Maybe she’d wet herself, but Jamie wasn’t going to change her diaper in the middle of the bustling squad room. Either she was going to have to learn to time her bladder functions better or she was going to have to live with a damp di-dee for a few more minutes.
He rummaged in his knapsack for the three different pacifiers he’d brought and attempted to stuff them into her mouth. She didn’t shut up until she’d gotten her thumb and forefinger wedged between her lips.
Sighing again, this time from exhaustion, he straightened up to find Detective Russo watching him intently, almost sympathetically. “You’ve got a kid, too,” Jamie said, gesturing toward the photograph on the desk.
Russo’s gaze flickered toward the photo and he nodded. “Yeah.”
“So you must have survived the horror of the first year, huh?”
Russo studied his son’s picture for a moment longer, then snorted. “The first year isn’t as bad as the second,” he observed.
Great. Something to look forward to. “I think the reason I didn’t report her to the police right away,” Jamie confessed, “was—I don’t know, call it hubris. I thought I could handle everything. I thought, hey, what’s the big deal? I know how to change the oil in my car. I know how to repair a leaky faucet. I can handle a baby. Piece of cake, you know?”
“And then you discovered it wasn’t so easy,” Russo guessed.
“It’s a bitch,” Jamie concurred. “I’m taking this class in fathering skills, but the nurse who teaches it told me I had to talk to you guys about the manner in which I gained custody of Samantha. So, here I am. Allison had better appreciate it.”
“Allison?”
“The nurse who teaches the class. Allison Winslow. She works in the maternity department at Arlington Memorial, and on the side she runs this program she calls the Daddy School to teach jerks like me how to deal with babies.”
Russo jotted Allison’s name onto a scrap of paper. Then he returned his attention to the triplicate form scrolled into his typewriter. “Tell me some more about the mother of this baby.”
“I can tell you what she told me about herself,” Jamie offered. “But I don’t know how much of it is true.” He recited Luanne’s full name, the phony number she’d given him and a general description of her. Specifics eluded him. She had long ago become blurred in his memory, a sexy, attractive woman who had deceived him for no good reason. Had her hair been ash-blond or strawberry blond? In the age of Clairol and L’Oréal, did it really matter? Given the way she’d dropped off her baby and vanished, she might be a brunette named Katrinka Jones by now.
“Do you have any idea why she might want to avoid you?” Russo asked.
Jamie scowled. He didn’t like the way Russo’s left eyebrow rose, the way his smile quirked with irony. Was he implying that Jamie was less than wonderful, that after spending a week in his bed a woman would be inclined to enter the witness protection program? “I swear to God, what happened in Eleuthera was mutually pleasant,” he said. “The only thing we argued about was politics. She’s a militant capitalist. I’m a seat-of-the-pants anarchist. That was all theoretical, though. When we weren’t debating philosophically, we were getting along all right.”
“Obviously.” Russo eyed Samantha, who had started to snore. “Are you sure the baby is yours?”
Jamie swore softly. He didn’t like Russo sowing seeds of doubt so soon after Allison had asked the same question. He didn’t like the vague temptation that doubt posed for him. If he underwent testing and learned that Samantha wasn’t his, he would be done with the police, with Luanne and with the baby. He would be able to return to his carefree life, his columns, his ragtop Miata and his eight hours of beauty rest every night.
And what would happen to Samantha? She would get shuffled around by the bureaucracy. She would wind up being monitored by underpaid social workers and cared for by someone who didn’t give a damn whether or not her stroller was the best money could buy.
He wouldn’t wish such a fate on any child, let alone his daughter. If she was his daughter.
“Yes,” he heard himself say. “She’s mine.”
Russo perused him thoughtfully, then broke away and began to type. Jamie sat in his chair, idly pushing the stroller back and forth in a lulling rhythm. Why was he so determined not to find out whether Samantha was his? Granted, ignorance had its advantages, but in this case he couldn’t figure out what they might be.
The typewriter clicked and clattered. In the distance a phone rang. Two uniformed officers laughed over a joke. Russo kept typing, slow but steady—the same tranquil tempo Jamie used to rock the stroller.
He glanced at the framed photo on Russo’s desk. The boy looked a lot like his dad: dark eyes, dark hair, a solemn, angular face. What would Samantha look like in a year, or two, or ten? If Jamie gave her up, he would never know.
“Okay,” Russo said, lifting his hands from the keys. “You can go now.”
“What’s going to happen next?”
“We’ll run Luanne Hackett’s name through the computer and see what comes up. Maybe it’s an alias. Maybe we’ll get a social security number on her. Maybe she has a pattern of giving birth to babies and abandoning them on people’s porches.”
The notion jolted Jamie. That Samantha could have half siblings was simply too weird. It didn’t seem to matter that the little girl was destroying his life. He felt protective of her. He didn’t want her to end up like Luanne’s other abandoned babies.
“So…meanwhile, I’m just supposed to go home?”
“I’ll be in touch,” Russo said.
Jamie stood slowly, giving Russo a chance to tell him something more. Surely Russo ought to be bristling with energy and theories, listing the steps he would take, putting together a task force to track Samantha’s mother down. Surely he should be calling a special meeting of the entire Arlington police force, introducing Jamie and Samantha and explaining why it was essential that the department use every resource at its command to find the heinous woman who’d abandoned Samantha, to bring her to justice.
But Russo only stood when Jamie did and shook his hand. “Good luck with the baby,” he said. “Maybe you can write about her in your column.”
“I can’t use her in my column,” Jamie argued. “She isn’t funny enough.”
Russo grinned. “That could change. I’ll be in touch,” he repeated, then pulled his report from the roller of his typewriter and walked away.
Great. Detective John Russo would be in touch. What was Jamie supposed to do while he was waiting?
Take her home. Feed her. Change her diaper. Burp her. Bathe her. Feed her again.
Talk to her. Make eye contact. Hold her. Be a daddy.
If only he knew how.
He could learn if he had to—and he did have to. Allison could teach him. He was already an expert on subjects he never would have imagined. He knew what no-tears shampoo was. He knew the pros and cons of Wet Wipes. He knew that a father could either save to send his child to college or he could buy a Danish stroller, but unless he was Bill Gates, he probably couldn’t afford to do both.
But if Jamie knew so much, how come he still felt like an ignoramus? The next Daddy School class didn’t meet until Monday. He didn’t think he could wait that long.
He hoped Allison wouldn’t mind if he dropped by the hospital for a quick tutorial, just to get him through the next few days. She was a nurse; it was her profession to help parents and their babies. Surely she would allow him a bit of remedial instruction—for Samantha’s sake.
“THE MOST IMPORTANT thing,” Allison lectured the five new mothers in the nursery, “is never to let go of your baby. Babies squirm, and just like the highway, they’re slippery when wet. Always keep a firm hold on them.”
She was teaching the techniques of bathing a newborn to the women. They were a typical group—bleary-eyed, bulky in their loose-fitting hospital gowns and bathrobes, their smiles giddy and anxious and brimming with love. As Allison demonstrated
on one woman’s baby, the other four stood beside their babies’ isolettes, absorbing her every word.
“Always dry the baby off gently but quickly,” she continued, swaddling her victim with a soft towel as she spoke. “Remember, their bodies’ thermostats aren’t fine-tuned yet. They get cold very easily. They’re so used to being nice and warm inside your bodies.”
The women nodded, looking awed by Allison’s deftness with the fussing infant. Within a minute she had him diapered and snapped into pj’s. She ran a comb through his sparse black hair, arranging it stylishly, then passed him to his mother. The women in the room applauded.
So, Allison realized, did the man in the doorway.
What was Jamie doing on the maternity floor of Arlington Memorial Hospital? Who had allowed him upstairs? Why was he watching her give Marilyn Glatz’s baby a bath?
And why on earth did her heart do a silly little dance at the sight of him?
He wasn’t the best-looking man she’d ever met. It was just those uncanny green-gray-gold eyes, and his adorable smile, half arrogant, half helpless, and his athlete’s body. It was just that Allison was worried about his little girl.
Right now the little girl seemed quite content in a luxurious stroller. Evidently Jamie had done some shopping since he and Allison had shared an evening of burgers and talk after class on Monday. Maybe he’d stopped by to show his teacher what a diligent student he was.
“We’re doing baths now,” she told him.
“I can wait,” he said, gesturing toward the corridor. He waved, then steered around and out the door.
The mothers in the nursery paid him little attention. They were too eager to try out the skills Allison had taught them. One by one, she led them to the plastic basin, had them fill it with tepid water and talked them through a bath. “Watch the umbilicus,” she warned one. “You don’t want to rub there. The dead skin has to fall off on its own. If you tear it, it will take longer to heal….” The words flowed naturally from her, as if she had nothing on her mind except belly buttons.
But Jamie occupied a solid spot in her brain, just as he had ever since he’d entered the room at the YMCA ten minutes late for class Monday evening. Not once in the past few days had she ever completely erased him from her thoughts. At odd moments, she found herself worrying about the legalities of his situation, about the imposition his baby must place on him. She was concerned with his attitude, his unreasonable confidence and his genuine fear. She was troubled by the understanding that nine months ago he’d been with a woman whose behavior left a lot to be desired, and that said something about Jamie’s lack of judgment.
Surrounded by spotless chrome, sterile towels, antiseptic soap and stacks of diapers in the nursery, she was still worrying about him.
She had more important things to focus on. Just that morning, Margaret had told her that her pilot Daddy School program, while an excellent idea, was a one-shot deal. The hospital didn’t plan to fund a second class. If Allison wanted to continue teaching new fathers, she would have to find the funding elsewhere. If she didn’t, struggling new fathers like Jamie would be left to fumble along without guidance.
She observed as the final mother took her turn at the plastic basin. None of the women was as adept as she was, but she assured them all that in time they would be varsity bath-givers. “It’s just a matter of practice,” she said. “Don’t be afraid. Stay calm, stay alert and you’ll do fine.”
She shooed them out of the nursery, sending them pushing their babies’ isolettes down the hall to their rooms. Then she dried her hands, moisturized them with lotion and collected the damp towels for the hospital laundry. When the room was tidy, she left in search of Jamie.
He was seated in one of the small lounges near the nursing station looking uncomfortable. His daughter was tucked into his arms, and he was peering into her face, but he wasn’t smiling as she flailed at him, reaching for his nose.
“Let her touch you,” Allison urged.
He flinched and glanced up. “She’s going to stick her fingers up my nostrils.”
“She’s trying to touch what she sees. That’s great. It means she’s experimenting with eye-hand coordination. Go ahead, get closer to her. She won’t stick her fingers up your nostrils.”
“Promise?” he asked dubiously.
Allison smiled.
Jamie bowed his head toward the baby. She smacked her little palm against the tip of his nose. “Ouch!” he grunted. She whimpered.
“Great moments in child rearing,” Allison teased, approaching the sofa where he sat. Before she took a seat, she circled the expensive-looking stroller. “Nice wheels,” she commented.
“It cost more than my car.”
“I don’t doubt it.” She lowered herself onto the sofa and scrutinized him. His eyes were circled with shadows and his hair was mussed, but all in all he didn’t look too terrible:
Then again, Jamie McCoy probably couldn’t look terrible even if he tried.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just…I wanted to see you.” He leaned back as Samantha reached for his nose again. Her movements distracted him, denying him the chance to elaborate on his statement His words hung in the air, implying a significance he couldn’t possibly have intended.
Why did he want to see her? It couldn’t be her he wanted to see. It had to be her expertise he had come for—advice, emotional support. She herself meant nothing to him.
“I went to the police,” he told her. “I did what you said. I reported the whole thing. I…” He let out a long breath, then caught his baby’s fidgeting hand with his thumb. The baby curled her fingers tightly around him and gave a little frog kick with her legs. “I don’t know how to do any of this, Allison. I’m trying, but I feel way out of my depth.”
“That’s perfectly normal,” she assured him, curiously touched by his earnest desire to do things right. “Most new parents feel the same way.”
“You’re so good at it,” he complained with a smile.
“I’m a professional.”
“Are you busy tonight?”
She blinked. Once again, his words must have conveyed more than he meant “Busy? Meaning…?”
“Meaning,” he said, gazing directly into her eyes, “I want to take you out”
CHAPTER FIVE
“SO, I AGREED to have dinner with him on Saturday,” Allison said, tearing spinach greens into a salad bowl with near violence. “And I think it’s a terrible mistake.”
“Going out with him on Saturday is not a terrible mistake,” Molly assured her. “If you’d agreed to go out with him tonight, it would have been a mistake. By putting him off till Saturday, you not only make him wait—you know, increase the anticipation and all that—but a Saturday date is more…I don’t know. More meaningful? More romantic? More—”
“Expensive, probably,” Allison muttered. She looked at the result of her destructive impulses—mangled shreds of green heaped high in the bowl—and sighed. “I don’t know why I told him yes. It’s been eons since I’ve gone out with someone new.”
“Obviously. If you went out more often, you wouldn’t be so tense about it now. Grammy? Come in here and tell Allison she did the right thing when she agreed to go out with that guy on Saturday night.”
“Wait, Grammy—let me help you,” Allison called over her shoulder. She dried her hands on a dish towel and moved to the arched doorway connecting the kitchen to the living room.
Her grandmother was moving more slowly these days. Allison had taken her to see an orthopedist, who’d insisted that knee-replacement surgery would do wonders for her, but Grammy had argued that a knee replacement would last only twenty years. “I’m seventy-seven,” she argued. “They do the replacement now, and what’s going to happen when I’m ninety-seven? Do you think I’m going to want to go through surgery again at that age?”
Grammy was stubborn, but Allison adored her. So did Molly, who wasn’t even relate
d to her. Molly Saunders and Allison were such close friends, Grammy treated Molly like just another member of the family. She and Allison had met in kindergarten twenty-three years ago, and the chemistry between them had been right, even though Allison was lanky and quiet while Molly was bouncy and bubbly. Allison had admired Molly’s garrulous personality; Molly had considered Allison brainy and classy. Their differences complemented each other, and for Allison—who’d had no siblings—Molly was almost a sister, someone with whom she could try out ideas, shop, share secrets and dreams.
In high school they’d been nicknamed the “Allie and Molly Show,” and even when they’d headed off to different colleges—Allison to the University of Connecticut and Molly to Simmons College in Boston, they’d remained in constant touch, visiting each other at school and seeing each other when they returned to Arlington for the holidays. Over the years, Molly had spent countless afternoons in the Winslow home, where Allison’s grandmother had run the household while Allison’s mother had been at work.
Like Allison, her mother and her grandmother had both been nurses at Arlington Memorial. Grammy had been widowed before Allison was born, and Allison’s mother had gotten a divorce when Allison was too young to remember much about it. Her father had made the mistake of hitting her mother once, and that had been enough to win him permanent exile from the family. Allison’s mother had reclaimed her maiden name—Winslow—and changed Allison’s name to Winslow, too.
Allison’s mother remarried when Allison was in her teens, and five years ago her stepfather had been transferred to North Carolina. Allison’s mother had offered to take Grammy with them, but Grammy wouldn’t hear of it. Arlington was her home, and just because she had arthritis and couldn’t get around so fast didn’t mean she was the least bit inclined to move to some godforsaken place called the Research Triangle—which she insisted on calling the Bermuda Triangle. Grammy would stay right where she was, thank you. If Allison wanted to stay, fine. If she wanted to move on, that would also be fine. Grammy didn’t need anyone taking care of her. She could manage on her own as long as she didn’t have to climb stairs.
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