All That Remains

by Janice Kay Johnson

  It was Carlene, predictably, who was furious, certain that Alec was teaching his daughters that they couldn’t depend on him. The words she’d said that night still gnawed at him when he let his guard down. It was only a few weeks later that she’d packed one day while he was at work and announced when he got home that she and the girls were going to her mom’s.

  He swore under his breath and tried surreptitiously to flex muscles that ached.

  Cupcake was considerably more restless than her mommy. Having her under there was unsettling, like sleeping with a cat that had burrowed beneath the covers. She snuffled and wriggled and periodically woke crying. The first couple of times, Wren barely regained consciousness, and only after Alec shook her awake. He had to unbutton the front of her shirt and help the baby find a nipple. The whole experience was weird and so intimate he tried not to think about the fact that he was groping in the dark for this woman’s breasts and moving her body around so that the strange small creature between them could suckle on her.

  He tried to keep the blankets pulled high to maintain the baby’s body temperature. The air outside the coccoon they’d created was winter cold. During one of his periods of wakefulness Alec realized that he couldn’t hear the rain. Incredulous, he lay listening to the silence. Had it finally stopped? Forty days and forty nights. No, it hadn’t actually been that long. He remembered Wren saying that the day felt surreal, as if it had gone on forever and only now mattered. He felt that way about the storm. After the days of gray, slanting rain, bobbing on floodwaters, hauling soaked, scared people until their faces were interchangeable and his tiredness grinding, this attic was an oasis.

  He should have slept like a baby, he thought, then smiled as he gently settled Cupcake on her back and pulled blankets higher over her mother, who was already burrowing onto his shoulder. Okay, maybe not. If he had made it home to his own bed, he might have slept like a log. Not a baby.

  Probably he should have checked if Cupcake was wet, but he was damned if he was going to bare her butt or try to figure out an alternative he could wrap her in.

  With a groan, he did slide his hand under her to make sure she wasn’t soaking the comforter, but so far it was dry, thank God. He seemed to remember that a woman’s breasts didn’t produce much actual milk the first day or so. The trickle of colostrum apparently wasn’t overwhelming Cupcake’s bladder.

  The next time he opened his eyes, it was to the gray light of day and to the contented sound of a baby nursing. What the hell…? Alec blinked gritty eyes a couple of times and oriented himself. Attic. Childbirth. Brown-feathered Wren and her wrinkly, red-faced baby.

  No weight on his shoulder. He turned his head and saw Wren curled on her side supporting Cupcake’s head. She smiled at him, her face so close he could see the lighter flecks in her brown eyes.

  He stretched and discovered that pretty much every muscle in his body ached and he was hungry.

  “Damn,” he muttered. “What I’d give for a heaping plate of scrambled eggs, crispy bacon and country-fried potatoes.”

  “After a hot shower.” Longing suffused her voice.

  “Yeah. Definitely after a shower.”

  WHO NEEDED TELEVISION or a morning newspaper when you had a new baby and a gorgeous man around?

  Since waking, Wren had spent most of the time—well, half the time—minutely studying her daughter. Less exhausted this morning, she felt wonder bubbling in her like champagne shaken until it threatened to pop the cork. To think that she had created this beautiful, perfect, little person! Wren loved everything, from the tiny, fuzzy eyebrows to the pink lips that pursed and occasionally smacked, to the curve of cheeks and high forehead. When she nursed or bobbed against Wren’s shoulder, Cupcake’s head fit in the cup of her hand as if made for it. She weighed hardly anything, but as Alec had pointed out yesterday, she was doing well, so if she was a week or two early it obviously hadn’t mattered. Wren could tell how relieved he was when he said that. She suspected he, too, had hidden a few shudders at the thought of how many things could have gone wrong.

  Astonishingly enough, watching him sleep, and gradually wake, had been almost as engrossing as staring at her beautiful baby. Every so often she looked away from Cupcake to study Alec’s hard face, only slightly relaxed in sleep. No open mouth or drooling; somehow he managed still to seem guarded. And yet there was something about his closed eyelids, the dark lashes fanned on his cheeks, that gave him an air of vulnerability. He was dreaming; his eyelids quivered, and a couple of times his nostrils flared and his mouth tightened. One hand lay on top of the covers, and she saw his fingers twitch, make a fist, then relax again.

  At last his lashes fluttered and his eyes opened. For a moment he stared blankly at the empty rafters before his head turned sharply and his deep blue eyes pinned her in place.

  She smiled as if it didn’t feel even a tiny bit strange to wake next to him.

  His first words told her their minds were in sync. A chocolate energy bar didn’t sound nearly as good this morning as it had yesterday. She could almost smell the bacon.

  Wren sighed. Hungry as she was, she’d give up breakfast for a hot shower.

  “Oh, well, we don’t even have soap.”

  Alec laughed, a low, husky sound. “What would you do with it if you had it? You can’t tell me you want me to dip some floodwater up for you to bathe in.”

  Wren scrunched up her nose. “I suppose it’s cold.”

  “Safe to say.” The humor left his face. “Not very sanitary, either. The town septic system got overwhelmed, and God knows what’s floating around out there.” He rose to his feet as easily as if he hadn’t spent the night on a hard floor the way she had. “It’s not raining.”

  “No. I noticed it quit.”

  “Damn,” he said softly. “I should have filled some jars with rainwater yesterday.”

  “Will we run out of water?”

  He went to the window. “No.” The tension in his voice had dissipated. “No, it’s still drizzling. I’ll start collecting water.”

  He figured out how to hang a jar out the window before coming back to discuss breakfast.

  “I’ll have apple and cinnamon,” she decided.

  “Not chocolate?”

  “Who has chocolate for breakfast?”

  He chose peanut butter. Suspicious, she asked if he was trying to leave the tastiest ones for her, but he insisted he didn’t care. There were more peanut-butter bars than either of the other flavors, so that’s what he’d eat.

  Then, before Cupcake fell asleep, they took advantage of daylight to refold and smooth their bedding, pile the wet or bloody clothes in one place, sort through what was left for suitable diaper or menstrual pad material and continue searching boxes for anything that might be the tiniest bit useful.

  “Hah!” Alec exclaimed when he unearthed a trunk of old quilts.

  Taking them out, one by one, Wren breathed, “Ooh, look at these. They’re handworked. This one is from the 1920s, I think. Look at these fabrics. And I’ll bet this one’s even older. Alec, the fabric is so fragile. I hate to use them.”

  “I don’t.” While she still kneeled in front of the trunk, he lifted out the entire pile and carried it to their pallet. “I don’t know about you, but my whole body hurts. That floor was hard.”

  She giggled a little at his indignation. “Didn’t you ever camp?”

  “You mean outside? Good God, no. I’m a city boy.”

  “You don’t look like a city boy,” she said thoughtfully.

  He glanced at himself. His jeans were faded and fit as if molded for him. They were also dirty, the denim stiff from wetting and drying—probably repeatedly. The equally well-worn red chamois shirt stretched across broad shoulders. It had a long tear above one cuff. He was walking around in saggy wool socks. His dark hair stuck out in every direction. The dark stubble on his cheeks was going to be a beard in another day or two.

  In fact, he’d confessed as he dug through boxes, that he was wishing
for a razor. Even an old-fashioned straight razor.

  “Dull would be okay,” he’d muttered.

  “Remember? No soap.”

  “I just want to scrape it off.” He cast a look of dislike toward the first-aid kit. “If the scissors would just open farther—”

  “I have that knife.”

  “Did you look at it? It’s worse than dull.”

  She shook her head, then smiled. “You look good in a beard.”

  He scowled. “I itch.”

  He found no razor. She’d noticed him scratching his cheeks and jaw unhappily every now and again.

  By the time his watch told them it was midday, he’d filled several jars with rainwater. Finally, he hung a white sheet out the window again as a signal, the way she had…was it only yesterday?

  While she nursed Cupcake again, Alec spread two of the three quilts atop their pallet.

  “So, I think it’s time I give Cupcake a real name. Before she starts kindergarten and the other kids make fun of her.”

  Alec grinned, as she’d expected he would. She loved his smiles, each and every one of them. The corners of those blue eyes crinkled, the creases in his lean cheeks deepened and the sense that smiles came rarely for him warmed something inside her.

  “Might be a plan.”

  Cupcake’s mouth slipped from her breast and Wren decided she had to change her diaper-slash-outfit. Alec saw what she was doing and picked out a man’s white T-shirt which he deftly ripped so that they could pass one fold between the baby’s legs and then tie it over her tummy. Wren had to laugh when she saw the final result. Cupcake gazed fuzzily at her as if bemused by the sound.

  “The latest in baby wear.”

  “Yeah. Maybe we should go into business.”

  “Well…we could advertise in survivalists’ magazines.”

  He gave a hearty laugh. “I could submit one of those housekeeping tips to them, too. Multiple uses for canning jars.”

  Wren laughed, too, feeling ridiculously happy. Hungry, yes, but still happy.

  “I want to name her after you.” Ignoring his stunned expression, she suggested, “Alexa? Only that’s not quite right. Alisha? Why didn’t you have one of those convenient names that’s easily convertible to a female version? Like Robert to Roberta, or…”

  “Edwin to Edwina? What a hideous thought.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Definitely not Edwina. That sounds like my grandmother or something.”

  “I had a Great-Aunt Edwina. Also a Great-Aunt Pearl.”

  “Did you.” Her forehead furrowed. “I don’t think I had any great-aunts at all. At least…I don’t know.”

  “No big extended family?”

  “I don’t actually know my father’s family,” she admitted. “I hardly remember him.”

  He stared at her, his eyes oddly intense. “Did you mind? I mean, when you were a kid? That he wasn’t there?”

  She gave an awkward shrug. “I imagined sometimes that he’d come storming back into my life.” Trying to keep her voice light, as though to say, how silly I was, she continued, “Furious at my mother for lying and telling him I’d died. Or moving and not telling him where she was going. Or something like that. And he’d snatch me away to be his little princess. I never bothered to give him a second wife or kids, because that would have made me the outsider. Naturally he had amazing parents. Cozy and loving.” Aware her attempt at a smile was a complete flop, she bent her head to gaze at Cupcake. “You know. Homemade chocolate-chip cookies. Piles and piles of Christmas presents. A room they kept just for me. I decided it would have a four-poster bed with a canopy. And lots of pink, of course.”

  “So it wasn’t him so much you missed as family.” Alec’s tone was odd.

  “Well, him, too. Because he was the important part, right?” She looked up to be sure he understood. “It might not have mattered so much if my mother had been, um, maternal. But she wasn’t especially. Although I admire her, now that I’m an adult.” She felt as if she had to say that. And it was true. “She’s a school administrator. I sometimes think it’s a little funny, because of course she started as a teacher. And, well…”

  “She isn’t maternal,” he said drily. “Which would suggest she isn’t crazy about kids.”

  He handed her another apple-and-cinnamon energy bar. Lunch. Oh, yum.

  “No.” Absentmindedly she tore open the wrapping. “But Mom actually taught high-school math, so it’s not like she started out as a first-grade teacher. And administration is what she always intended to do. Mom’s ambitious. She was a vice principal by the time I was old enough to know what she did. She was principal when I was a freshman at the high school, which really sucks, by the way, because everyone knew whose kid I was. Then she got promoted to assistant superintendent of the whole district, and just this year to superintendent. She talks about waiting three to five years and then applying for a superintendent position in a bigger school district. New fields to conquer, and all that.”

  He nodded as if he understood more than she’d actually said. So, okay, she was proud of her mother, but Wren couldn’t help also wishing… She ducked her head again to be sure he couldn’t see her face. Wishing for the impossible.

  She knew better.

  “Um, back to Cupcake. I thought of bird names. Since I’m Wren, I mean. These days it’s not so odd. People are naming their kids things like Sparrow or Hawk. But I’ve always hated my name. I’ve never met another Wren.”

  “There were plenty of Alecs.” He opened his own lunch. “I was Alec H. in fourth grade.” He frowned. “Sixth, too, I think. In fourth, though, there were three of us. Alec C., Alec M. and Alec H.”

  “Did anybody ever make fun of you for that?”

  Around a bite, he shook his head.

  “Then be glad you aren’t Hawk.” She sounded more tart than she’d intended, but to this day she always had to spell her name and explain it.

  “No Sparrow, then?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why don’t you pick something pretty?”

  She frowned. “I like the idea of naming her after you. Hmm. What’s your mother’s name?”

  “Past tense,” he said gruffly. “Mom died a few months ago. Her name was Marian. Actually, Abigail Marian Harper. When she was little, she was embarrassed by the Abigail. That was her grandmother’s name, so of course it was old-fashioned in her eyes. Later, she admitted she always thought it was pretty, but by then she was Marian to everyone.”

  “Abigail.” Wren’s smile dawned. “That was actually on my list.”

  “Really?” There was something defenseless in his eyes.

  “Really. I like it. Abigail Fraser.” Wren smiled. “Abigail Alexa Fraser. That’s a lovely name.”

  He groaned, but laughed, too. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that, but I’m honored.”

  “I’ll tell Abigail about you. The man who leaped for the windowsill, abandoning his boat and marooning himself with me so he could help her be born. She’ll know that’s part of her history. A special part.”

  “I’m going to blush,” he warned her, but a smile still played at the corners of his mouth.

  “I won’t be able to see it under…under…”

  He rubbed a hand over his jaw, using the opportunity to do a little scratching. “The shrubbery? Hell. What do you want to bet I have a rash by the time I shave?”

  “If that’s the worst that either of us suffers, we’ll be lucky.”

  His face went still. “We’ll be okay. Someone will come along.”

  “I know. Starving to death takes ages, and we have plenty of water now, don’t we?”

  “Yeah, I think we do.” He cast a glance of satisfaction at his row of jars, yawned, stretched and winced. “I’m hoping for a better night’s sleep tonight.”

  “I’ll find something else for a pillow.”

  His gaze returned to her face. “Cuddling keeps us warm.”

  She shouldn’t still be able to blush—after all
, the man had seen and groped every part of her body, hadn’t he? And heard her tinkling into a jar, for goodness’ sake. Her cheeks were heating anyway.

  “Do you think we could make a cap of some kind for Cupcake? No,” she corrected herself. “For Abigail…for Abby.”

  “Sure. That’s a good idea.”

  In the end, he cut a sleeve off an ancient thermal knit shirt, tied the top into something like a pom-pom with a bit of the twine he’d used for Abby’s cord and rolled the edges several times until it covered her to her eyebrows. Adjusting the fit, he said, “She has ears like yours.”

  Wren moaned. “You mean, they stick out.”

  “It’s cute.”

  “On her, maybe,” she muttered.

  “On you, too.” For a second, it seemed his eyes darkened, but he looked away.

  Was it even remotely possible that he…? No, of course not. Imagining this truly gorgeous, sexy man being attracted to her was akin to the stories she’d made up about her father, a man who in reality didn’t give a flying leap about the little girl he’d abandoned. Alec was only being nice, something he did very well.

  “She’s asleep,” he commented, voice soft, and Wren looked down. Abby’s eyes had closed and her sweetly shaped mouth had gone slack.

  “She does that a lot.”

  He watched as she snuggled the baby on her back and pulled the blankets to her chin. When he suggested she nap, too, Wren gave in to the seductive notion and slipped under the blankets, her body curled around Abby’s. Insisting he wasn’t cold, Alec folded his down vest several times and tucked it under her head for a pillow. He moved away, then, to stand looking out the window. Watching for rescue? she wondered fuzzily, and slept.

  Of course Cupcake—no, Abby now—inevitably got hungry. She’d slept for two hours, Alec told her, when Wren asked.

  “I don’t snore, do I?” She felt self-conscious at the idea of him watching her sleep, the way she had him.