First Comes Baby

by Janice Kay Johnson

  They ate until they were bursting and talked like they hadn’t in years.

  Megan, it turned out, had been in love with the style-challenged computer nerd. Stunningly, he had been the one to fall for someone else.

  “I hate the fact that I have to see him regularly at work.” Megan suddenly groaned. “I think I’m going to puke.”

  “Good practice for when you get pregnant,” Laurel said heartlessly.

  “Do you intend to have another baby?”

  Not unless it’s Caleb’s.

  The knowledge was quick and certain.

  But that wasn’t what Megan had asked. “Lydia is worth every minute.” She was just as sure of that. “If it seems right…maybe.”

  Megan nodded. “Tea. That might settle my stomach. Do you still have some?”

  “I’m sure I do.” Did tea become stale? This had been on the shelf since pre-pregnancy. “I’ll even make it for you,” she offered.

  Lydia had been asleep for a couple of hours. Laurel had been working toward getting her on a schedule and should have woken her a while ago, but it was so nice to have the time with Meg she hadn’t.

  Now she heated water and poured them both cups of tea, herbal for her and caffeinated green tea for her sister. She was still avoiding caffeine since she was nursing.

  When she carried it to the living room and set the two mugs on the coffee table, Megan asked. “What about you? Are you okay?”

  Laurel opened her mouth to lie, and suddenly couldn’t. Sinking onto the sofa, she shook her head. From someplace raw inside her, she asked the unanswerable. “Why did it ever have to happen?”

  “The rape?”

  Laurel gave a jerky nod.

  “I don’t know. Because bad things happen.” She searched Laurel’s face. “Is it keeping you and Caleb from…?”

  Laurel nodded again. Her face contorted and she bent her head to bury it in her hands. Hot tears smeared on her fingers.

  “Oh, sweetie.” Megan scooted over and grabbed her in a fierce hug. “It’s not fair. None of it’s fair.”

  Laurel cried against her sister’s shoulder. She had to go to the bathroom for tissues when she was done. The face she saw in the mirror was becoming familiar: blotchy and swollen.

  Blowing her nose, she returned to the living room. “I really think Caleb and I could have been happy if I weren’t so screwed up. But how do you have a relationship if sex can’t be part of the deal?”

  “Are you sure it can’t? Because…” Megan bit off whatever she’d begun to say.

  “What?”

  She hedged for a moment, then said, “Because it can be wonderful. With the right person.”

  “I never…”

  Megan’s eyes widened. “You weren’t a virgin!”

  She sounded so horrified, Laurel laughed. “No. I was going to say, none of my experiences were that stupendous. I guess they weren’t with the right person.”

  Caleb. They weren’t with Caleb.

  “Have you tried?” Megan paused delicately.

  “Um…not exactly.” Laurel told her about Caleb’s kisses and the evening when she’d realized how selfish she was being. “The thing is,” she concluded, “he seemed okay with it. Like, Oh, well, we tried. Big shrug.”

  “He does have his pride.” Megan took a swallow of tea. “Maybe not just that. Maybe he loves you enough that he wants to stay friends no matter what. And he thought if he made a big deal out of being rejected, that wouldn’t happen.”

  Laurel hadn’t thought of that. Was it possible she’d hurt him? That all his casual, it-was-no-big-deal attitude was fake?

  Yeah, she realized, it was possible. That would be like Caleb. He wouldn’t have wanted to hurt her by letting her think she’d done anything wrong.

  Then, maybe it wasn’t too late. If she was next thing to positive that she could go through with it, so she wasn’t just sucking him into another great experiment for her benefit, never mind the fallout.

  “I’m going to have some more ice cream,” she decided, getting up again.

  “You have no idea how tempted I am to say, me, too,” her sister confessed. “The tea helped.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  Megan grumbled. She’d bought the ice cream. Couldn’t she decide if she wanted some or not?

  When Laurel went back to the living room, she set down her bowl on the coffee table, then bent over and kissed the top of Megan’s head.

  “I’m really glad you came tonight. I needed this.”

  Her sister smiled at her. “Yeah, me, too. We look like hell, don’t we? But we should do it more often.”

  “Way more often,” Laurel agreed, feeling teary again.

  Right now, she wasn’t letting herself think about the fact that Megan wouldn’t be here tomorrow night, or the next night or the one after that.

  Any more than Caleb would be.

  CALEB PROWLED HIS EMPTY HOUSE, unable to settle at his computer or with a book, uninterested in the television offerings. All he wanted to do was call Laurel. See Laurel. Hold Lydia.

  He’d mucked everything up. Gone too fast. Pushed too hard. If he’d just been more patient…

  It might not have made any difference.

  He swore out loud, his voice startlingly loud in the quiet house.

  Damn it, she’d responded to him. Yeah, going from kisses to hot sex was a leap, and one that probably looked scary to her given her history.

  Was that why she’d backed off so fast? She’d panicked? Or had something else happened?

  He wondered if she was glad to be home. She’d pretended to be yesterday, when he dropped her off.

  “Look at the garden,” she’d tsked. “I didn’t cut anything back. I didn’t mulch…. I’ve got a ton to do.”

  “Spring is a few months away.”

  “I want to get the beds cleaned up before the bulbs start coming up.”

  She’d gone inside and talked about airing the house out, washing bedding before she used it. Housewifely, already making lists of everything to be done. He felt extraneous even before he left.

  He’d driven home, paced for two hours and thought about calling.

  Too soon. Too needy.

  But tonight, phoning seemed reasonable. Lydia was his baby, after all. It was natural for him to wonder how she’d handled the move. Although Lydia had her own bedroom and a crib waiting, Laurel had taken the bassinet so that their daughter could continue to sleep next to her bed for a while. Even so, the shadows and smells and sounds would be different. Would she wonder why her daddy wasn’t there?

  If so, he realized with a sinking feeling, she’d forget him soon enough. He’d be relegated to that category of people who appeared occasionally instead of being an everyday part of her life. He hated that.

  Caleb grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top and took a long swallow. He wasn’t much of a drinking man, but for this call, he needed to be fortified.

  “Caleb,” Laurel said, after she’d picked up the phone and he had identified himself. “We’re fine. Were you worried about us?”

  You could say that.

  “Just wondered how Lydia handled the change.”

  “As if we’d been on the road since she was born.” Amusement suffused her voice. “You know the drill. Eat, poop, sleep. As long as she gets clean diapers and Mommy’s breast, she’s okay.”

  There was the confirmation: Dad was not needed.

  And he was just feeling sorry for himself. “Great,” he said, as heartily as he could manage. “Glad to hear that.”

  Silence. Neither of them knew what to say.

  “Megan came over last night,” Laurel offered.

  “Yeah? How’s she?”

  As if he didn’t know. Hadn’t seen Laurel’s sister at least weekly since Lydia’s birth.

  “Fine. We stuffed ourselves on ice cream and talked. Girl bonding.”

  Versus hanging with the guy who’d provided the sperm and was otherwise irrelevant.

/>   Getting pathetic here.

  “Have to be in Seattle Wednesday,” he said. “I was hoping to stop and see Lydia if you plan to be home.”

  “Oh, sure. We can be. When are you coming?”

  They set a time, said goodbye with what sounded like relief on her part.

  His house was just as empty. Wednesday was still three days away. Caleb opened another beer and thought, How am I going to live like this?

  WEDNESDAY’S VISIT WAS awkward. Lydia got woken early that morning and was now ready for a nap, but Laurel had kept her up for Caleb’s sake. She kept apologizing for Lydia’s crankiness, which made Caleb grit his teeth. It was if she was rubbing in his visitor status.

  He claimed appointments, thrust his by-then-screaming daughter at Laurel and left.

  In the car, he said aloud, “This sucks,” and shoved the key in the ignition with a shaking hand.

  That night at home he thought seriously about cutting his losses. Distancing himself. What kind of real father could he be with occasional visits? Maybe it would work better later on, when he could take Lydia for the weekend now and again, when she’d remember him during absences.

  But for now, holding Lydia for a half hour and then having to give her back… Seeing Laurel happy in her home with the baby she’d wanted… Why not just dig out his heart and hand it to her the next time he said goodbye and see ya, grinning as if he was okay with this whole, screwed-up arrangement?

  An arrangement, he couldn’t let himself forget, to which he hadn’t just agreed, he’d actually volunteered. No, he’d done more than that. He had demanded that Laurel let him father her baby. With full knowledge that these visits were all he was ever going to get out of it.

  He just hadn’t known how much he would love his daughter from the moment she was laid in his arms.

  And he hadn’t understood that what he felt for Laurel wasn’t friendship that might have blossomed into love if they’d ever had a chance. Nope. It had already been too late. He was in love with her. The can’t-imagine-ever-loving-another-woman kind.

  So now he had two choices.

  Back off. Way, way off. Continue providing child support. Maybe try later to build a relationship with Lydia separate from her mom.

  Or, option two, keep torturing himself. Be Laurel’s best buddy. Hold Lydia fleetingly once or twice a week. See them both just often enough to keep his wounds raw. Keep pretending, somehow, that he was fine.

  He didn’t want to abandon Laurel. He’d refused to even when she did her damnedest to get rid of him. He thought she still needed him now even if she was determined to embrace single parenthood.

  But Caleb didn’t know if he could keep doing this.

  He got drunk that night for the first time in years. Woke feeling like crap.

  Staring at his haggard face in the mirror, he realized he couldn’t walk away. Lydia needed to grow up knowing he cared. And Laurel…damn it, he’d promised friends forever, and he’d deliver, even if it hurt.

  So he stopped by Saturday for another short, uncomfortable visit. Thursday the next week for a longer one, staying for dinner. Saturday again. Wednesday again.

  Laurel was vague about when she might start back at work. Soon. But the partners at the firm were being nice about her taking extra time.

  With his twice-weekly visits, Caleb had a routine going. Laurel relaxed, seemed to welcome him as her old buddy Caleb again. He hugged her a few times, kissed her cheek when leaving. He kept thinking, It’s got to get easier.

  The visits did. Leaving didn’t. In between, he counted the days. The hours.

  He should start doing some traveling again, after taking a lengthy sabbatical, but the idea of not seeing Laurel and Lydia for a couple of weeks or longer kept him from making firm plans.

  Two months old, Lydia was able to hold her head steady without a hand supporting it. She cooed; she squealed. She was starting to rock as if she meant to roll over. Every time Caleb saw her, she’d changed. It was a daily thing, and he didn’t want to miss a single accomplishment. He didn’t want to go from being a person she recognized as regular in her life to a stranger.

  There were problems in Bolivia. Deliveries weren’t arriving, items were missing from the ones that did. His contact in Tarija in the south wasn’t returning calls or e-mails. The region was dangerous enough, the politics so touchy, he was reluctant to send anyone else in his place.

  He had to go sooner or later. Sooner would be better. This was his life. Ten days, two weeks, he’d be home. He’d send Chad to Mexico and El Salvador, look for another eager PLU grad this spring to learn the ropes.

  The next week, Caleb was in the back at the Seattle store, checking a shipment of Honduran pottery, when his cell phone rang.

  “Caleb?” Laurel’s voice was barely recognizable.

  He swung away from the open box and his associates. Dread dug claws into his gut. “What’s wrong? Is it Lydia…?”

  “No! No. She’s fine. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry. You’re probably busy. I shouldn’t have called during the day…”

  He interrupted. “Now’s fine.” Covering the mouthpiece, he said, “I’m stepping outside,” to the store manager and assistant manager. They nodded, and he opened the heavy metal door.

  “Caleb?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” A fine mist wet the ground and the cars. He stepped close to the wall, under the eaves, gravel crunching under his feet.

  “Detective Garner called. He’s the officer who investigated after I was raped,” Laurel said unnecessarily.

  Caleb tensed.

  “He thinks they’ve arrested him. My rapist. He attacked someone else. In the same parking garage.” She was breathing as hard as if she’d been running. “They want me to identify him. Oh, God, Caleb.” Her voice broke, regathered, thick with anguish. “What if I don’t recognize him? What if I can’t be sure? And then they let him go?”

  “They won’t let him go, not if he got caught in the act.”

  “But he’d get away with what he did to me.”

  “You’re not going to let him. You’re too strong to do that.”

  “I don’t know if I am.” She sounded frantic now. “I don’t know if I can look at him. I can say no. You’re right. He’ll go to jail anyway. I don’t have to do this.”

  “You have to do it. For your sake.”

  All he heard was her hard breathing.

  “Are you home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay there. I’m on my way.”

  Good thing he hadn’t yet made reservations. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE GLASS WAS SUPPOSED to be one-way, but Laurel knew the moment she stepped into the room that it wasn’t. Couldn’t anyone else see how thin it was? As a line of orange-suited men filed in on the other side, Laurel felt the first flutters of panic.

  They can see me. Oh, God, they can see me.

  All six men ignored the people flanking Laurel and stared straight at her. Several smirked. He was there, fourth in the row. His mouth formed the word bitch. He’d called her that while he raped her, his voice guttural. You bitch. That’s all you are. A bitch. Such hate.

  She reeled back. Suddenly the glass exploded, disintegrating into glittering shards. There was nothing between her and him. Eyes on her, he stepped forward, the glass crunching under his feet. This time she heard him.

  “Bitch.”

  The police officers did nothing. She swiveled. They were gone. They’d stepped out without her realizing. How? How? She backed away, her heart slamming…

  And awakened sitting straight up in bed, one hand clasped over her mouth, her body heaving with dry sobs.

  For a moment Laurel stared uncomprehendingly around her dark bedroom. Thin slats of light leaked through her window. Another band of light from the one she’d left on in the bathroom. The bassinet within arm’s reach. Lydia made a tiny snuffling sound. The numbers on Laurel’s clock glowed: 4:13 a.m.

  Real me
mories settled back into her mind. Laying Lydia down to sleep just before midnight. This week she had started skipping her 2:00 a.m. feeding if she had one at eleven or eleven-thirty.

  Before that… Caleb. He’d been here. Was still here?

  Needing reassurance, Laurel pushed the covers aside and put her feet on the floor. She tiptoed around the bassinet and out of the bedroom, pulling the door partially shut behind her. Around the corner, the living room was darker. She peeked over the back of the couch and felt a huge swell of relief at the sight of him sprawled on his back, one foot on the floor, another propped on the far arm of the couch. For some reason that foot, long and bony, was the most visible part of him, caught in the faint light from the bathroom.

  She wasn’t alone. Thank God she wasn’t alone. It had been a bad dream. A nightmare.

  He shifted on the couch. Voice soft, he asked, “Are you all right?”

  “I had a bad dream. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just wanted to be sure…”

  “That I was here?” He jackknifed to a sitting position, pulling the blankets with him. “Come here.” He patted the cushion beside him.

  Laurel circled the couch and sat, grateful when his arm came around her and tugged her against him. He wore a T-shirt, no bare chest, but she still felt his warmth and the solid, reassuring beat of his heart, so much slower than hers.

  “Was it the rape?”

  She shook her head against him. “I was identifying him. Only the glass wasn’t one-way. He could see me. And then…” She shuddered. “Then it shattered, and he walked through the opening.”

  “You won’t be alone.”

  “In the dream, I was. Everyone else had left.”

  He swore under his breath and his arms tightened.

  “It was so real.”

  “You saw him in the dream. So you do know what he looks like.”

  She frowned, remembering. “I’m not sure in the dream he looked like he really does. I just knew it was him. But…I think I’ll recognize his face. And his hands.”

  After a minute, Caleb asked, “Why his hands?”