The Black Sheep’s Baby

Chapter 1

I t was the week before Christmas, and Lucy was sorting laundry.

She acknowledged that fact with a sense of mild astonishment-and not-so-mild vexation, for Lucy Rosewood Brown Lanagan was not a person to whom the adjective “mild” could normally be applied. At least, not often or for long.

“It’s too quiet to be Christmas!” she declared loudly, though more to herself than to her sister-in-law, Chris, who was sitting at the kitchen table thumbing through magazines, looking for recipes.

“This looks good,” Chris said without looking up. “Walnut squares…”

“Eric’s allergic to walnuts.”

Lucy said it without thinking, an automatic response-which she realized a moment later when Chris looked up and eagerly asked, “Oh, is he going to be here for Christmas this year?”

A familiar pain made Lucy’s voice uncharacteristically light when she replied with a shrug, “Haven’t heard from him.” And a moment later asked, “What about Caitlyn?”

Chris’s eyes jerked away, shifting back to the magazines spread out on the table in front of her as she said in a tone as artificially cheery as Lucy’s, “She doesn’t know for sure. Says she’ll try her best to make it, at least for Christmas dinner.” And a poignant little silence fell between the two women, fraught with empathy and unvoiced yearnings.

“It’s too quiet-” Lucy began again, just as, with faultless timing, a door banged sharply and loud thumping noises started up out on the back porch.

Chris gave a gurgle of laughter. She and Lucy both looked toward the kitchen door as it burst open to admit their menfolk along with a gust of freezing wind. Lucy knew the smile in Chris’s shining eyes was only a reflection of her own, though it gave her as much embarrassment as satisfaction nowadays to admit, even after more than thirty years, that the sight of her husband’s face could still give her that seasick feeling under her ribs.

“Getting colder,” the man himself announced as he ducked into the service room across the hall to wash up in the laundry tub. “That storm’s on its way. Be here before morning.”

“Forecast said midnight.” Lucy’s brother Wood zigzagged over to give his wife a hello kiss, peeling off gloves and ski cap on the way. “Pack it up, darlin’. I want to get back to the city before this thing hits.”

“Edward Earl,” Lucy said in a no-arguments voice-well aware that as his big sister she was the only person alive allowed to call him by his given name-“you’ve got plenty of time, you can stay and have some supper. I’ve got a roast in the oven and a Jell-O salad in the fridge, so you just go on in there and get washed up. Supper’ll be on the table in ten minutes.”

“I’d do as she says, if I were you,” Mike said in a warning tone, grinning as he came into the kitchen, rolling down his shirtsleeves. He paused to give Lucy a peck on the cheek.

“Smells good. What’ve you two been up to?”

Though she wasn’t the demonstrative sort, she gave him an elbow in the ribs to let him know her heart was doing a happy little skip-hop at his nearness.

“Looking up recipes. Everything all battened down out there?”

“Everything that can be… More recipes?” Mike was looking sideways over Chris’s shoulder at the spread on the table. He cocked an eyebrow toward Lucy. “Who’re you cooking for, the third division?” In an aside to Wood he added, “We had leftovers from last Christmas dinner for Easter.” And then, probably because he knew very well how precarious Lucy’s mood had been lately, coming up on this particular holiday season, he wrapped his arms around her and murmured next to her ear, “Honey, there’s just gonna be the four of us. You don’t need to go to so much trouble.”

“Five,” Chris said firmly, shuffling magazines into a stack as she stood up. And when nobody said anything for a second or two she lifted her head and looked her husband hard in the eyes. “Caitlyn’s coming. She said she would.”

“She said she’d try.” Wood’s voice, too, was gentle.

“She’ll be here.” Chris gathered up the pile of magazines and marched off to the parlor.

Wood muttered what sounded like, “I hope so,” under his breath as he pulled out a chair and sat in it. And after a moment, “Sure does seem strange, doesn’t it? Not having a houseful of kids around for the holidays? Doesn’t seem like-”

Lucy interrupted him with a swipe at his shoulder. “Edward Earl, take off your coat before you sit down at the table!”

“Yes’m.” He rose obediently, not trying to hide a grin.

“And hang it up, too-you know where it belongs.”

“Just like old times…” he grumbled good-naturedly as he carried his chore clothes across the hall to the service room.

“Old times…” Lucy muttered angrily, turning to the sink. It wasn’t that she was angry, really, just that she could feel a familiar heaviness creeping around her heart, thinking about the season…the quietness. She hated that heaviness; it made her feel old and scared, panicky and depressed, all at once. Old times. How I miss them… Mama, Daddy, Gwen. And the children. Where did the children go?

Not to be put off, Wood was saying as he reclaimed his chair at the table, “Speaking of ‘old times,’ I was thinking about how it used to be, you know? When we were kids.” His wife came back in just then, and he craned to look up at her and reached for her hand. “You should have been here, Chris.” And then he laughed. “I’m surprised you weren’t, actually. Mom had this habit of inviting people. Anybody who didn’t have anyplace else to go, Mom made ’em welcome here at our house. But even without the strays, we always had a crowd-remember, Luce? Aunts, uncles, cousins-whatever became of all those cousins, anyway? Does anybody ever see them anymore?”

“We mostly lost touch after Mama and Daddy died,” Lucy said without turning from the sink where she was washing green beans. “I get cards from some of them at Christmastime. You know, those letters everybody sends now that they’ve all got their own computers.”

“What I can’t figure out,” said Wood, lacing his fingers together behind his head and gazing around the kitchen, “is where we used to put everybody. This room-this house-sure seems a lot smaller that it did when we were kids.”

“Everything seems smaller than it did when we were kids,” Mike put in. He’d taken his usual place at the foot of the oval oak table and was indulging in a back-cracking stretch. “Something about perspective.” Everybody paused to look at him alertly in case he meant to go on, since it wasn’t Mike Lanagan’s way to do much talking at times like this. Mostly, Lucy’s husband liked to just watch and listen, like the reporter he’d been and still was, she knew, in his heart.

“What we did, was,” she said when it had become apparent Mike had said all he was going to for the time being, answering Wood’s question even though she knew he hadn’t really expected an answer, “we put all the leaves in this table and the grown-ups squeezed in right here in the kitchen. The kids got to eat in the parlor. Dad would bring in two sawhorses and put planks on them, and Mom would put the oilcloth tablecloth from the kitchen table over that. The good linen tablecloth went on this table, along with the good china.”

Lucy turned on the faucet to run water over the beans. “Us kids got to eat on plastic or paper plates, like a picnic. I’m surprised you don’t remember that, Earl. You always used to try to start food fights with your cousin Donnie- Donnie Hewitt, remember him? He could make milk come out of his nose, which is a talent I don’t imagine benefited him much later in life.”

Wood passed an embarrassed hand over his eyes. His wife was gazing at him in wonderment. “That was a long time ago. I guess we’ve grown up some since then.” There was a reminiscing silence, and then he added without any laughter at all, “I wonder sometimes, you know? About Mom and Dad-what they’d think if they could see the way we turned out.”

Lucy didn’t say anything, but became intent on chopping up bacon to go on the green beans. She was thinking about Wood-Earl-and how he’d been just in high school when their parents were killed in that car accident in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. Thinking about it, even though it had been so many years ago, made her throat tighten up.

It’s this season, she thought. She hoped she wasn’t turning into one of those people who hate the holidays just on general principles.

Wood went on, after clearing his throat in the loud way men do when they’re in danger of showing emotion. “They’d have to be surprised about old Rhett becoming president of the United States.” Everybody laughed at that.

Lucy surprised everyone, herself most of all, when she turned, swiped the back of her hand across her nose and said fiercely, “They’d have been just as proud of you, Earl, becoming a teacher. Just think of all the lives you’ve-” Embarrassed, she broke it off and jerked back to the sink.

There was a long pause, and then Wood said softly, “Know who I think they’d’ve been proudest of, Lucy? You.”

She made a sound like a startled horse. “Me!”

“Yeah, you. Keeping this place going all by yourself, after Rhett and I ran out on you. Think how many generations this farm has been in our family. All the way back to-”

“Great-great-I don’t know how many greats-Grandmother Lucinda Rosewood, my namesake.” Lucy picked it up, smiling around the ache inside her. “Who once foiled a Sioux raiding party when she set her barn and fields on fire, tied up her baby in her apron and climbed down the well and hid there-”

“While the fire burned all the way to the river!” everyone chimed in, laughing, on the refrain. It was an old Brown family story, well-loved and often told.

The laughter died and silence came. Wood broke it with a gruff, “You did-we all know it. It was you who kept it here for us all to come back to.”

“For a little while, anyway,” Lucy said. She plunked the kettle full of beans down on the stove and turned on the burner, making as much noise as she could to cover up the sounds of knowledge and sadness and inevitability in the room behind her. Just small rustling, shuffling sounds, because no one was about to say out loud what they all knew to be true, which was that, after Lucy, there wasn’t going to be anyone left to keep the farm going. At least, not anyone in this family. The best they could hope for, Lucy knew, was that someone would buy the place who’d want to live in the big white farmhouse and keep cows and sweet-smelling hay in the great old barn. But the fact was, more than likely the farm was going to end up being swallowed by some agribusiness giant with offices in a high-rise in Chicago or Dallas or Kansas City, and the house and barn and all the other corrals and outbuildings would stand empty and abandoned like so many places she’d been seeing lately. Until, one by one, they were torn down, blown apart by a high plains wind, or fell in on themselves from the sheer burden of their loneliness.

Desperate to banish the images and feeling guilty for the sadness she’d brought upon them all, Lucy turned from the stove with a determined smile. “Hey,” she said lightly, “who knows? Maybe one of the grandkids…”

Wood gave a hoot of laughter. “Grandkids? Whose? You guys having some we don’t know about?”

Mike gave a wry snort and spread his hands wide as if to say, Don’t look at me.

“Rhett’s got grandkids. Lauren’s two boys-”

“Who’re way out there in Arizona on an Indian reservation. And I doubt Ethan and his rock star are going to be in any hurry to start producing rugrats.” Wood was ticking them off on his fingers. “Ellie and her husband-and weren’t the secret agent twins off in Borneo, or someplace, nabbing orangutan poachers?”

Mike cleared his throat. “That was last year. They’re in Madagascar now.”

“Ellie and Quinn are still in the honeymoon stages,” Lucy said defensively. “So are Ethan and his Joanna, for that matter. There’s plenty of time. Nobody’s rushing anybody.” She had a secret horror of becoming one of those mothers who’re always hinting and nagging about grandchildren, as if their children’s sole purpose in life was to provide them with some.

“And then there’s our Caitlyn…” Wood said that on an exhalation, sitting back in his chair. He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know if Caty’ll ever get married, let alone have kids. She’s too busy saving the world.” Lucy thought that his eyes seemed sad, following his wife as she moved from place to place, quietly setting the table and that Chris seemed unusually pale, her face more than ever like a lovely porcelain mask.

“What’s Caty doing these days?” she asked, glancing at Mike to see if he’d noticed anything out of the ordinary; if anything was amiss, he’d see it, and they would talk about it later.

“Who knows?” And Wood added, with a rare flash of impatience, “If she shows up for Christmas, you can ask her. Maybe you can get more out of her than we’ve been able to.”

“Wood,” Chris admonished softly.

“I guess that just leaves Eric.” Wood was smiling, now, but too brightly. “You heard from him this year?”

Lucy shook her head. “It’s early yet. He’ll probably call.” She opened the oven door and reached for the potholders, but Mike was already there, taking them from her and lifting the heavy roasting pan onto the counter.

“He’ll call,” he said in a low voice, catching her eyes and holding them across the sizzling, crackling pan, through a fog of garlic and spices and oven-roasted beef. “He always does.”

Lucy held on to the quiet confidence in her husband’s eyes and drew strength from it, as she had so many times before. And she smiled her special smile, just for him, to let him know she appreciated it.

“So, there you have it,” Wood said, coming upright in his chair in hand-rubbing anticipation of dinner. “No pitter-patter of little feet any time soon. Personally, I’m in no hurry to become a grandparent. Hey-I don’t feel old enough to be a grandparent. I feel like I just got grown-up myself. Frankly, I’m enjoying spending time with my wife.” He reached for her hand as she slipped into the chair next to him. “Anyway, we keep pretty busy, between my classroom full of kids and Chris’s physical therapy patients.”

“It’s not a matter of being busy,” Lucy said, in between carrying platters and bowls to the table. “Lord knows, we’ve always got plenty to do around here. It’s just-” she broke off, frowning, to survey the table, then finished it as she seated herself. “It’s just too quiet, that’s all. Earl, will you please ask the blessing?”

He did, since she’d made the “request” in her no-arguments tone of voice, and then everyone was busy passing and serving and tasting and exclaiming about how good everything was. After that, conversation turned to the blizzard that was predicted to arrive later that night, and the new versus the old and familiar Christmas specials on TV.

It wasn’t until later, when the taillights of Wood and Chris’s car had gone bumping down the gravel driveway to flash bright and then wink out as they turned onto the paved road, that Lucy could finally turn into the comfort of her husband’s arms. “I’m sorry,” she whispered against his chest.

“Mmph,” said Mike in a tender murmur. “What for?”

“I didn’t expect to feel like this-not at Christmastime.”

“Like what?”

It was a moment more before she could bring herself to say it. “Sad…” And then added quickly, afraid he might misunderstand, “About getting older, I mean. I always thought I’d be like Gwen, so full of laughter, right to the end.”

“Gwen had her sad moments,” Mike said into her hair.

“I suppose. I think-” she turned her head to one side so she could listen to his heartbeat and was silent for a moment, drawing strength from that. “I think it’s because everything’s changed, and I haven’t. I still feel exactly the same as I did when I was young, and Mom and Dad and Gwen were alive and all the kids were home and it seemed like the house was always full of people and noise and laughter. I don’t know how to explain…”

“You don’t have to. You miss the kids. I miss ’em, too.”

Lucy nodded. She and Mike held each other and listened to the silence together, and after a while she found that the silence didn’t seem quite as lonely as before. “It would be nice to have some grandchildren,” she said, with a laugh and a very small sigh. “To visit now and then.”

Mike chuckled. “Maybe we could rent some.”

She wasn’t sure what it was that woke her. She lay for a moment, blinking and disoriented, listening to the howl of wind and the dogs’ excited barking, watching patterns of light and shadows move across the walls.

“Mike-wake up! Someone’s coming up to the house.”

They’d fallen asleep watching television, as they often did, Mike stretched out on the couch with a book on his chest and his reading glasses askew, Lucy bundled in an afghan in Gwen’s La-Z-Boy recliner. She righted the chair with a ka-bump and struggled out of the afghan, at the same time searching with her feet for her house shoes. “Mike! There’s a car coming up the drive. Who on earth do you suppose-”

“Wha’ time is it?” Scowling at his watch, he answered himself in tones of disbelief. “Almost eleven?” By that time Lucy was halfway across the kitchen.

She stopped in the service room long enough to grab a coat, which she was shrugging into as she stepped onto the back porch. The cold stabbed at her, making her gasp. The dogs were less frantic now that they’d achieved their purpose and the household had been properly roused. Lucy quieted what remained of the racket with a sharp command, then stood hugging herself as she watched the car lights drive past the front of the house and right around to the back door, the one everybody except strangers always used. Not a stranger, then.

She had begun to shiver violently, but it wasn’t from the cold. She no longer felt the cold at all, in fact, only a strange numbness.

The car crunched to a stop near the bottom of the steps, just where Wood and Chris’s car had been parked a few hours before. Lucy found that she was standing at the top of the steps, but when she would have started down, Mike’s arms came from behind to encircle and hold her where she was. The car’s headlights went dark. The door opened, while Max and Tippy, the two Border collies, circled close, wriggling and whining.

Lucy wondered how she could shake so hard and still stand. She wondered how she would stop herself from bursting into tears.

The driver-a man-stepped out of the car and slowly straightened. For one brief moment he lifted deep-set shadowed eyes toward them while his hands reached to touch the dogs’ eager, searching muzzles, buried themselves in thick, silky fur. His face was gaunt, hard-boned, a stranger’s face.

Lucy’s breath caught in a sharp whimper. She could see that his lips were moving and knew he was speaking to the dogs, but she couldn’t hear his voice for the rushing wind inside her own head. She felt Mike’s arms around her, holding her so tightly she could scarcely breathe. She clung to his arms with icy fingers and tried to draw a breath, tried to speak-anything-just to say his name. But she couldn’t. Not even in a whisper.

He was moving quickly now, almost at a run, not toward her, not toward the house, but around to the other side of the car. Then he was opening up the back door, and for what seemed to Lucy like a very long time he leaned into the car, bending over something inside. Suspense keened in her ears as she watched him take something bulky from the back seat and come back around the car, carrying it by a handle. Something covered with a blanket…

Mesmerized, Lucy stared at the blanketed something as her son carried it toward her up the steps, slowly, one at a time. It could not be what it seemed to be. It couldn’t. But, two steps below her he halted, swinging the thing from his side to in front of him so that he held it in both of his hands, like an offering in a basket.

There was no mistaking it; it was an infant’s car seat.

Lucy tore her eyes from it, then, to gaze into the face of the hollow-eyed stranger. He smiled, though she could tell it was an effort, his teeth showing white in a beard-shadowed face.

“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. Merry Christmas.”

The breath she thought she’d lost came forth in a rush, but before she could make her lips form a reply, she heard Mike’s voice saying calmly, “You’d better come inside, son. It’s cold out here.”

Then, somehow, they were all in the nice warm kitchen, and Eric was lifting the infant carrier onto the table. In a daze, Lucy reached out to touch, then carefully lift the soft pink-and-yellow-and-blue blanket that covered it.

“Her name’s Emily,” Eric said gruffly behind her.

Lucy said nothing at all. She was gazing down at the face of the sleeping baby, like a single perfect flower in a nest of thistledown.

“She’s five weeks old,” her son went on in the hard, cracking voice she didn’t know. “And she’s mine.”