Quadruplets on the Doorstep

by Tina Leonard

  “You were right. Social Services isn’t even going to remotely consider me as a temporary mother for the babies. You’ve just got to find Jenny some how!” she finally cried on a wail.

  He felt a little better now that he knew the issue they were confronting. “No single moms, huh?”

  “No single, young, barely-out-of-nursing-school moms allowed. Scraps of paper are not legal documents, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Whew. You didn’t enjoy that conversation, and I think I understand why.”

  “Well,” April said, finally moving away from the shelter he’d tried to give her. “I understand her point. Social Services has a job to do, and they do it under sometimes impossible situations, and always highly emotional ones. I was just hoping so much that, in this case, they’d allow me some leeway.”

  “Not a chance?”

  “Not a chance.”

  He moved his fingers down to her elbow. “Let me walk you to your car.”

  Nodding, she began walking the way she’d been going when he’d stopped her. He let his hand fall away from her, just keeping up easily with her quick pace. “Did you know that Jenny was actually a good student?”

  She stopped abruptly, swiveling to stare up at him. “No, I didn’t. How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve been doing my job. She was a better-than-good student. According to some of my buddies who did the initial interviews of the hospital staff and the landlady when Jenny first went missing, the teenager was a remarkable student, as was her husband. They felt a need to prove themselves. Apparently, their relationship was for real, and they expected to get married and go on to college, where they could live in married-student housing, work, and rely on each other for emotional support. Finding themselves pregnant moved the timetable up, and they had to marry and drop out of high school. But these were not troublemaker kids.”

  “No. Jenny didn’t strike me as that type. But I would never have guessed that she had planned to go to college.”

  “Mrs. Fox told the police that both David—the deceased husband—and Jenny planned to get their GED, and they had both applied to the same colleges, also with applications for student aid. They were sincere in their efforts, and they meant to make it happen. After David died a few months ago and Jenny moved in with Mrs. Fox, Jenny began to become uncertain as to whether she would even try to attend a local college. The babies, of course, would need every minute of her time for the first several years. But without income, Jenny knew she’d have to work at a minimum-wage job. All this stress began weighing on her. She mentioned several times that she wished she could give the babies the home they deserved.”

  April stood still, looking at him.

  “She must have seen an awful lot of good in you,” he said softly, “to decide that you were just the answer to her prayers.”

  April shook her head. “She was desperate. I don’t think Jenny knew what she was doing. After giving birth, many women suffer postpartum blues. With Jenny, this would have been doubly manifest, I believe, because of the grief she was already suffering from losing her husband.”

  “Maybe. But I now have to look at it from a different angle, based on this information,” he told her. “You’re saying she was grief-stricken, and once she comes to her senses, will return. I’m saying, yes, she was grief-stricken, but moreover, she desperately wanted her children to have everything she couldn’t give them. She met you, saw a kindred spirit who had made it where she had once dreamed to go, and she knew you’d love her children. Like a dying mother who fights to the last instant to create the best world she can for her offspring, Jenny gave you to her babies.”

  “Rather than giving her babies to me.”

  “Right. You were the gift, the way of a better life. I believe Jenny has no plans whatsoever to return. None.”

  Chapter Three

  April could hardly take Caleb’s words in—and yet, there was a core of logic she couldn’t ignore. “I would never, ever have thought what you just said.”

  “Because you’re going from the perspective of empathy,” he said. “In an optimum world—yours—the mother is tired and frightened and will return once her medical condition, the blues exaggerated by grief, is overridden by the love for her children. But Jenny’s world was far from optimum. Though I don’t believe she thought her actions through with any sense of clarity or comprehension, I believe she was acting on the survival-of-the-fittest theory. Because she was desperate, and she was fighting for her children’s survival.”

  “You know, you’re very good at this,” April said slowly. “You were an awesome cop, weren’t you?”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Now who’s asking bad questions? Let’s get you to your car and get you home. You look like you could fall asleep on your feet.”

  April ignored his guiding hand as she thought through the picture he’d drawn. “So what you’re saying is that you feel Jenny didn’t know that her children would be split up and put into foster care.”

  “I am positive that, while she was book smart, she was quite innocent about how the system works,” Caleb said. “She’d gotten pregnant, which, in hers and David’s history of being orphans themselves, they would have most likely been eager to avoid. While many teens get pregnant because they’re bored, or they’re subconsciously wanting someone to love them, David and Jenny were not bored. They were working toward a common goal. And they didn’t need anyone to feel loved by, per se, because they had each other. I’d bet the pregnancy was a total accident. You see that it changed their plans, and therefore, their lives, forever.”

  “Being unsophisticated about birth control doesn’t mean Jenny was unsophisticated about what might happen to her babies if she abandoned them. She watches TV like any other teenager.”

  “But,” Caleb said, tugging April forward so he could take her to her car, “she chose her replacement. Would she have known that Social Services wouldn’t heed her request? You seemed to think her wishes might make a difference. You told me you’re willing to take those babies. Jenny probably felt that your bond with the babies and your training might make a difference.” He paused for a moment, then said, “You are determined, and you are capable, and Jenny no doubt sensed you’d do your best to stand up for her children’s rights. What she didn’t know is that she has to sign a legal document giving up all rights to her children before you could ever adopt them legally. They can’t be adopted by anyone until the living mother authorizes adoption.”

  April’s heart stilled inside her. “So although Jenny meant to provide for her newborns, she’s actually put them in the very situation she grew up in herself. Orphaned. Oh my God.” April couldn’t help the tears that swept down her face all over again.

  “Here, here,” Caleb said, pulling her into his embrace again. “Crying’s not going to help, April.”

  But she was shaking and she couldn’t stop, so for once she allowed herself to take comfort from some one else. Just for this moment, I need Caleb. I’ll cry it all out, and then I’ll be strong again.

  “You’re too upset to drive. Let me take you home. Come on,” he said, trying to move her.

  She shook her head against his chest, but he was adamant. “I’m at least going to follow you home to make certain you get there safely, so you might as well give in gracefully.”

  “I don’t think I know how to give in gracefully,” she mumbled, wiping her nose on a tissue she jerked from her purse.

  “Now, why does that not surprise me? Miss Chock-Full-of-Spit-and-Fire doesn’t give in grace fully. Surprise, surprise.”

  She laughed reluctantly through her tears. “I don’t think I like you when you’re being sarcastic.”

  He snorted. “That doesn’t bode well for our working relationship. I like to be sarcastic sometimes. It keeps me from getting bowled over emotionally by little red-haired women who wail all over my big strong chest.”

  “Oh, please!” But that brought the smile to her face he’d been trying to find,
so she decided just this once she would give in gracefully and let Caleb follow her home.

  “I guess you’re going to want coffee or a nightcap when we get to my house.”

  “After that nasty doughnut you tried to give me earlier, I may be too frightened to take anything else from you. But I deserve a nightcap after all the thinking I’ve done today. It’s not easy running lithely through the trails of the teenage feminine brain.”

  She suspected it was very easy for him, and was even more convinced that seeing different angles in every situation had made him a damn fine cop. Never would she have seen Jenny’s dilemma the way he had.

  “I warn you that the trails of the feminine brain are tricky at any age,” she teased. “Do you still want to join me for a nightcap?”

  “I’m on duty until the case is solved, aren’t I? If you’ve got orange juice, I’ll take you up on it.”

  “That I have.” She dug in her purse for her keys. “Bri did tell me once that women fell for you like mad, and that you rarely noticed it happening. She said you were an accidental seducer.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m inviting you in for orange juice, but please, do not think I can be accidentally seduced or otherwise.”

  He laughed, not offended. “My big sister has a head full of romantic rocks. Ignore her.”

  “One should never ignore their best friend.”

  “Well, if anyone is safe with me, it’s you, babe. Come on. Let’s get you home.”

  What the heck did he mean by that? She turned quickly before he could see that his casual statement had unsettled her.

  Much more than she wanted to admit.

  “WE NEED a plan B,” April told him once they’d stepped inside her house. Caleb hadn’t been too shocked by the white compact car she drove—very clean and spare—and the house was what he would have expected as well, although something niggled at him, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. Everything was in its tidy place, with delicate hues on the walls and in the carpet. The word he would have used to describe it was dollhouse.

  “Plan B for what?” he asked, distracted by the lace drapes. In his apartment, he never bothered to open the plastic shutters. April’s drapes hung like fairy-tale wisps, tied with soft blue bows. He scratched at the back of his neck, wondering if he was beginning to break out in a rash. Or hives.

  “For making certain the babies aren’t put in four separate homes. There has to be something we can do. We know for sure that Jenny didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  “Did you sew your own drapes?” he asked, absently taking the glass of orange juice she handed him as he stood awkwardly in the living room.

  “Of course.” She laughed at him. “Why do you ask?”

  His gaze roamed the kitchen she’d stepped from. Tiny vases sat in a collection atop a counter; china dishes were placed along the wall for ornamentation.

  He swallowed uncomfortably. “If your toilet broke, what would you do about it?”

  She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I’d fix it, of course. What’s hard about that? There’s a ball and a chain and some plumbing. I laid the tile myself in the kitchen. One reads the directions, takes a do-it-yourself class at the local repair store and then goes home and puts the tile in. What are you really asking me?”

  “When Jenny was in the hospital for those two weeks before she gave birth, did you talk about your house at all? Or sewing? Cooking? Woman things of that nature?”

  Her forehead wrinkled up delightfully as she thought about his question. “Yes, I’m sure I did. What else was there to talk about? Before I’d go off duty for the days I wasn’t scheduled, she’d ask me what I planned to do with my time. And so I told her. At the time, I believe I was working on a cross-stitch for your sister’s nursery.”

  He drained the juice and reached around her to put the glass on the counter. “Okay. Well, thanks for the libation. Guess I’d better let you get some rest.”

  “Not until you tell me what you’re thinking. You’re working on something, and I want to hear what you’ve come up with, since I now realize you’ve been running through the trails of my brain.”

  “Okay.” He drew a deep breath. “But don’t go all ballistic on me.”

  She shrugged. “I can’t make any promises. Hope you’ve got your flak jacket on.”

  “I think you’d like a baby someday.”

  She blew a raspberry. “You can do better than that! You didn’t have to stand here asking silly questions about toilet repair to say, ‘Okay, she’s a female, and females approaching their thirties want children ninety-five percent of the time.”’

  He held up his hands. “But did you know you wanted a baby?”

  There was no way she was going to share her dreams with him—not now. “You’re safe, Caleb, I promise you. Even if I did install my own tile floor.”

  Brushing that aside, he said, “And did you also know you might have subconsciously projected your dreams very clearly to Jenny?”

  APRIL HAD THOUGHT any number of things might happen if she allowed Caleb inside her house. Bri had mentioned that the opposite sex seemed terminally tempted by his loner appeal. Maybe she’d thought he’d make some attempt to hold her again. Quite possibly, that’s why she had allowed him inside her home on the pretext of serving him a drink. She’d answered his questions about her home with a sense of pride.

  Never had she thought he might be analyzing her. When he’d said she was safe with him—she hadn’t known how safe.

  “Caleb, if you’re trying to say that I subconsciously told Jenny I wanted children—her children—I’ve got to tell you that you’ve gone way off the deep end.”

  He sank into the sofa, uninvited. She could tell he was so deep in thought he didn’t realize she was becoming angry. “Could she have chosen you out of a sense of gratitude? Maybe even as a way to make your dreams come true? That would definitely lead me to conclude that she’s not coming back, which would also mean that it would be good to start checking bus stations—”

  “Caleb,” April interrupted. “Stop. I did not push my dreams onto Jenny. I did not position myself as the answer to her prayers. You’re supposed to drink your orange juice, possibly murmur something nice about seeing me soon and then leave. Definitely you’re not supposed to be conducting a case file on me.”

  Surprise touched his face. “April, I’m working all angles. You wanted me to find Jenny, didn’t you? Well, when am I supposed to turn off the sensors?”

  Feminine annoyance made her voice sharp. “When you start checking me over as a suspect.”

  “Not a suspect. An unsuspecting, maybe even unwilling, player in Jenny’s desperation.”

  She wasn’t sure she was mollified, so she went into the kitchen for a few moments, examining whether she was upset because he just might have a point, or if she was miffed because she’d hoped he might try for a kiss before he left—and clearly had no intentions of that. She’d noticed he was tired, anyway. “I’d better let you go. You probably need some sleep before your inner-cop clock runs past a twenty-four-hour shift.”

  There was no answer, so she turned to see the expression on his face.

  But the big, rough-and-tough man had fallen asleep, his head cradled on one of the soft ribbon pillows she’d made.

  “Yo, dream man,” she said, nearing him.

  He gave a tiny snore of exhaustion.

  Rolling her eyes, she got an afghan out of the closet. “Your sister was wrong about you being terminally tempting to the opposite sex. And by the way, I crocheted this myself, you lummox.” None too delicately, she tossed his booted feet up onto the sofa and dumped the afghan on him. “And I upholstered the sofa you’re snoozing on, and I painted these walls myself, and I’ll have you know, none of it was done with any thought of trying to snare you, so you can rest easy.”

  CALEB AWAKENED, bolting upright as he wondered if he’d heard a sound. It was dark; he was sitting on April’s sofa. Touching a button on his watch, green numbers
glowed the hour. It was 5:00 a.m.

  It was the first time he’d spent the night in a woman’s house in quite a while. But there had been no up-close-and-personal time before he’d snoozed. He wished he hadn’t fallen asleep on her. Scintillating conversationalist—that’s me. Real impressive. Reaching to a table beside the sofa, he flipped on the lamp. Two blankets covered him, put on him by April. He’d brought her home to comfort her and make certain she was all right. Their roles had reversed, and he found it an embarrassment to the macho bravado he’d been wearing around April.

  Time to make himself scarce. But first, he decided to check on Nurse Sullivan. Just a glance, to make certain she was securely tucked into her bed.

  Folding the blankets, he tossed them onto the sofa, then headed down a narrow hallway. He switched on a light, seeing that there were two empty bedrooms on the left, a sewing room on the right and a hall bathroom. At the end of the hall, there was a closed door—the only place she could be. Quietly, he reached out a hand and edged the door open, every sense sharp as he waited for his eyes to adjust.

  A double bed centered the room, with white sheets, white bedspread, white pillows—too much, if you asked him. But in the center of the ethereal white, April lay sprawled, a tousled yet relaxed flame at rest. Her hair was flung over her pillow; one slender leg poked from covers that had twisted around her waist.

  He felt heat rising inside him, and decided waking up with April could take the chill off of late-December mornings real fast. She looked like pure temptation to him.

  Yet, the clear reminder of who April was lay clustered in every window, in every edge of free space on dressers and the window seat. Dolls of every nationality, type and material kept a gentle vigil of forever childhood, satisfied to watch over April’s most vulnerable moments.

  That vulnerability frightened him—and yet drew him inexorably to her bedside. He couldn’t stop looking at her delicate skin, her lips as they curved in her sleep. The leg so frankly exposed made him nervous even as he couldn’t take his gaze from her. So, to return the favor she’d provided him, he took hold of the white blanket she’d kicked to the foot of the bed and slowly pulled it up over her until he reached her neck.