The Black Sheep’s Baby

Chapter 4

A fter Lucy had gone, Devon went back into her room and for a few minutes stood with her toes curled up inside her oversized slippers, frowning at nothing and dithering over her choices. Her choices seemed annoyingly limited.

She needed to talk to Eric-that was absolutely number one on her priority list. But Lucy had asked her to wait awhile, so she couldn’t do that. At least, not right this minute, which was when Devon preferred to do things.

In the meantime, though, she could get dressed. Should get dressed. But the clothes she’d taken off last night were still unpleasantly damp, and neither they nor anything else she’d brought with her for what she’d expected would be an overnight stay in a nice hotel seemed remotely appropriate for an Iowa farm in a blizzard. Lucy had invited her to help herself to whatever she might find in the closet, and as unappealing as that prospect was, she supposed she’d have to take her hostess up on her offer unless she wanted to spend the entire day in borrowed pajamas and an old flannel bathrobe.

Perhaps she could take a shower. Oh, she longed to take a shower; not only could she have used the morale boost, her hair was also sorely in need of the taming only a good shampooing could give it. And no time like the present, when she had the house all to herself.

But then she realized-if she took a shower, she wouldn’t be able to hear the baby if she cried.

That was when it hit her-she was alone in the house…with a baby! An extremely tiny baby, moreover. A helpless infant no more than a few weeks old.

Panic seized her. Her heart pounded; she began to sweat. Oh, God-what did she know about babies? She couldn’t remember ever having touched one, let alone picked up one, fed one, changed a diaper. Oh, God, she thought, what am I going to do if it wakes up?

A series of images flashed through her mind, vivid as a slide show: a tiny fist waving against the backdrop of a masculine pec that was enticingly adorned with a smooth brown nipple. A big hand with long, sensitive fingers rhythmically patting a blanket covered with pink bunny rabbits and yellow ducklings. A tiny head covered with red-gold down bobbing just below an angular beard-stubbled jaw.

She gave a snort, laughing at herself-though mysteriously, her heart still pounded.

Get a grip, Devon. Think about it-if he can do it, how hard can it be?

She could handle one little tiny baby. She was a grown woman, more intelligent and capable than most. Of course she could do something millions of people, all kinds of people, even some not-all-that-bright people, managed to do quite capably every day. And just to prove she could, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

The door directly opposite hers was open. Devon could see a tumbled bed, and on it what was unmistakably a fuzzy yellow…her heart gave a leap before she recognized it as a bathrobe, the one Lucy had been wearing this morning. The master bedroom, then. The door next to it was open, too-obviously a sewing room or workroom of some sort, eclectic and joyously cluttered. The door at the far end opposite the stairs was the bathroom. That left only one door-the one next to Devon’s.

That door was closed. Never one to waste time once she’d made a decision, before she could even think about chickening out she marched up to it, seized the doorknob and turned it. Quickly and silently she pushed open the door and stepped inside. Then she just stood there, absolutely still, while her heart banged itself silly against her ribs.

Eric’s room. She knew instantly that it was his, and that almost nothing in it had changed since he’d left it, probably as an eighteen-year-old heading off to college. The bedspread and curtains were faded blue denim, the furniture old, scarred and brown. There was a desk topped with a hutch, the shelves of which were filled with books, mostly paperbacks. A stereo and a revolving carousel that held an assortment of both tapes and CDs took up most of the space on a long, low dresser, along with a lamp with a parchment shade and a base shaped like a horse’s head.

One surprising thing: on the walls, where she would have expected to see posters of rock concerts or sports stars, maybe some shelves lined with athletic trophies, instead there were photographs-dozens of photographs, of people and animals, buildings and landscapes, both in color and black-and-white, all expertly matted and framed. Devon recognized several shots of the barn she’d seen from her window this morning, one bathed in glorious sunset light, another-this one dramatic in black-and-white-against a backdrop of a stormy sky, still another in happy primary colors, red, green and blue, like a child’s crayon drawing. There were portraits-lots of portraits, mostly casual-of people Devon didn’t know. There was a very pretty, wholesome-looking girl with freckles and a perky smile, and an incredibly old but still beautiful woman with tragic eyes and a face that looked as if it might, at any second, break into laughter. She did recognize Mike and Lucy, photographed both together and separately. And, good Lord, was that-no, it couldn’t possibly be-but it was-Rhett Brown, the former president of the United States, standing beside an old rope swing hanging from a huge tree limb. And sitting in the swing was none other than Dixie, the First Lady!

All this Devon observed in a few seconds while she was trying hard not to look at the one thing in the room that was trying to demand her attention. Which was a nest surrounded by pillows in the middle of the blue denim bed, and in the nest, what appeared to be a small snowdrift of pink bunnies and yellow ducklings.

No sense in trying to avoid it. She walked toward it slowly, tiptoeing, dry-mouthed, her heart still bumping along, gathering speed like a runaway wagon. Her knees touched the edge of the bed. She caught her breath, then leaned over to get a better look, and felt a giddy urge to laugh-not with amusement or anything like it, but simply a release of tension. And a profound sense of wonderment and awe. Tears sprang to her eyes; she found that she was hugging herself, trying to stop herself from shaking.

The cause of all this unheralded emotional turmoil was lying on her back, but propped with pillows so that she was rolled almost on her side. One tiny fist lay like a half-open blossom against a plump pink cheek. Her mouth was open, and from it issued a soft but unmistakable snore.

Susan’s baby. My niece.

Devon drew a shuddering breath. “Hello, Emily,” she whispered.

She put out a finger but pulled it back before she touched the fat, velvety cheek. She stood for a long time-looking, and looking, and looking.

The barn had always been Eric’s special place of refuge, since the day he’d bravely and defiantly climbed the forbidden ladder to the loft, off-limits to a five-year-old, and discovered the newborn kittens his sister Ellie’s cat had hidden there in the hay.

Back then it had seemed to him a safe and friendly place, warmed even on days like this by the body heat of the animals winter-quartered there, the busy and contented sounds they made filling all the spaces inside the barn so that the storms howling outside its walls seemed far, far away. In the summertime, its dim and dusty emptiness made a different kind of refuge, a cool, quiet escape from sun and responsibilities and the hot, sweaty work he’d hated so.

The camera in his mind had loved the play of light and shadow inside the old barn, a montage of patterns and colors, constantly changing: shafts of sunlight slanting through open doors, shimmering with dust motes; moonlight glimpsed through windows fogged with drifts of spiderwebs; shadows leaping across a rough-plank wall, brought to life by a swinging lantern; heat lamps bathing newborn calves in pools of molten gold…

But that was pure enjoyment. Other times he’d come to the barn, like now, with his emotions in turmoil, his heart full of rebellion and his mind full of questions. At those times it wasn’t enjoyment he’d been looking for, but peace. Acceptance. And if not answers, at least the patience to wait for the answers to come.

More often then not, back then, he’d been able to find those things here-and why that was, he wasn’t sure. Though later in his life he’d wondered if it was because inside the barn’s walls, everything-from the spiders in the rafters to the cows with their new calves-seemed so simple, all of life reduced to its basic elements: food and shelter, birth and death. And everything beyond those walls, like the noise of the storm, had seemed, for that moment, at least, far away and therefore inconsequential.

He’d been a kid, then. Naive, to put it mildly. He found that out later in his life, too, about the same time he’d discovered that some of those things outside the barn were closer to him than he’d thought, and there was no escaping their consequences after all.

So, what was he doing now, running off to his childhood refuge when he had damn little hope of finding peace, there or anywhere else? Certainly not acceptance, not of any kind of scenario that would involve giving up Emily to this woman-this lawyer-and her parents. Not answers, either. Or ideas. He’d used up his last one, bringing the baby here, to the place he’d been surprised to realize he still thought of as home. For all the good it had done him, or her.

No-as far as answers and ideas went, he was fresh out. And he hadn’t much hope of finding any new ones waiting for him in his mom’s old barn, either. Stupid idea.

Still…amazingly, there was something calming about working alone in the early morning quiet, cleaning out stalls by the gentle light of a hanging lamp. It had been a long time since he’d wielded a pitchfork or shoveled manure-not activities he’d ever relished in his youth-and he was mildly surprised to discover it felt good to work up a sweat. He’d actually taken off his jacket and, finally, even his shirt.

His mom and dad had been in and out, starting the morning chores. He’d stopped shoveling long enough to ask his mom who was looking after the baby. She’d given him a searching look before answering, “She’s still asleep. I asked Devon to keep an ear out for her.”

He’d had nothing to say to that, and had just nodded and gone back to shoveling, using the physical activity and his own sweat to dampen down the fiery sizzle of anger in his belly.

After that, his parents, no doubt remembering his old habits, had pretty much ignored him. Still, he’d been glad when they’d finished the chores and gone back to the house, and the quiet he remembered, if not the peace, had settled once more around him.

When he again felt a cold blast of arctic air and heard the storm’s howl rise abruptly from a muted roar to a banshee’s scream, he thought it must be his mom or dad come back, probably to tell him the little one was awake. When he saw instead the bundled shape of someone that couldn’t possibly be either of his parents, his heart gave a leap, then settled down to a quick, angry thumping.

He watched in impassive silence while the figure, clumsy in snow-dusted parka and rubber chore boots several sizes too big for her, struggled to push the door closed against the buffeting wind. She gave a wordless cry of victory when she succeeded in dropping the latch into its cradle, then whipped around and leaned against the door, breathing hard.

She looks scared to death, Eric thought, amused. As though she’d just managed to escape a pack of ravenous wolves.

Oh, he wanted to feel contempt for her, this thin-blooded California girl, threatened by a little snowstorm. He tried. But…dammit, there was something fierce, even triumphant about the way she threw back the hood of her parka and shook out that fiery hair of hers, and try as he would, he couldn’t manage to convince himself it was contempt he really felt.

She came toward him, absently brushing snow from her coat and looking around her like someone who’d been magically transported to an alien world. Rather the opposite, he thought, of Dorothy finding herself in Oz.

“What do you want?” he asked before she’d gotten far; he couldn’t explain why he didn’t want her coming close to him. “She awake?”

“What? Oh-no, Emily’s still sleeping, or was when I left. Anyway, your mom…” Apparently fascinated by the barn, she’d finally got around to looking at him, only to do a double take and interrupt herself with a blunt, “Aren’t you cold?”

Eric glanced down at his naked chest. “Only when I stand around,” he said meaningfully, and twirling the scoop, rammed it, with more energy than was necessary, under layers of dirty, wet, trampled-down straw. He heaved the shovelful toward the pile he’d been building in the center aisle without checking to see if his visitor was out of the way or not, and got an infantile satisfaction when he heard her exclamation of dismay.

Didn’t slow her down a bit. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her skirt the manure pile, brushing straw off of her parka sleeve now, instead of snow, and come to lean her elbows on the gate of the stall next to the one he was working in.

He went on shoveling, thinking if he ignored her she’d take the hint and go away. No such luck. Apparently lawyers didn’t understand subtlety. Looked like, if he wanted to get rid of the woman, he was going to have to use more direct measures.

He stopped shoveling, and scoop held at the ready, said, “What do you want?” just as she opened her mouth to say something. A lifelong habit of good manners-for which he could thank his mom and dad’s stubbornness-made him halt and give her a sardonic go-ahead shrug.

“I was going to say I didn’t know you were a photographer.”

It wasn’t what he’d expected. He lowered the shovel blade to the floor and leaned on the handle. “My mom been blabbing?”

“No. I went to check on the baby and saw the photos in your room. I asked about them, and she told me they were yours. And that you’re a professional photographer.”

He gave a soft grunt and corrected it. “Photojournalist.”

She said, “Ah,” and went on looking at him in a searching, appraising kind of way he found intensely annoying.

“Don’t look so surprised,” he said after a moment, smiling without amusement. “What did you think? Yeah, I have a profession, even earn a living at it, pay taxes and everything. You just assumed I was some homeless street person?”

“Why shouldn’t I think that?” she shot back, riled and defensive. “How else would you have met my sister, much less-”

“Got her pregnant?”

Devon closed her eyes and held up a hand to stop him in case he meant to say more, which he sure as hell didn’t. As far as Eric was concerned, any conversation with this woman was a waste of time.

“Look,” she said, taking in a long draught of air through her nose-the smell of which seemed to surprise her a bit, since her eyes got watery and she blinked and gave her head a little shake to clear it before she went on. “I just thought, since we apparently got off on the wrong foot this morning-” She broke off. Eric was shaking his head.

“Oh, I don’t think so, lady,” he said softly. “I think that’s pretty much the only foot I ever want to be on with you.”

She looked at him in silence, then said just as softly, “Aren’t you forgetting something? Emily is my niece. If you are her father, we’re now family, you and I-distasteful as that may be for both of us. Like it or not, Eric, we have that little baby in common. And I’m sure we both want the same thing, which is what’s best for Emily.”

Eric made a rejecting sound and turned away. Looking at her had again become impossible; his eyes felt seared by her image.

As before, she didn’t take the hint and back off but instead pressed her advantage, coming right into the opening of his stall, invading his space. He wanted to shut her out, command her to leave, but again, an ingrained courtesy forced him to stand and listen to her voice, that poised, confident voice, so different from Susan’s, and insidiously gentle, now.

“Look, Eric, I think I understand how you feel. You must have loved Susan. As I did. I think…my sister was very lucky to have found someone like you, after such a difficult and unhappy adolescence. At least, maybe she finally found some happiness, at the end. I know losing her was hard. My God, it was hard for me, don’t you realize that? Hard for my parents-for all of us. And I know you must love your daughter very much. But Eric-” she put out a hand and touched his arm, and he felt a shiver go through him, sharp and cold as a knife. “Even you must admit that your job… Your mother says you have to travel most of the time. Don’t you think a stable home, with two loving parents, would be a far better environment for a child than what you, a single-”

He made a violent movement, shaking her hand off of his arm as if it were some particularly loathsome variety of bug, and glared at her with burning eyes. “You think you understand me? Lady, let me tell you something. You don’t understand anything. You got that? Nothing.” Breathing hard, he turned away from her again.

Lady, don’t make me do it, he silently prayed. Just go. Get the hell out of here. Don’t make me say it.

It was rejection as emphatic as anything Devon had ever experienced, a door slammed rudely in her face. But it wasn’t her way to flee in ignominious defeat. She stood in frozen silence, staring at the naked back he’d turned to her, at muscles bunched and rigid as stone.

Her eyes felt as if they’d been scorched; she kept blinking, trying to soothe their burning. His sudden withdrawal had shocked her; she’d thought-she’d been certain-she was saying the right things. Getting through to him. She’d sensed his pain and grief-surely she’d been right about that much.

Part of her shock was anger at herself, because once again she’d let Eric Lanagan take her by surprise. Once again she’d misjudged him. I can’t read him, she thought, fighting an unfamiliar sense of failure. He’s right-I don’t understand him.

“Look-” he flung out an arm and she stiffened, composing herself to face him. But he kept his back to her as he went on, in a voice that had gone low and guttural, “I might as well tell you-you’re going to find out anyway, soon enough. I’m not the baby’s-Emily’s-father.”

Again, it wasn’t what she’d expected-the admission, not the fact. Inwardly in turmoil, outwardly calm, she nodded, though he couldn’t see it, but didn’t say a word. After a moment he rounded on her, fierce and defiant.

“I was working on a piece-a photo essay-for the L.A. Times. About teenaged runaways. That’s where I met her- Susan. I didn’t know her last name-didn’t know any of their names. It took me months, living with them on the streets of L.A., but I finally won their trust-some of ’em, anyway. Susan was one. She seemed…special to me, right from the first. There was something about her, you know?” He stopped and looked away, and Devon felt an ache, the beginnings of a lump in her throat.

A tiny movement from Eric tugged at her attention; she let her eyes follow the ripple of his throat when he swallowed. But then, without permission, somehow her eyes just continued on down, slaloming over the planes of a chest still shiny with sweat. Irrelevantly, she thought, He lied. He is cold. She could see his nipples had gone boldly erect, hard and sharp as buttons.

There was something in the silence. She jerked her gaze upward and found his eyes on her. And the darkness in them seemed more anguished, now, than angry.

In mounting suspense she waited, and after a moment he went on, in a voice so raw and sharp she thought it must hurt his throat to talk. “We got to be friends. Friends-” he interrupted himself with a sharp angry gesture “-not lovers-we were never that. She trusted me. Told me her story. She told me-” he clenched his teeth hard; she could see the muscles work in his jaws “-she’d been abused-sexually. By her father. Your father. For years. Until she finally got strong enough, desperate enough, and decided to take her chances on the streets.” He stopped, breathing hard, waiting for her reaction.

She didn’t give him one. Couldn’t have if she’d wanted to. She’d gone cold, hollow. The truth was, she felt nothing, nothing at all.

“Go on,” she finally said, without expression.

He did, wearing a tight, off-center smile, and if her lack of response surprised him, he didn’t let it show. “She survived, the way so many of them do-working as a prostitute, panhandling, a little shoplifting. Got into, then out of drugs.”

He let out a breath, picked up the shovel, then stood it on end again, flexing his grip on the handle. Releasing tension. “When I met her she was clean-and pregnant. Didn’t know who the father was, though. I took care of her, or tried to. Saw to it she had food, vitamins, things like that. I just about had her talked into moving into a shelter. I’d made all the arrangements. I went to pick her up and that’s when I found her-she was in labor, bleeding. Barely conscious. I drove her to the hospital, got her there in time to save the baby.”

Silent now, he watched himself twirl the shovel, around and around in the straw. Then he looked up at Devon from under the lock of hair that had fallen across one eye, his face suddenly younger, more vulnerable than she’d ever seen it.

She didn’t want to see that. She hated him. Hated him.

He went on, inexorably. “That’s all she could think about, you know? Her baby. Was her baby okay, and please save her baby. She held on to my hand and asked me-begged me-to keep her little one safe. Don’t let them get her-that’s what she said to me. Please-don’t let them get her. She told them I was the father, and they let me hold her, just for a minute. I stood there and held that little girl and watched them try to save her mother’s life. They kept pouring blood into her, everybody yelling back and forth and shocking her with those paddles. But it didn’t…it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.” His clenched jaws relaxed, and his voice trailed away on an exhausted breath.

Through the shimmering haze of her anger, Devon saw him draw a hand across his face, then straighten up and turn toward her, silently waiting. Waiting, she realized, expecting her to say something. She became aware that she was shaking-a tight inner tremor that wouldn’t even show on the outside. To him she knew she appeared cool and unruffled, calm and unmoved. Oh, but the trembling, deep, deep inside.

She couldn’t remember ever being so angry. She wanted nothing more than to flee, to simply walk-no, run-away and leave him there. Leave him with his vicious and unconscionable lies.

“She lied.” She heard herself say it in a calm, cold voice. “Susan always was a little liar.”

It was her exit line, and she did walk then, not run-that would have been undignified-away from him, with her spine rigid and her chin high. She got as far as the door, pulled back the latch and felt the wind battering against the boards and it seemed to her like some fearsome beast trying to gain entry. Hurriedly she shoved the latch back in place and sagged against the door, leaning her head against it as a shudder shook her through and through. She felt defeated, trapped, cornered-caught between the storms within and without.