The Black Sheep’s Baby

Chapter 8

“I t was like…she couldn’t even stand to touch her,” Eric said. He was sitting at the kitchen table, watching his hands turn a coffee mug around and around on the red-and-green plaid tablecloth that had magically appeared there since breakfast. “Mom…you think it’s possible for a woman to have no maternal feelings whatsoever?” Or…feelings of any kind?

“Devon? Oh, I can’t believe that.” Lucy threw him a smile over one shoulder. “She was probably just nervous. A lot of people are, around new babies.”

“Yeah, well, I wish you could have seen her.” He pushed the mug away on an exasperated exhalation, then sat and bleakly gazed at his mother as she went back to rolling cookie dough into balls on the countertop.

Which was when it occurred to him that the back of her green sweatshirt was adorned with the rear view of a very fat black-and-white cat wearing a Santa hat; he assumed the front view of the cat would be on the corresponding side of the sweatshirt. Since breakfast, it seemed, his mother had metamorphosed into a Christmas elf.

Now that he thought about it, since this morning the whole house had broken out in Christmas. The sweatshirt, the tablecloth, Christmas songs drifting in from the CD player in the parlor, cookies baking in the oven, filling the air with the rich dark smell of cinnamon and cloves. Molasses Crinkles, he realized as he watched his mother’s hands deftly spoon gobs of thick brown dough, roll them into balls, dip them in sugar and then, the final touch, with a fingertip touch a single drop of water to the sugared top of each cookie, so they’d crack when they baked. What memories it all brought back. Those cookies had been his favorite, and he bet he hadn’t tasted them in almost ten years. She’d probably made them especially for him.

At some point in the future he’d probably have to think about that, maybe even decide whether it touched or annoyed him-or both. But at the moment he had something else on his mind. Someone else. Devon. Naturally.

What am I going to do, he thought gloomily, if she doesn’t have any feelings? About the little one, at least-he’d seen pretty convincing evidence of other kinds of feelings, down there in the barn this morning.

The little one. He thought then about his own feelings, and the need he still had, after all these weeks, to hold a part of himself safely aloof from feeling too much for a child he knew he had no real claim to. Saying her name, even in his mind filled him with fear. Even the word “baby” made him feel vulnerable. “Little one”-that was better. Nothing to do with his heart, only a small person for whom he was responsible. A helpless being he’d sworn to protect.

On that score, on a purely legal level, once the DNA tests proved he wasn’t the baby’s father, his custody claim wasn’t going to have much of a leg to stand on. So, he’d figured his only hope for keeping the little-Emily-out of her grandparents’ clutches was to get to Devon’s emotions-break her down, get her to remember what it had been like, growing up in that house. At the very least, get her to remember and acknowledge what it was that had made her little sister run away from home-and stay away, at the cost of her own life. But what if, he thought now, the memories are too painful for her to face? What if she’s buried the memories-and the feelings-too deep? What if I can’t get through?

Then…it will have to be Caitlyn.

“Son? You want to give me a hand out here for a minute?” His dad had opened the back door just wide enough to put his head through, letting in eddies of damp snow-scented air to swirl through the warm, spice-saturated kitchen.

“Yeah-sure.” As he pushed back his chair, Eric saw his mother throw another smile over her shoulder, this one aimed over his head, toward the back porch door.

Watching his parents’ silent communion, he felt a pang of something that wasn’t quite envy, but rather an acknowledgement sense of being on the outside of an exclusive club-one with a membership of two.

Once upon a time, he’d wondered if the kind of love his parents had was really as rare as it seemed. Now that he’d been out in the world for the past ten years, he knew beyond any doubt that it was. And that was a bleak and lonely thought.

Even with the storm windows up, the porch was cold as a meat locker. It smelled of mud, evergreens and freshly cut wood.

“I took off another four inches-that should be enough.” Mike gestured vaguely at the wet sawdust and pine boughs scattered on the floor, the tree leaning against the wall. “Your mother likes to use the extra branches to put around.”

Yeah, Dad, Eric thought but didn’t say aloud, I know. I used to live here, too.

He didn’t blame his father for treating him like a stranger; not really. He’d been just a kid the last time they’d spent any time together. The few brief and very awkward visits in the years since, some even more awkward phone calls hardly counted at all. Now, here he was a grown man, and it seemed neither of them had figured out how to work it yet.

“I thought we could-oh-okay…” His father hastened to grab the other side of the eight-foot tree Eric was already lifting and together they eased the freshly cut stump into the stand. “That looks pretty straight,” Mike said, standing back to get a better perspective.

“I’ll hold it, if you want to tighten the screws,” Eric said, and then silently cussed himself as he watched his father lower himself to his knees with a stiffness that hadn’t been there before. His dad getting old? Eric wasn’t prepared for that. Not by a long shot.

“You know, son,” Mike said, squinting up at him through the evergreen boughs, “I couldn’t help but hear what you were telling your mother just now-about Devon. The baby…”

Eric glanced at his father, then quickly away. His feelings just then were ambiguous, as they had been since long before he’d pulled his car up to his parents’ back door. While the child-the son-in him was bristling at the merest hint of parental interference, the adult-a brand-new parent himself-cautiously hoped for some much-needed advice. So as not to betray that fact, he eyeballed the tree, straightened it minutely and unnecessarily, and said, “Yeah? What about it?”

“You said…you didn’t think she had…any feelings…for the baby.” Mike’s head and shoulders had disappeared into the foliage, and his words came in muffled grunts. “But…I think…you’re wrong about that.”

What else is new? Eric-the-son wanted to say. Eric-the-new-father drew a careful breath and gruffly said, “Yeah? Why?”

“Think about it.” Mike sat back on his heels, gave the tree a measuring glance, then transferred the glance to Eric. “If she didn’t have any feelings toward that baby, why would it bother her just to hold her? Shouldn’t be any different than holding…say, a doll. Or a sack of groceries. Right?”

Eric didn’t say anything. He stared at the tree, then gave it a quarter-turn. His father studied it with tilted head, muttered, “A little bit to your right-that’s it, hold it right there,” and dove into the branches again.

“Now, Devon, it seems to me-” slightly out-of-breath, it came from the depths of the tree “-is a young woman who likes to be in control.” There was a pause before Mike emerged to gaze up at him again, this time balanced on the ball of one foot and the opposite knee. “That sounds like a cliché, I know, but in her case I think it’s important. There’s a good reason she’s a lawyer. Lawyers get to call the shots, see? Tell people what to do. Anyway, to a lawyer, emotions are commodities, something to be polished up, spin-doctored and sold to a jury.” He smiled crookedly and stuck out a hand. After the briefest of hesitations, Eric gripped it firmly and braced himself against the pull of his father’s weight. “Real emotions-particularly her own,” Mike said with a grin when he was on his feet again, “probably scare that woman to death.”

Eric made a disbelieving sound and shook his head, but it was only for show. To his surprise, his father seemed to know that. Instead of arguing with him, he touched his arm and moved closer in a companionable, man-to-man sort of way.

“Son, let me tell you how it is with women and babies. I don’t know what, but there’s something that happens. Put a woman close to a baby, and she goes all soft and runny inside. Even the most sensible no-nonsense woman’ll suddenly start cooing in babytalk. Take your mother-when she was younger, she’d fight a bare-knuckle brawl to prove how tough she was. She felt she had to, I guess, trying to run this place alone, all that responsibility, being the boss. I had a devil of a time just getting her to admit she needed me.

“Then your sister Rose Ellen was born…” He paused, laughing softly, and for some reason Eric found himself laughing the same way. “Ah, man.” Mike shook his head. “I remember once, Ellie was only a couple of weeks old. I walked into the bedroom, and there was your mother, leaning over the crib, crying. Nearly scared me to death- I thought for sure something was wrong with the baby. But your mom shook her head and kept looking at Ellie, who it turned out was sound asleep and perfectly fine, and all she could say was, ‘She’s so beautiful-’” He broke off with a cough, and Eric, all too familiar with how it was with guys and emotions, turned away with an embarrassed laugh of his own.

“The thing is,” his father said after a moment, stopping him just before he could escape back into the kitchen, “there aren’t many emotions in this world more powerful than those of a mother. You’ve heard of maternal instincts? If Devon was feeling even a little bit of that, it is no wonder she ran.”

After her demoralizing morning, Devon hid out in the bathroom for as long as she could find excuses to do so. She showered and shampooed, conditioned and deep-cleansed, tweezed and clipped, brushed and flossed, blow-dried and styled anything and everything she could think of to which those activities could possibly be applied. Worse than the boredom was the full awareness that that was what she was doing-hiding out. And the worst of it was, she couldn’t really understand why she was doing it. Devon O’Rourke wasn’t a coward. She was not in the habit of avoiding issues and ducking confrontations-especially when such confrontations might be her only means of obtaining needed information.

But then, Devon O’Rourke did not ordinarily make a complete mess of things from the get-go, either.

She’d been over it a dozen times, and demoralizing as it was, it was still the only conclusion she could come to. She’d screwed up. Made one mistake after another. To begin with, she now realized, she should have just let the marshalls serve the court order and never gotten involved with these people at all. That was mistake number one.

Mistake number two: What was I thinking of, born and raised in Southern California, to have tried to drive in a Midwestern blizzard?

Number three-and after that so many more she’d lost count-all had to do with Eric. Damn him. She’d started out underestimating him. She’d told herself she wouldn’t make that mistake again, but somehow he kept catching her off guard anyway. She didn’t understand him. And all her efforts to do so seemed to result in more confusion, more misunderstanding.

All right, so what in the hell was she supposed to do now? Devon was accustomed to taking action, making things happen, not waiting for events to happen to her. But stuck here in an Iowa farmhouse, in a blizzard, she was both figuratively and literally-and she thought of the rented Town Car, out there in the snow somewhere-spinning her wheels.

The north wind doth blow and we shall have snow,

And what will the robin do then, poor thing?

She’ll sit in the barn and keep herself warm,

And hide her head under her wing.

A shiver coursed through her, though the bathroom was warm and steamy as a tropical greenhouse. All right, so big deal, she’d forgotten that nursery rhyme-so what? And so many others… Why? Why can’t I remember my childhood?

Where were you when your sister needed you?

Help me, Devon please don’t leave me.

Damn you, Eric, she thought bitterly. Damn you.

It was hunger-and the delicious smells drifting up from the kitchen-that finally drove her downstairs. As before, she was vaguely disappointed to find the kitchen empty, though she did locate the source of at least one of the mouthwatering smells there. Cookies-dozens of them, spicy brown rounds with crackled tops-were spread out on trays on the kitchen table and covered with clean dish-towels. Though the smell made her almost dizzy, after a quick peek she let the dishtowel drop back over the cookies without tasting so much as a crumb; Devon rarely allowed herself to eat sweets.

While she’d been barricaded in the bathroom, it seemed, Christmas had arrived. The already cozy farmhouse kitchen had been transformed, as if by magic wand-or a battalion of elves, Devon thought wryly-into a department store window. A bright red-and-green tablecloth covered the oak table, and there were red cushions on all the chairs. A basket in the center of the table held pinecones decorated with cranberries and sprigs of evergreen. There was a wreath dangling against the glass part of the back door, and above each window, boughs of evergreen had been tied to the valance rods with red velvet bows. There were Christmasy towels and potholders on the counter, and Christmasy covers on the toaster and blender, and Christmasy knickknacks on the shelves above the microwave oven. Devon tried to tell herself it was ridiculously overdone; she wanted to believe it was tacky and gaudy and silly.

She tried, but she couldn’t.

What she really thought it was, was pretty.

And being there in the middle of it all made her feel much the same way the cookies did-dizzy with longing and at the same time doggedly proud of the willpower with which she had always denied herself such things.

There was Christmas music, too, she realized, drifting in from a stereo playing somewhere in the house. Bing Crosby had just started “I’m Dreaming Of A White Christmas,” when real voices joined in, picking it up on the next line. Men’s voices, singing in harmony. Men’s voices? Good God, Devon thought, one of them had to be Eric. Would he never stop surprising her?

Following the voices and the music, she crept down the hallway to the parlor. Yes, they were all there-Mike and Lucy, Eric and even the baby, asleep in her carrier seat-but instead of joining them right away, Devon paused in the shadows just outside the doorway to watch. Standing in the dark hallway and looking into that room, all aglow with Christmas cheer and family togetherness, she felt as if she were alone in a cold street, watching strangers through a lighted window. Watching something warm and real, but which she could neither feel nor touch. Something wonderful that she could never be a part of.

Across the room, Eric and Mike stood flanking a Christmas tree that towered almost to the high parlor ceiling. They were facing each other, each holding one end of a tangle of Christmas tree lights, though at the moment that was all they were doing-holding them-as they devoted their attention to the song they were singing with droll abandon. Though Eric’s was the stronger voice, he was doing the harmony, while Mike backed up Bing on the melody. Lucy, their appreciative audience, perched sideways on the recliner chair with her chin in her hands and the baby’s carrier at her feet, watching and smiling, but not singing. No one noticed Devon.

She didn’t mind. She was glad of the chance to study Eric’s family, she told herself, ruthlessly disregarding a persistent, mouthwatery hunger feeling that was centered much nearer her heart than her stomach. She told herself it was his whole family she needed to know more about, although after the first sweeping glance around the room, her eyes came back to Eric-just Eric.

She was struck by how alike they were, father and son-though she couldn’t have broken the resemblance down to specifics. Eric was a little taller than his father, and a lot thinner, and he did have his mother’s hawklike nose. And, she realized, her intensity, too-though it was possible that Mike’s quiet way was something that just came with age. Like wisdom.

Barely thirty herself, it was hard for Devon to imagine herself or anyone her age old, but she knew with complete certainty that, like his father, Eric would still be trim and attractive when he was in his sixties-and well beyond. She could see it in his bones, the strong features unsoftened by excess flesh, in the shape of his head, the breadth of his shoulders. And his hands…

Oh yes, those big, long-fingered hands, so unexpectedly gentle when he’d touched her, this morning in the barn. Oddly, she could feel them still, on her face, her throat, the side of her neck. Feel her pulse throbbing against his thumb, and her body quivering inside, humming like a dynamo-some high-voltage power source. So gentle…

And they’d scared her to death. They still did.

She shifted restlessly, that strange vibration inside her a tickle she couldn’t reach. And that movement was enough to give her away. Mike sang out, “Hey-Devon! Come on, join us.”

“White Christmas” had ended. Someone else was singing now; Devon had no idea who, or what. She moved into the room, pretending an ease she didn’t feel, avoiding Eric’s eyes though her senses hummed with awareness of him and her skin still shivered with that memory of his touch.

“My,” said Lucy from her perch on the recliner, “don’t you look nice.”

Devon’s smile, as she murmured her thanks for the compliment, was wry. Her clothes-black silk pants and an ivory cashmere sweater-and hairstyle-a sleek and elegant twist-would have been entirely suitable for dinner in a hotel dining room, maybe a solitary nightcap in the lounge afterward. Here, in a farmhouse parlor in the middle of a snowy winter afternoon, she was well aware that she was ridiculously overdressed. Mike and Eric were both wearing nondescript jeans and sweatshirts, and Lucy looked decades younger than her age in matching green sweats with a Kliban Cat Santa on the front.

Well, so what? Devon thought. Too bad. After her marathon primp-session, she’d debated whether to put on something borrowed again. Considering the debacle she’d made of the day so far, she’d opted instead for the boost of confidence her own clothes might give her. So what if she looked like a city girl, and completely out of her element? That’s what she was, dammit.

“You must be starving. Help yourself to some cookies and cocoa.” Lucy casually pointed with her head to a tray on the coffee table. “We sort of missed lunch-got so busy decorating, I guess we all lost track of time-so we’re filling up on snacks to tide us over till dinnertime.” Her grin wasn’t even remotely repentant. “There’s some popcorn around here, too, someplace. Mike, where did you-oh, there it is.” Mike had reached behind him to retrieve a giant Tupperware bowl from the desktop. He handed it over to Lucy, who stretched to add it to the hospitable jumble on the coffee table. “Don’t be shy, dig in.”

What else could Devon do? Her own fault she’d missed out on breakfast, of course, but she was starving, and it had been a very long time since that piece of toast and cup of coffee in the dark early morning. One cookie wasn’t going to ruin her!

Seating herself on the edge of the couch, Devon picked up a napkin and selected a single cookie from the half-empty plate. The rich, spicy aroma made her lightheaded. She bit into the cookie and it was so delicious she actually closed her eyes. It was all she could do not to croon.

“Molasses Crinkles were always Eric’s favorite,” said Lucy with a pleased and reminiscent smile.

Mike chuckled. “Don’t even think about stopping at one.”

Devon had already taken another cookie. She envisioned her thighs blowing up like off-road tires.

“Have some cocoa,” Lucy urged. “It’s the old-fashioned, made-from-scratch kind, not instant.” She gave a contented sigh and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I think hot cocoa just goes with a snow day and a roaring fire.”

Devon felt the same way about white wine, preferably a nice Napa Valley chardonnay, but she didn’t say so. Probably not so much as a bottle of wine in this entire house, she thought, as, in complete surrender to the inevitable, she poured herself a cup of steaming cocoa from the thermal carafe on the tray.

She was taking a cautious sip when her eyes collided with Eric’s across the rim of the cup. She gulped instead, and felt a delicious warmth spreading all through her insides-similar in effect to a slug of good brandy.

Brandy…yes. That’s what his eyes are like. Brandy.

Had he been watching her all that time, she wondered, with his mocking smile and whiskey eyes? Her heart skipped and jumped beneath her ribs, but she defiantly refused to let herself look away. She blew gently on her cocoa and stared back at him through the fog of rising steam.

“Speaking of snow days,” Lucy announced to the room at large, “the noontime weather report says the storm is supposed to be over by tomorrow. Should be ending late tonight.”

“Thank God,” Devon muttered, tearing her gaze away from Eric’s with a determined shake of her head. He and his father went back to untangling the strings of lights and bickering about whether to begin installing them at the top of the tree or the bottom.

Mike contemplated the end of the string he was holding. “Doesn’t this white one have to go at the top? For the star?”

“Okay,” Eric countered in a disgusted tone, “if you do that, what’re you gonna do with the plug? It’s got to hang all the way down the back of the tree. Shoot, you’re gonna need an extension cord just to reach the socket.”

“You’re going to have an extension cord, no matter what.”

“Of course,” said Lucy, looking thoughtful, “there’s no telling how long it’ll take them to get all the roads plowed…”

“What about you, Devon?” Eric was watching her again, with that curious and unnerving intensity she’d seen in his eyes before. “How do you do it-bottom up, or top down?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said dismissively, veiling her eyes with her lashes as she sipped cocoa. “I don’t usually have a tree, since I’m generally at my parents’ house for Christmas.”

“No tree?” Lucy sounded horrified.

“Okay,” said Eric, “so how do they do it?”

“How should I know?” Devon snapped. Why did she feel as though she were in the witness box, being cross-examined by a hostile prosecutor?

“You were there, weren’t you? When you were a kid? Don’t you remember-”

“No,” said Devon, seething with inexplicable anger, “I don’t.” It was too warm in that room, stifling, rather than cozy. Under her cashmere sweater, her skin felt damp and itchy.

“What I think is,” said Mike, “we should get an artificial tree.” That was met with a loud duet of protests that effectively broke the tension. He put up both hands, laden with lights, as though to shield himself from a shower of thrown objects. “No-wait-hear me out. That way we’d only have to put the lights on once, see? Then we just leave them on when we take the tree down.”

But nobody was taking him seriously, not even Devon. It was as impossible for her to imagine a fake tree in that farmhouse parlor as it would have been to envision herself serving cookies and hot cocoa to guests in her Los Angeles apartment.

And just like that she felt a wave of homesickness for her own apartment, for the serenity of its uncluttered furniture and neutral colors…its cool, quiet elegance, and sweeping city-view.

“I remember,” Lucy said with an air of amazement, “when we still used real candles on the tree.”

“Come on, Ma.”

“No-it’s true. It was when I was a little girl-I’ll bet Rhett would remember. Earl might have been too small. We had these little metal candleholders that you clipped onto the ends of the branches. Then there were special little candles that fit into the holders.”

“Wasn’t that dangerous?” Devon asked, conscious of the century-old wood-frame house around her.

“They were only lit once,” Lucy explained. Her face was wistful, and her features blurred and softened with it so that she seemed almost to become that little girl she remembered. “That was Christmas Eve. They turned the lights out, Mama’d get her guitar, and everybody’d sing ‘Silent Night.’”

“Except you, I hope.” Leaving the light-stringing to his dad, Eric had moved close enough to his mother to give her an affectionate bump with his elbow. He threw Devon a grin and explained, “Mom can’t carry a tune to save her life.”

“Pop couldn’t, either,” Lucy ruefully confirmed. “Who do you think I got it from? And passed it on to Rose Ellen, poor thing. Thank goodness you got Mama’s voice, Eric-like Rhett and Earl. My brothers,” she explained for Devon’s benefit. “They used to sing with our mother-for church and weddings…community get-togethers, mostly.” She looked up at her son and gave him a light swat with the back of her hand. “And I did too sing. Nobody cares that you can’t carry a tune when you’re a child.”

“That’s true.” Eric sat on the arm of the couch and hitched himself half-around so he could reach for a handful of popcorn. “What about you, Devon?” He lifted an eyebrow, regarding her over one shoulder as his arm came within an eyelash of brushing hers. “You sing?”

Vaguely embarrassed by the question, she opened her mouth to answer it. And inexplicably couldn’t. She wanted to look away from him and found that she couldn’t do that either.

“That’s the kind of reaction you get from most adults when you ask that question,” Mike said kindly when Devon, at last, gave a helpless shrug. He paused to consider the arrangement of light strings on the tree. “I did a column about that once, years ago-it was after I’d gone to visit Ellie’s kindergarten classroom. Ask a bunch of five-year-olds if they can sing, and every hand goes up. Ask an adult and ninety percent will shrug and look embarrassed. It’s kind of too bad, really.”

Devon cleared her throat. “I never said I couldn’t sing.”

“Well, can you?” Eric’s eyes glinted teasingly. So close to her, she found their effect more than ever like swallowing straight whiskey.

She lifted her chin and glared back at him. “I do well enough.”

“Oh, yeah?” He tossed a kernel of popcorn into the air and caught it adroitly in his mouth. “So, let’s hear you. Sing something.”

“Eric!”

Devon gave an incredulous laugh. “Oh, sure, like I’m going to sing a solo right here!”

“A duet, then. I’ll sing with you.” He leaned back on one elbow, completely relaxed. His eyes caught hers and crinkled with smile lines. “I’ll bet we’d be good together,” he murmured under his breath, as though for her only.

Her breath made a surprised sibilance as she stared at him. What’s in that cocoa? she wanted to exclaim. Unless she was badly mistaken, she was almost certain he was flirting with her. In front of both his parents, for God’s sake.

In the next moment she was sure she was mistaken, that she was being overly sensitive, that she’d misjudged him. Again. Because Lucy was beaming at them both, hands clasped under her chin, and once again her eyes had a wistful shine.

“Oh, you know, I’ll bet you would be. It would be so nice to hear you two young people sing Christmas songs together. That’s always been one of my favorite things about Christmas-hearing the old carols. It makes me think of Mama and Papa, Christmases when the boys were both home-and when you and Ellie were kids, Eric-remember?”

The look she gave her son was suddenly fierce and accusing, and her voice had grown husky. “We’ve missed you so much, Eric. These last ten years-”

“I’m here now, Mom.” He spoke softly, but even from where she sat, Devon could feel the tension radiating from his body.

“It’s getting late,” Mike interjected quietly from across the room. He was peering out the windows. “Time for chores.”

But Lucy wasn’t going to be forestalled. “For how long?” she said in a choked voice, transferring her fierce and accusing glare from Eric to Devon. “Until the roads are cleared?”

“Lucy-”

“Mom-”

“I’m sorry,” Devon began. She put down her cup and was appalled to hear it clatter on the tabletop. “It’s not my-”

“Please let them stay.” With the spriteliness of a little brown bird, Lucy hopped off the recliner and came to take Devon’s hands in both of hers. “Devon, why not? At least until Christmas. It’s only a few days…”

She’s so small, and yet there’s so much energy, so much power in her, Devon thought. Eric’s mother was a tiny human dynamo incongruously wrapped in a comic-strip cat. She shook her head, feeling dazed. “I can’t-”

“You stay, too.” She threw her husband a brief, silent plea. “We’d love to have you-wouldn’t we, Mike? So, why don’t you stay for Christmas-all of you?”