Quadruplets on the Doorstep

by Tina Leonard

  “And what did my sister have to say?”

  “She filled me in on the latest gossip. It’s probably what’s got me thinking maybe we’ve pressed so much into our situation that we haven’t taken the time to examine if we’re happy about it.”

  “Bri is a troublemaker,” he grumbled, his tone loving in spite of the words.

  “She told me that Adam and Maggie are finally going to have the baby they’ve longed for. It’s a wonderful blessing, because you know that Adam and Maggie have undergone so many trials with the fertility treatments that their marriage had begun to show some stress. But now they’ll be a family. Sometimes people don’t know how they’re going to get to be the family they want so much, but it should be celebrated when it happens. You’re going to be an uncle again, Caleb.”

  “Well, isn’t that something,” he said, enormously pleased. “Another baby in the family.”

  She smiled, her lips stretched to simulate pleasure for the news, but all she could do was hope that he’d be as pleased when she told him her news.

  Their news. She had a feeling he wouldn’t want to celebrate, then.

  THEY SPENT a fast morning with the babies keeping them on the go. Caleb was starting to think he could handle this project pretty well: four babies and a wife. Maybe he could do this permanent-marriage thing as good as he’d ever done anything he’d tried.

  The instant he thought about the marriage as a project, he knew April had a point. One of them was assuming a life he’d never seen for himself out of a sense of duty.

  “You’re right,” he said suddenly. “Maybe I’ve been on autopilot.”

  She paused in the act of bending over a bassinet to check on Craig. Her head turned to stare at him, and he couldn’t help thinking that it would kill him not to see that spunky face every day. That tousled auburn hair alone felt like silk to his hungry fingertips.

  “Autopilot for you is to serve, protect and defend,” she said. “I think that’s just what you’ve been doing, for us. And as long as that’s the case, I don’t think I have anything to offer you that you’ll let me give you, Caleb.”

  He hadn’t expected her to read his feelings. Chewing on the inside of his jaw, he said, “I suppose the healer in you has a suggestion?”

  “Maybe.”

  When she bent over like that, making her hair hang forward a little, and then shot him that teasing smile that said oh so clearly that his smart-aleck question hadn’t rattled her, he had a suggestion of his own. He desperately wanted to put that woman back in her white bed and christen it for their own. “I’m listening. Let me hear your best shot.”

  “I think you miss the police force like crazy. And I think you’ve put us in the place of what you’re missing.”

  He stared at her.

  She gave him an innocent look as she stood up. “You’re not the only one who runs through every angle, Caleb. I was a pretty good nurse, and I’m a very astute woman.”

  The wink she gave him was unsettling. He wasn’t certain if he liked realizing he’d met his match. She’d hit the bull’s-eye, dead center. “I guess you’ll have a diagnosis, Nurse Sullivan?”

  Her shrug was way too unassuming. “Talk to someone at the force about how you feel. I’ve never heard you mention that you talk with anyone, Caleb. And I know you don’t talk to me. You’re too busy trying to take care of me, the babies, Jenny.”

  “Are we back to that independence thing?”

  “No.” She gave him a smile that was somehow sad, somehow knowing. “But I do think you need to give some thought to how much your partner’s death impacts how close you’ll want to be to this family. And to me.”

  He sighed, the tone unwilling even to his ears.

  “You can’t receive love if you’re not willing to, Caleb.”

  “Do you want to give it to me?”

  “Maybe,” she retorted. “But I’m not going to force it on a man who slips into my bed at night and then skitters away before dawn.”

  “I was trying to be considerate.”

  “And I liked having you in my bed. I just think you’ve got to want to stay in it, all the way.”

  “Are you suggesting you wouldn’t mind if I went back to my old life?”

  “I want whatever you want. But I want you to do what you want, instead of living with fear and regret. You won’t be any better off than Jenny if you do.”

  “Technically frozen.”

  “Right. Her grief is fresh, though. You and I owe it to these kids to move on.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said, wanting it to be way down on his to-do list.

  She gave him that foxy smile as she bent over Matthew’s bassinet, and he decided maybe he’d think about it sooner than later.

  “SO, YOU’RE NOT THINKING about returning to cop work,” Andrew Mulligan, Caleb’s former captain and close friend, said offhandedly.

  “I don’t think so. But it is a big part of me that will always be there.”

  “Sure. We can use you if you think the time is right.”

  Caleb wasn’t certain of anything. His old life, his new wife and the in-between-the-two knife that had once seemed to separate the two so clearly. “I’ve got these four children now,” he said with some wonder.

  “I heard. I also heard that you’re the one who brought the missing mom back.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, feeling satisfaction with his part in bringing Jenny successfully to her children. Initially, he’d been afraid that she’d resist returning, but somehow a bond had forged between them. She trusted him. It was a matter of time before she began to trust her love for her children. She’d never be equipped to handle the emotional needs of the quads—were there any single teenage parents who could?—but one day she’d find her footing with them. And sometimes that was enough.

  “You’re a great cop, Caleb.”

  Present tense. The past was still a part of him. “My dad always says it just that way, Andrew.”

  “The old man’s right. You are. I just sense your heart’s not in it anymore.”

  “No. I don’t think it really is.” Yet there was still something there, a question unsolved.

  “Your new family will begin to replace your relationship with Terry,” Andrew said softly. “In case you’re wondering if there’s light at the end of the tunnel after losing a partner.”

  “How do you know?”

  Andrew shrugged. “I know.”

  “Okay.” Caleb accepted that, hearing the deeper edge in Andrew’s voice and knowing that personal experience was speaking.

  “By the way, Terry’s wife is dating again. Did you know that?”

  His skin prickled with electricity. “Dana is dating?”

  “Yeah. A real good cop, too. Something wrong with that?” Andrew asked with a patient smile.

  “No. I guess not. I mean, I guess I just…”

  “It’s been a few years,” Andrew said gently. “She’ll always grieve for Terry, but she has a family to think about. She knew it was best to move on.”

  Caleb didn’t know what to think about that. Had it been that long since that fateful night? So long, and yet it seemed like yesterday.

  “Let go of the guilt, Caleb,” Andrew said softly. “We’ve replayed that night a hundred times. All the officers in the area said the same thing. You did exactly what a good cop should have been doing. No one could have saved him.”

  “I keep seeing it, thinking I could have moved faster, should have covered better,” Caleb said, his voice uncertain.

  “Anytime an officer is lost, we go over the details, debriefings, and every other angle to learn what went wrong, and what can be done better in the future. From what I read and heard, you saved a few other lives that night. Just not his. And sometimes, no matter how much we want it to be different, it’s just out of our hands.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Some things are in our hands, though,” Andrew said. “This marriage of yours, for one thing. Terry would want you to be hap
py, Caleb. And it sounds like you’ve got a helluva good thing going.”

  “April’s pretty sweet,” Caleb admitted. “And those babies are something else.”

  “Like ’em, do you?”

  “They’ve turned me inside out pretty good.”

  “Think of them as making up for your partner, if you need to, then,” the captain told him. “Think of everything they’re going to need emotionally that you’re in a prime position to provide. Consider it a gift to Terry. He’d want that, you know.”

  Terry had felt damn strongly about kids, that was for certain. He’d felt damn strongly about drugs on the streets that got into kids’ hands, which was one of the reasons he’d been such a fierce warrior.

  “You’re right,” Caleb said, feeling the past recede from focus. It was as if the present became crystal clear to him in that moment, and everything he wanted and needed and hoped to have in the future.

  April. And the quads. And helping Jenny walk through the burning wall of grief until she could make it to the other side. Not as a parent, maybe, but as a whole person.

  “Thanks, Andrew.”

  “You’re welcome. Anytime. By the way, this conversation hasn’t been totally unselfish on my part.”

  Caleb settled a gaze on him. “April doesn’t have any unmarried sisters, Captain.”

  Andrew laughed, not offended in the least. “No. I’m not cut out for the job you’re undertaking, Caleb. I was thinking of something more force-specific.”

  “As in?”

  “I know you’re working for your dad, but we could use a crack detective on the odd case,” the captain said. “There’s simply no one that works the angles and brings in the goods the way you do. It would be occasional, and I’d make certain only the real knuckle-crackers came your way. You’d be off the street and safe from harm, because I think we both agree that with four children, you’d better keep your head down. But you’d still have the opportunity to do something that’s close to your heart, and that you’re damn good at.”

  A chance to do what he really loved again. Police work. It would mean spending less time working for his father, but no one would be happier than Jackson if he returned to what he was best at. Relief spread through him that he’d never expected to feel again, and a well of need opened up inside him.

  For April.

  She’d understood exactly what he needed to do. Suddenly, he felt healed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Caleb hurried home to see April, to tell her that he understood it all now. She’d been right. Until he’d put the past away, he’d been simply giving, and not allowing her to give to him. It was as if he’d shoveled in all the dismay and guilt he’d carried into her life, like a giant piece of earthmoving equipment.

  He was ready to be a partner rather than a martyr.

  To his surprise, April was gone. So were the quads.

  Maybe she’d gone to see Jenny. Quickly, he rang Mrs. Fox’s house, asking to speak to Jenny.

  “Hey, Caleb.”

  “Hey. Is April over there?” Maybe she’d taken the babies to Jenny, to try to get them together in small, easy-to-manage doses.

  “No. I haven’t heard from her, either.”

  “Oh.”

  “Caleb, I’ve been thinking about something.”

  “Go.”

  “I do want to be a part of my babies’ lives.”

  His eyebrows raised. “That’s great.”

  “But I still want you and April to adopt them. It’s just that…I’m still at the age where I wish I could be adopted,” she said quietly. “I wish I had a family who wanted me. Y’know? It’s not that I can never love them, it’s just that…I think you guys are what I would have wanted if I’d been able to have parents of my own.”

  “I’m so glad you explained your feelings to me,” he said. “It helps a lot, Jenny. I don’t think I’d ever quite seen it that way before, but don’t worry about that anymore. April and I will be there for you. Consider yourself part of our family.”

  “Thanks, Caleb,” she said softly, her voice teary with gratitude. “You’ve taken on an awful lot for me.”

  “I’ve gotten a lot, too. I’ll come by and get you later so you can see the babies.”

  “I want to.”

  “Good. And then we’ll talk about your future, and what we can do to help you.”

  “Thanks.”

  He hung up, strolling into the kitchen to look for a note from April. But there was nothing there, either. She could have gone to see Jackson, or Bri.

  But packing up four newborns by herself required a mission, he was pretty certain. If there’d been an emergency with one of the children, she would have called his cell phone. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem that she wanted him to know about it—just yet.

  “MOM, DAD,” she said to her adoptive parents as they stared at the newborns in their carriers. “I haven’t told you the one-hundred-percent truth. This is Craig, Melissa, Chloe and Matthew, and it looks as though I will be officially applying for them to be my children.”

  It was clear that Donna and Webb were thunder-struck, as they sat on the high-backed green antique sofa, with a fan of babies in front of them. April felt terrible for not telling them the truth about her marriage sooner. As a short-term solution to Jenny’s problem, she hadn’t seen a need to bring it up. Now she realized that her decision had been pretty narrow-minded and selfish. They were her parents.

  She’d been dutiful, but not loving. She’d shut them out of her life to the extent that she could. Adopting her as a teenager had been a leap of faith for them. Too afraid of a bond being ripped from her again, she’d protected her heart instead of allowing herself to be close to them.

  She was a fine one to tell Caleb he needed to resolve his past unless she resolved hers as well.

  “I wasn’t totally honest with you. Caleb and I didn’t get married as a love match.” She swallowed, touching the cameo at her neck that her mother had given her on her wedding day. “We did it so we could apply for these children for temporary foster care.”

  “So these children are not Caleb’s?” Donna asked.

  “No. He married me so that we would have a two-parent home in order to secure temporary care, if possible. A girl who had come to the hospital bonded with me, and after she gave birth to these children, she sneaked out of the hospital. She left a note that asked me to take care of her children.”

  “And so you have, it appears,” Webb said. “You have a kind heart, April, which other people see. But temporary and permanent are two different things, and Caleb isn’t here with you, so it leads one to worry.”

  “Well, we weren’t expecting the situation to need to become permanent. We thought that once Caleb found Jenny—he used to be a police officer and his father asked him to make use of some of his skills—Jenny would see her babies and fall in love with them.”

  “As you had,” Donna commented.

  “Yes,” April admitted. “I couldn’t imagine not falling for these children. They’re all so special, they all have their unique moments. Craig impatiently waves his fist when he wants something. Matthew wrinkles his nose when he cries, Melissa can kick her feet like a Rockette and Chloe stretches her fingers as if one day she’ll get whatever she wants on her own, without asking for help. Yes. I loved these children from the start.”

  “What about Caleb?” Webb asked.

  “My feeling is that he’s still in shock. He’s offered to stay with me, but I’ll know when the time is right to take him up on his offer.”

  “Do you love him?” Donna asked.

  April bowed her head a little. “I do. I have for so long. But it’s so easy to fall in love with a man like Caleb, Mom. He takes care of me and the babies so sweetly. And it’s not just us. He went running off after my neighbor’s puppy the other day. And he worries about Jenny. There’s not a woman on earth who wouldn’t appreciate what he has to offer.”

  “You don’t want to be a burden,” Webb state
d.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “I don’t.”

  Her parents glanced at each other before Donna spoke. “That was always your number-one worry once we adopted you, April.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Other girls your age thought about boys and dances and cheerleading. You thought about how you could help around the house, and worried about what scholarships you could get to colleges, so you wouldn’t be a burden to us.” Donna smiled at her a bit wistfully. “We wanted you to be a child, but it was as if you came into our home already an adult, feeling that you had to care for us.”

  “I did feel that way,” April said uncertainly.

  “We were patient with you, realizing that your situation had made you feel uneasy in our home,” Webb said. “And we’ve always been proud of you. Very proud.”

  “Maybe you should be willing and comfortable with your answer if you ever feel that Caleb is asking you to stay with him because he wants you, honey, not because you’re a responsibility he’s shouldering. We certainly didn’t feel that way,” Donna told her gently.

  “I feel like I’m starting all over today,” April said, surprised. “I don’t know why I didn’t see any of this clearly, but I’m starting to feel like I didn’t know you very well. That I didn’t give you a chance. Is it possible to be born again? Because that’s the way I feel.”

  Donna and Webb smiled at her.

  “Hello, baby girl,” Webb said. And then he held out his arms to her.

  Without hesitating, April rose up on her knees and clasped her father’s neck. Then she moved to kiss her mother on both cheeks. “I love you,” she told her mother. “Thank you so much for being my mother, and knowing just what I needed to hear.”

  “It’s what I always wanted to say,” Donna said, “but I just knew it wasn’t the right time. You needed to make your own way. And now, you have. Congratulations on your beautiful children, April. You’ll make a fine mother. And a wife.”

  “It means so much to hear it,” she whispered. “You can’t know how much I’ve worried that I’d be unable to be a good wife.”