The Black Sheep’s Baby

Chapter 9

T he silence in the room seemed absolute. When, Devon wondered, as three pairs of eyes focused on her with varying degrees of intensity, had that cozy parlor begun to seem to her more like a hostile courtroom?

She freed her hands from Lucy’s grasp and hitched herself uneasily on the couch’s cushions. Beside her, she could feel Eric’s body tense and come upright on the arm. In preparation for his mother’s defense? she wondered.

Wait a minute, she wanted to shout, I’m not the villain, here, dammit! I’m not the one who took a baby girl and fled the jurisdiction in defiance of a judge’s order.

“What day is it?” she demanded, her eyes darting around the room as if the answer must be somewhere in plain sight.

“December twenty-first,” Mike supplied.

“There, you see?” Lucy straightened and tucked one wing of her chin-length hair behind her ear with an unmistakable air of triumph. “Nothing’s going to happen until after Christmas anyway.” She said that as if it were a done deal, as if the decision had been hers and hers alone to make. “You might as well stay here-spend Christmas with us. Your parents will understand, won’t they, if you miss one Christmas with them?”

“I don’t know, I’m not…” She let her voice trail off. She wasn’t used to being steamrolled and didn’t know how to respond.

At some point, Eric had quietly gotten up from the arm of the couch and was now bending over the baby carrier on the floor beside the recliner. Devon watched him hunker down, balanced on the balls of his feet, the fabric of his jeans stretching taut over the flexed muscles of his thighs.

He seems so much younger like this, she thought. With that gaunt face and those aged eyes of his turned away from her, nut-brown hair curling long on the back of his neck, broad shoulders angular and rawboned even beneath the drape of his sweatshirt.

Something twisted inside her chest, and she uttered a faint, unconscious sound of protest.

“Hey, you know what? It’s Winter Solstice,” she heard Mike announce.

Lucy gave a gasp. “That’s right, December twenty-first!” She turned to her husband, eyes alight, and she was smiling again as if that moment of emotional intensity with Eric and Devon had never happened. “Oh, that calls for a celebration.”

“Break out the champagne,” Mike said, grinning back at her.

“Sorry,” said Lucy, “no champagne. Guess cocoa will have to do.” She found their mugs, poured a dollop of cocoa into each from the carafe and handed one to her husband. Grinning at each other, with the air of observing an old ritual, they clinked the mugs together, and then Lucy turned to Devon and Eric with a sweeping gesture that included them both. “Come on, you two-join us in a toast to the shortest day of the year!”

Devon threw Eric a mystified look. His eyes met hers above the pinkish gold head bobbing on his shoulder, but without their warm, brandy glow they seemed remote and faintly mocking. Awkwardly, she lifted her mug toward her hosts, and as they did, drank down her last swallow of lukewarm cocoa.

“Well-chore time,” said Lucy briskly when that was done. She was already halfway to the door. “Coming, Mike?”

“Right behind you.” He paused in the doorway to lift his mug in a farewell wave. “Carry on, kids,” he said with a wink, and then they were gone. Devon could already hear the clank of buckets coming from the utility room down the hall.

In the now-silent parlor, Eric watched Devon turn to him with a look of bemusement, and braced himself for her soft, disparaging laugh. Funny, he thought, a moment ago he’d been embarrassed by his parents’ behavior; why now did he find himself preparing to defend it?

“What was that all about?” she asked in a hushed undertone.

“What was what about?” Without thinking, he had pressed his lips to the top of the little one’s-no, Emily’s-velvety-soft head and was breathing in the sweet, baby smell of her. He felt himself already growing calmer, quieter inside.

“I don’t think I’ve ever toasted the shortest day of the year before,” Devon said, regarding the mug in her hands with an expression on her face that barely avoided mockery. “I don’t know, I guess it never seemed like cause for celebration to me. Is there some significance there that I’ve missed?”

“The cause for celebration,” Eric gently explained, joggling the baby in his arms and slowly pacing, “is that, from now on, the days get longer. If you’re a farmer, in a place where you actually have winter, that means something, yeah.”

“Oh,” said Devon. She set the mug on the coffee table, not looking at him. He heard her take a breath, and it seemed to him her shoulders had a slump to them now, as if she felt defeated, a condition he imagined she wasn’t much accustomed to. “Living in L.A., I guess I never really noticed.”

Living in L.A., I guess you wouldn’t, he thought. Whisperings of sympathy stirred through him, but he couldn’t think what to say to her to let her know how he felt-or even whether he should. Better, maybe, that they should stay enemies.

Holding his breath, he flipped the second lightswitch on the plate beside the door, then murmured, “Hallelujah…” as the tree erupted in tiny multicolored lights.

After gazing at them for a moment, he said without turning, “You don’t have a clue what we’re all about, here, do you?”

“No,” said Devon humbly, “but I’m trying.”

He gave a surprised laugh. He didn’t know what sort of response he’d expected from her, but he knew for sure it wasn’t humility. He paced back toward her, gently joggling the baby, inhaling again her uniquely soothing smells. “Any chance of you taking my mother up on her invitation?

She gave a light, ironic laugh. “It sounded as though she doesn’t mean to give me a choice.”

He acknowledged that with a smile. “She doesn’t look it, but Mom can be a real steamroller.” He paused to settle himself on the arm of the couch within arm’s reach of her, and instantly felt the tension in her mount, as if he’d crossed some invisible line. “She does have a point, though,” he said after a moment, looking at her along one shoulder. “Nothing’s going to be done about anything until after the holidays.”

She shifted her gaze to the tree. “That’s not the only consideration. There are my parents. They are expecting me, you know.”

“So, go-be with them.”

“Without you and Emily?” Her eyes lashed back at him with stinging green fire. “Not a chance, Lanagan.”

He shrugged. After a moment she made an exasperated sound and abruptly rose and walked away from him, rubbing at her arms. “Is it true? Has it really been ten years since you last saw your mother?” She paused for a sharp, mirthless laugh. “It seems to me you and my sister had something in common.”

Anger surged through him, and he forced himself to answer calmly. “Ten years since I was here for Christmas. I’ve seen my parents a few times in the meantime-other occasions, other events. Family crises… Not the least of which,” he added wryly, “was having my uncle elected president of the United States.” He paused. “But yeah…for Christmas, it’s been a while.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not my fault.” She’d halted in front of the tree and was staring at it, and the lights splashed her face with a wash of luminous color, like stained glass. The photographer in Eric caught his breath in awe; his fingers itched to be holding a camera. “Look-your issues with your parents have nothing to do with me or Emily. It’s not fair of you-or your mother-to use that to coerce me.”

“Nobody’s coercing you.” He managed to keep his voice quiet, but his body refused to obey the same command. He left his perch on the arm of the couch and paced a few restless steps, while his fingers gently rubbed the baby’s back in calming circles. Calming himself, not her. “Hey, can you blame her for wanting to have me-and her first and only grandchild-with her for Christmas?”

She whirled on him, primed with the contradiction, “Emily’s not-” then froze when she saw how close to her he was.

“Mom doesn’t know that,” Eric shot back before she could continue. “And even if she did, do you think it would make any difference? If I say the kid’s mine, that’s all that matters.”

Her mouth opened, and he knew she meant to lash back at him. For some reason, though, the harsh words didn’t come. Instead, she glared at him, breathing hard, and he glared back while his heart banged around in his chest like one of those crazy balls that keep gaining energy with every bounce.

It occurred to him that Emily had begun to squirm and fuss, picking up on the tension around her, he thought, and by the looks of things, was about to launch into a full-blown temper fit. And because he childishly wanted to blame someone else for that, he threw Devon a look of dark accusation as he went to collect a disposable diaper, the plastic jar of baby wipes and a fresh bottle of formula and retreated to the couch. Accusation, spoken and unspoken, hung in the room like fog.

By that time the baby was in full voice, which could be spectacular when a person wasn’t used to it; he was surprised Devon hadn’t gone running for cover at the first squall. Instead, she stood with her back to the tree and watched him with a tense, stoic look on her face while he got the diaper changed-something the kid didn’t enjoy at the best of times. Then he had to get her calmed down enough to accept the bottle, and all the while his insides were swirling with emotions he didn’t know what to do with and wasn’t even sure he could name.

He thought about what his dad had said about maternal feelings being so powerful. Obviously there were some powerful emotions involved in being a father, too. He’d known, for example, the first time they’d placed the little baby girl in his arms, that from then on there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to protect her. He wished he knew how to explain that to Devon.

The thing was, the feelings that kept coming over him whenever he was around Devon, the emotions churning around in him right now, for instance, sure as hell weren’t maternal. He was pretty sure they didn’t have much to do with being protective, either.

“Eric?” The voice was harsh in the peace that came abruptly, as the baby’s mouth closed at last around the nipple and the room filled up with the hungry sounds she made when she ate.

He glared at Devon, primed and battle-ready, but something about the look on her face made him wary, and kept him silent. There was something wistful, almost bleak about the way she watched him, he thought. For the first time in a long time she reminded him of Susan.

What is she thinking? Is she…could she possibly be remembering?

His heart gave a bump of excitement and hope, and he softened his glare and waited.

“What did Susan intend to do with Emily?”

It was a long way from what he’d hoped for. “Do?” Frowning, he shifted on the couch, getting himself and Emily more comfortably settled. “What do you mean?”

“What was Susan going to do, after her baby was born? I’m sure-” a smile flickered weakly, then vanished. “I doubt very much that she intended to die.”

Eric didn’t answer. Instead he stared down at the baby’s face, watched it waver and blur.

“She was living on the streets, you said. So, did she have any kind of a plan?” Her voice was brusque-almost pugnacious. But when he looked at her, all he saw was the same wistfulness that had touched him so often in Susan-a stretched, fragile look around her eyes…a certain childlike softness to her mouth. She looked…lost, he thought. And-yes, there it was again-vulnerable. “Was she going to put the baby up for adoption? Keep her? What?”

He drew a careful breath. “I don’t think she’d made up her mind. Sometimes she’d talk about keeping her baby-going into the shelter, getting a job… But then, I think-I don’t know, maybe the fear of failure would get to her, and she’d be just overwhelmed by it all. You know-‘What if I don’t make it? What kind of life will my baby have then?’ And by that time, she figured she’d be that much more attached, and giving her up would be that much-”

“What was she like-my sister?” The interruption was no more than a whisper.

Eric narrowed his eyes, but it did nothing to help the pain that had come over him. Giving her up. It was a fear that he understood in his gut, in the depths of his soul. Looking at Devon became too hard, and because he didn’t want to look at Emily either, just then, he turned his head away. “Tired,” he said gruffly. “Defeated. Like most street kids, old before her time-like…nineteen-going-on-a-hundred.”

He felt rather than saw Devon nod. After a moment she asked in that same fragile whisper, “Was there a funeral?”

“She was cremated,” he said bluntly. “I took care of it-sorry, it was all I could afford. There’s a marker, though, where her ashes are buried. If you want-”

“Thank you. I-my parents would appreciate that.” She hesitated, staring at nothing, rubbing at her upper arms. Then she walked quickly past him and out of the room.

But not before he saw that she was crying.

A Southern California girl born and raised, Devon had never experienced the profound stillness of snow. Because of it, and because she was still operating on Pacific Coast time, she slept late and awoke to a disorienting brightness that alarmed her before she was at least partly reassured by the numerals on the nightstand clock.

She threw back the covers and, accustomed now to the shock of the cold floor on her bare feet, rushed to the window. And caught back a cry with a quick intake of breath. After that, she could only look and look…and hug herself and shiver with a strange effervescent excitement. She was unaware, then, that what she was experiencing for the first time ever was only the exquisite delight countless children have known, awakening to discover a world made magic by a simple blanket of white.

Surprised somewhat by her eagerness to be out in it, she dressed quickly in borrowed clothes and hurried downstairs. She found the kitchen warm and cozy as she’d come to expect, humid with the smells of coffee and something she feared must be boiled oats, with the friendly sounds of a local radio station playing in the background, turned down low. Her heart did a peculiar little bump when she saw that Eric was there before her. She couldn’t for the life of her think why; slouched in a chair with several days growth of beard on his face and an errant lock of hair giving him a vagabond air, he was hardly heartthrob material.

She couldn’t help but think what a difference a day made. Yesterday morning, bare-chested and holding a baby in his arms, he’d confronted her in this kitchen with all the hospitality of a peasant encountering Frankenstein’s monster. Today, he was sitting at the table placidly reading a book, a coffee mug and an empty cereal bowl on the table in front of him, and he only looked up long enough to mutter a neutral, “’Mornin’-help yourself to coffee and oatmeal.”

And why on earth did she find herself wishing for more?

“Where are your mom and dad?” she asked as she pulled out a chair and sat down, curling her hands around a mug of steaming coffee.

“Feeding cattle,” Eric said without looking up, as he deliberately turned a page. Under the stubble that darkened his jaws she could see a muscle working, and she felt a distinctly childish-and unsettling-desire to kick him under the table.

“How come you’re not out there helping?” She was secretly pleased when he closed the book and pushed it away from him. Pleased, and yet another part of her couldn’t think what had possessed her, to demand attention like a spoiled child.

“Somebody has to stay with the kid,” he reminded her. He laughed without humor when Devon straightened as if she’d been poked, then ducked her head to meet her raised coffee mug and bury her face guiltily in the steam. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of asking you.”

She didn’t reply, but sipped coffee and nursed a little ember of…was it hurt, or annoyance? So, I’m not the mothering type, she thought. So, I don’t know how to hold a baby-what am I supposed to do, apologize for that?

Refusing to give in to the disappointment she felt, she tilted her head to study the cover of the book he’d been reading. “Harry Potter-I’ve heard of him. Isn’t that supposed to be a children’s book?”

“Yeah, so what?” He picked up his coffee mug and lifted an eyebrow at her over the rim. “Does that mean adults can’t read it?” He took a swallow, gesturing toward the book with the mug as he set it back down. “Dad told me I should read it, actually. He’s a writer-I can see why he’d like it.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s full of words,” he said, then smiled when she laughed at that ridiculous statement. “Well, you’d know what I mean if you read it.” Then, while laughter still warmed his eyes, he slyly asked, “What books did you read when you were a kid?”

“The usual ones.” She flung it back at him, defiantly, to let him know that, even with the laughter and the smile, he hadn’t caught her off guard this time.

“What?” he persisted, looking innocent. “Nancy Drew…horse books…Beverly Cleary…The Hobbit-”

The Hobbit. She pounced on that-she’d read Lord of the Rings in college. “Yeah, I read that.” She said it with an air of victory, and before he could ask more questions, rose briskly, taking her coffee cup with her. “What I want to do,” she announced, “is go outside and see the snow.”

“Believe me,” he said dryly, “it looks prettier from here.”

She turned to lean against the sink. Acutely self-conscious under his quiet, appraising gaze, she folded her arms across her breasts. “Hey-I’m from L.A. This is a new experience for me. I intend to make the most of it.”

“I hope you’ve got your long johns on.”

“My what?”

“Long johns-thermal underwear?” His glance swept her from head to toe, a touch as light as snowflakes. Inside the meaningless shell of her clothes, she felt slim and cool and naked. He nodded at the jeans she was wearing. “In those, without thermals you’ll freeze in five minutes.” He made an exasperated grimace. “It’s not a damn Christmas card. Don’t you know it’s cold out there?”

She couldn’t seem to answer him. It’s true, she thought. Your voice can stick in your throat.

Impatient, brusque, he shoved his chair back and stood up. “Come on-I’ll find you some.”

She moved clumsily to one side so he could put his cereal bowl and coffee cup in the sink. He reached past her to run water into them, then gestured for her to go ahead of him. She obeyed, meek but resentful. And he says his mom’s a steamroller, she thought. Maybe it was in the genes.

Oh, how she did not want to walk ahead of him up the stairs. She’d never felt so conscious of her body before. She tried to hold herself rigid, wishing she could somehow stop the sway of her hips, the stretch of fabric over her buttocks. She was breathless by the time she reached the top, and her heart pounded as if she’d climbed a dozen flights of stairs.

In the upstairs hallway, Eric slipped past her and into her room. She followed, and found him opening and closing drawers.

“Ah-here we go.” He held up a pair of light blue knit thermals, top and bottom. “These ought to fit you-I think they’re probably my dad’s, so ignore the, uh…guy stuff.” He tossed them on the unmade bed and pulled open another drawer, this one full of socks. “If you’re going to go outside in this, dress in layers-especially your feet-got it? At least three pairs of socks. The boots you were wearing yesterday morning should be okay… Oh-and eat some breakfast. You’ll need the energy to keep warm. There’s oatmeal-”

“I hate oatmeal,” Devon blurted out. Belatedly recognizing the rudeness of that, she hugged herself contritely, shivering even in the mild coolness of the bedroom.

“Suit yourself,” Eric said with a shrug. He went out of the room, and a moment later she heard the door next to hers quietly close.

Still shivering, still resentful, she jumped belatedly to close her own door after him. Then, muttering words like “Bossy!” and “Where does he get off!” under her breath, she began peeling off her clothes.

It took a while, and by the time she was finished the room was strewn with discarded clothing, but she was satisfied she’d donned enough layers to see her through an Arctic trek. She felt enormous-like a pregnant whale, cocooned in layers of fabric and stuffed into jeans that felt a couple of sizes too small now. And stiff-she could hardly bend her knees. She walked like a B-movie monster. But she was ready. And she could hardly wait to get outside.

Ignoring Eric’s advice about breakfast-she really did dislike oatmeal-she bypassed the kitchen and made straight for the service porch, where she struggled into the rubber boots and parka she’d worn yesterday. The boots were a snug fit, now, and much less clumsy than they’d been during her brief excursion to the barn. She stomped them experimentally a few times, then clumped across the porch and pushed open the outer door.

The air made her gasp, and at the same time she wanted to whoop with sheer glee. It was like the coldest coldest champagne she could imagine-effervescent, exhilarating, breathtaking. She paused for several moments, breathing deeply, blinking in the incredible brilliance of the morning. It’s not a Christmas card, Eric had said. No, she thought, it’s a thousand times more beautiful…more wonderful.

She’d barely reached the bottom of the steps before the dogs came bounding to welcome her; apparently they were old friends, now. Once the amenities were out of the way, the two Border collies went tumbling and romping off through the blanket of snow that covered the yard, rolling and leaping, yipping excitedly as if, she thought as she watched them, laughing, they were trying to demonstrate for her its marvelous possibilities.

Although, romping in snow was one thing, she discovered as she floundered her way down the hill on what she hoped was the driveway, taking her bearings from the tops of fence posts she could see sticking out of the drifts at the bottom. Walking was another. She’d fallen down several times by the time she reached what she assumed must be the road. In addition to making a clumsy spectacle of herself, snow had managed to find its way inside her boots, and her hands were red and aching, though she tried her best to keep them warm by tucking them deep in the pockets of her parka.

She halted at the bottom of the lane, hip-deep in snow, and turned first one way, then the other, sighting along the line of fence posts, a curving row of stark black dots against all that blinding white. She shook her head, then looked again. Panic flashed briefly through her mind, followed by bewilderment, and finally, pure stubborn, muleheaded disbelief.

Where in the hell was her car?

Eric, who had been following Devon’s erratic progress down the hill from a discreet distance, lifted his camera and snapped several quick pictures before moving on. He’d taken more than a few already-a fact he hadn’t decided, yet, whether to share with their principle subject. Based on what he knew of Devon so far, he wasn’t ready to trust her sense of humor-wouldn’t have given odds, in fact, that she had one.

“Waiting for a bus?” he inquired as he approached the bereft-looking figure half buried in snowdrifts.

She jerked toward him, blowing on her hands-bare, of course. When it came to weather, the woman obviously had no sense. Her face brightened, but only briefly. She made an annoyed grimace, lifted her arms and let them fall back to her well-padded sides. “I can’t find my car.” She sounded so astounded, Eric couldn’t help but smile. “It has to be here somewhere,” she insisted, glaring at him as if she thought he must have hidden it, somehow. “I couldn’t have walked that far in that damn blizzard.”

“Then it must be here.” Scratching his chin and making exaggerated “Hmm, let’s see…” noises, he looked up the road in the direction from which he knew she’d have come, studying the patterns the wind-driven snow had made along the fence. Resisting the urge to lift his camera one more time, he plowed his way around Devon and halted beside a drift larger and slightly more rounded than the others. He gave the side of the drift a kick, and was rewarded with a solid-sounding thunk.

“Oh, my God. It’s my car. It is. I don’t believe it.” Devon had wallowed her way to his side, and was already trying to brush away the blanket of snow that had completely buried what appeared to be a spanking new luxury car, navy-blue-ignoring the fact that her bare hands were cherry-red with cold.

“For God’s sake, here-put these on before you get frostbite,” he said as he roughly bumped her arm with the hand he’d pulled from the pocket of his parka.

She looked at him-first, in surprise, at his face; then uncomprehendingly at his hand. When she saw the pair of heavy, thermal-lined ski gloves, she jerked her eyes back to his, and he saw in them the beginnings of a glow that spread slowly over her whole face, a kind of lightening, not unlike a sunrise.

“Thanks…that was nice of you,” she said as she took the gloves from him and awkwardly put them on. She sounded breathless, but it might have been the cold.

“Don’t you know you lose most of your body heat through your hands and head?” he growled, holding up the blue-and-white knitted ski hat he’d pulled from his jacket’s other pocket. “Here, hold still.” He kept his expression pained as he turned her toward him and yanked her closer, so she wouldn’t know what he was thinking.

As he lifted the ski cap and pulled it roughly over her cold, damp hair, he was thinking what a shame it was to cover it up and how heartstoppingly beautiful those wild, flame-red curls were, part of the reason he’d felt compelled to focus his camera lens on her again and again on her ungainly trek down the lane, the one spot of color and warmth in a frozen black-and-white landscape.

As he tucked away an errant curl with a gloved finger and tugged the cap ungently over her ears, he was thinking how young and fresh and sweet she looked, with her nose and cheeks all rosy and her mouth blurred and trembling with the cold…and how fiercely, how intensely he wanted to kiss her.