl?”

  “Afraid so. I remember how I used to be afraid of the dark, and he’d sing to me—‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ He said that God gave us stars so that we’d never be in the dark. No matter how dark it might seem, there was always at least one star to light our way. That was something that really stuck for me.”

  “That’s sweet.” A star to light his way—that wouldn’t have been enough back when he was fighting off the bigger boys. He hadn’t needed a far-off twinkle of light; he’d needed someone with bones and muscles to step in and protect him.

  They were silent for a few moments, each in their own thoughts. Outside the kitchen window, the stars glittered like pale diamonds. The velvety night sky felt calm and vast, a comforting blanket of eternity outside the warmly lit kitchen.

  Emily broke the silence. “So have you found out anything about Jessica?”

  “I have. A little bit.” Greg brought himself back to the present. “She worked as the manager of a clothing store. She graduated with high grades from college, and everyone seemed to think she was pretty talented. She lived in a little apartment above an Italian restaurant, and her finances were a wreck. She had several credit cards—the high-interest kind—racked up, and she’d been missing payments. Her credit score was in the dumps.”

  Emily nodded slowly, and he suddenly felt like a fool.

  “I’m sorry. I’m probably being callous here. She’s not a case—she’s your cousin.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Emily gave him a sad smile. “A little bit of emotional distance is a good thing, if you can get it. Do you know anything about Cora’s father?”

  “No. I haven’t gotten that far yet.” He had to admit, that had piqued his curiosity, as well. “You don’t know if she had a boyfriend or anything?”

  “I have no idea.” Emily shook her head. The kettle behind her started to whistle, and Greg moved toward it.

  “I’ll get that.” He poured the water over the tea bag into the teapot, his mind moving over the case in his methodical way. The victim was young, college educated, but alienated from her family. She had a baby that no one knew about. She was on her way back to the town where the majority of her extended family lived when she had a head-on collision and was killed. She appeared to be distraught. She had a will where she left sole custody of her newborn baby to a cousin she hadn’t spoken to in five or six years. There were a lot of gaps. Why did no one know about this baby?

  “Well,” Emily said as he poured her a cup of tea, “I have a feeling that you’ll dig up some answers.”

  “Are you sure you want that?” Greg asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes the answers we look for don’t bring the comfort we think they should.”

  Emily was silent for a moment, her eyes clouding in thought. “It’s better to know, isn’t it?”

  “I tend to think so,” he agreed. “I don’t like surprises. I’m the kind of guy who likes to know what to expect.”

  “That makes two of us.” She gave him a smile and lifted a spoonful of ice cream in a salute. “Here’s to playing it safe.”

  Greg couldn’t help but grin. Emily looked over at a pile of mail on the counter, and she stretched to reach it.

  “I’ve been forgetting things,” she admitted, shaking her head. “It’s the lack of sleep. I put this here this afternoon and—” she looked up at the clock on the wall “—seven hours later I look at it?”

  Greg tried to hide a smile as she sorted through the pile of letters. She stopped, the muscles around her eyes and jaw tightening.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She tore open the envelope and grabbed the letter. Glancing over it, she let out a sigh. “Well, it looks like I have a court date.”

  “For the custody case?” Would it be too much to hope she had driven like a maniac past a traffic camera?

  “Yes. I have three weeks.”

  That wasn’t much time at all, but it was something. In three weeks, hopefully he’d be able to find a little more information for her about her cousin.

  “That’s plenty.” Greg gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

  He just wished she looked more reassured.

  Chapter Eight

  The next afternoon, Greg got a call from Fran, a nurse at his mother’s home, saying she was the most alert they’d seen her in weeks. His spirits immediately lifted. It had been so long since his mother had recognized him that the chance of being able to look into her face and have her see her son instead of a stranger was an exciting one. Making sure he was out of uniform first, he hopped into his car and headed down to the Shady Pines Nursing Home.

  It was a squat building consisting of two wings. Fran stood there with a couple of other nurses, chatting while they filled out charts. She was a large lady in her fifties. Her dark-skinned face looked almost ageless, but her hands betrayed the years. When she saw Greg step inside, squinting from the bright sunlight, she raised a hand and hurried over.

  “Thanks for calling, Fran.”

  “My pleasure. Go on over. You know where she is.” Fran gave him a motherly pat on the arm. She had a son his age, and she tended to treat him like one of her own brood, a gesture that Greg privately appreciated.

  As he made his way down the hallway, his shoes squeaked on the newly polished linoleum. His mother’s room was in the center of the west wing, a cozy little room with a pleasant view of the walking path many of the children used to get home from school. When he got to her door, he tapped softly and peeked inside.

  “Hello?” His mother looked up at him, frowning. Her gray hair was freshly washed and combed, and she stood there, a small watering pot in hand, poised over her row of potted flowers on the windowsill.

  “Hi.” He could hear the hope in his voice, but he was afraid to alarm her.

  She looked at him quizzically for a long moment, then set down her watering pot. “May I help you?”

  “I was...” He paused. She didn’t k
now him. She was certainly more together than she had been in a long time, but she wasn’t in the present, that much was certain.

  “You look an awful lot like my husband.” She nodded. “Well. Imagine that. Did you know there are only a few different kinds of faces in the world? It looks like you got one quite similar to his.”

  “Could I come in for a few minutes?” Greg asked hopefully. “I just wanted to rest my feet.”

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

  “Of course, of course,” he assured her. “I only wanted to say hi. I’m a friend of your husband’s.”

  “Then you know exactly how jealous he is, too.” She laughed. Her laughter was light and cheerful. “Did you need something?”

  “A glass of water would be great,” he said, flashing her a grin. She sighed, heading toward the little sink in the corner of her room and taking down a plastic hospital-issue cup. Turning on the sink, she wagged a finger under the flow of water.

  “This old house...” she muttered. “Always takes a bit to get cold water this time of year. It’s always lukewarm.”

  He remembered that house well. The kitchen sink seemed to give you warm water when you wanted to drink it and cold water when you wanted to wash anything. It had driven his mother crazy, but after his father had passed away, she hadn’t bothered getting it fixed. He thought it must have reminded her of when his dad was around, and she didn’t want to lose the reminder. Now, in the hospital room, she was mentally changing the small room around her into the house from her memories.

  “Thanks,” he said as she handed him the cup. “This is kind of you.”

  “No bother,” she said and turned back to her plants.

  “So how are you?” he asked.

  “I’m good, Mr....”

  “I’m Greg.”

  “I have a five-year-old named Gregory.” She smiled gently.

  “What’s he like?”

  She looked over at him suspiciously. “Greg, let me be straight with you. My husband and I have an old-fashioned relationship. He’s friendly with men, and I’m friendly with women.”