An Unexpected Addition

by Terese Ramin

  “And what the hell did you mean, ‘right for whom?’” Hank’s voice rode over hers, completing his diverted thought. “For the love of Mike, right for the baby, of course, right for the kids, right for me, right for you—”

  “Right for the baby, the kids, for me and for you?” Interrupting her own tirade, Kate stalked the room, eying him as she might any other lunatic who confronted her. “That’s a pretty darned arrogant assumption, don’t you think? Who the dickens died and put you in charge of knowing what’s right for everybody, anyway? ‘Cause I don’t see six feet of dirt over my face and I am legally responsible for seven of the eight kids we’re talking about here, and that doesn’t include the one inside me—”

  “Which I put there,” Hank pointed out.

  “And very nicely, I might add,” Kate agreed, not missing a beat, “and that’s another thing—”

  On the other side of the office door the kitchen buzzed with whispers and silence.

  “D’you think she’ll marry him?” Li asked, stirring waffle batter for breakfast.

  Tai snorted. “Because she’s pregnant? Sister Kate? You’re joking, right?”

  Li shook her head wistfully. She might always have had the mother Megan envied, but Megan was the one with the dad. “I didn’t think so,” she said.

  “What is?” Hank asked, diverted by Kate’s and very nicely.

  Suddenly distracted, she paused, mouth open, and looked at him. “What is what?”

  “What is the other thing that is?”

  Was he laughing at her? Kate viewed him suspiciously. His eyes gleamed, more amber than mead, but his face was merely curious. “What other thing?”

  “That other thing?”

  “Hank.” Kate controlled her temper with effort. “If you don’t speak plainly I am going to rattle you senseless.”

  “You’ve already rattled me senseless by letting me wake up in your bed this morning and announcing you’re pregnant,” he pointed out. “I can’t imagine what more you plan to do.”

  Kate raised her brows and looked at him.

  He grinned, waved her away. “I know, I know, give you six seconds, you’ll think of something.”

  She snorted, and turned to shuffle something on her desk. “You’re cute, but I’m still not marrying you.”

  “Why not?” Hank caught her arm, pulled her around and forced her to look at him. “I want my child, Kate.”

  “I know you do, Hank.” She offered him a sad smile, touched his face. “I won’t keep the baby from you. We don’t have to marry, just so you can be its dad as well as its father.”

  “Damn it, Kate.” He slammed away from her in frustration. “I’m not going to do a weekend-hobby thing with another kid. It didn’t work for Megan and I was married to Gen. I also don’t want a six-months split. Or even joint custody. Joint custody doesn’t give me the first year of 2:00 a.m. feedings and silly baby or crabby baby and colic and teething. Even if Meg and I keep living in the cottage after the repairs are finished, I don’t get that because I’d be in a separate residence.” He tossed a hand in a gesture of helplessness. “I want to be here, Kate. Not just for the baby or for myself but for you, too. To take up the slack when you need to sleep. To be part of all of it. Your kids’ lives, the farm, all of it.”

  “You said it yourself, Hank.” It was her turn to pursue him, make him look at her. “You were married to Gen and it didn’t work for Megan because you were married to your job, too. I’m not going to be your wife so you can go back to deep cover knowing you’ve got a safe place to leave Meg.”

  “Go back?” He stared at her, appalled. “I’m not going back. I don’t want to go back, I want to go forward. You think me going back to undercover is what this is about? Job convenience? Adrenaline highs?” He ran a hand through his lengthening hair. “Damn, I don’t even want to go back to the office next week. I mean, hell, Kate, think about it—”

  “Can you hear anything?” Bele asked, ear smashed tight against the keyhole.

  Beside him, antenna ears angling for best advantage against the door, Mike shook his head. “Nope, nuthin’. We need Grisha’s stethoscope.”

  “Or a microphone to slide under the door,” Bele suggested.

  They eyed each other, consideringly.

  Li crossed the room to pull milk glasses out of the cupboard near them. Sun flashed in the glass and figurative light bulbs lit simultaneously over Bele and Mike’s heads. Glasses! They could use glasses to magnify the sound.

  Or they might have if Li hadn’t noticed them and said, “Get away from the door, you guys. If Ma wanted you to hear what they’re saying in there, she’d’ve invited us all to stay.”

  Rats. They looked at each other. So close and yet foiled again. Sighing they moved toward the mud room, feet dragging. But not for long.

  Mike brightened first. He grabbed Bele’s arm, dragged him out of the kitchen. “Window!” he whispered excitedly.

  His brother’s eyes lit. “It’s open,” he agreed.

  Casting a quick glance behind them to make sure their goody-two-shoes sister hadn’t overheard, they slipped out the mud-room door and dashed around the side of the house to stand underneath the office window.

  “Hell, Kate, think about it...” Hank laughed without humor. “If I wanted to go back undercover that badly I could have dumped Meg in foster care or on Gen’s sister a long time ago. Cripe, I probably could have found some woman willing to marry me and mother Meg for the price of an absentee husband and a signed-over paycheck, not to mention my insurance policy. So if that’s what you think, if that’s the holdup, just tell me what I gotta do to convince you I want to be here, nowhere else, and I’ll do it.”

  “You know there’s more to it, Hank.”

  “Then don’t dance with me, Kate, spell it out.”

  “There’s Megan, Hank, there’s love.”

  “Love.” Face carefully blank, he skipped the issue of his daughter as too much to deal with in a word and moved on to bolder things. “You need a word, you want a declaration?”

  “Don’t you?” she asked gently.

  He shook his head. “Words don’t cut it for me, Kate, they never have. I need pictures. It takes more to hold a family together than words.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Kate agreed. “But I thought you were talking marriage here, too, not just family. And that’s meant to last longer than the kids, so it’s got to start someplace besides great sex and an accidental baby.”

  “It’s more than sex, damn it—”

  She held up a hand to halt his automatic protest. “I’m glad.” She smiled briefly. “Very glad. But you have to remember, I don’t have a frame of reference for that the way you do, and marriage has never been on my agenda, not even once in my life, Hank. And now you want me to consider not only having...” she laughed, uncomfortable with the inadequate concept “...a boyfriend for the first time ever, but to think about two weddings, our baby, Bele’s adoption and what’s best for all the kids, all on the same day at the same moment.” She raised an open hand, let it drop closed at her side, asking for understanding. “I can’t. I shouldn’t. Neither should you. Not all at once. Geez Louise, I mean—” She shrugged, looked at him. “Don’t you at least want to get used to the concept first? Let the kids get used to it? Let Megan...I don’t know...I just can’t think it’s wise or even fair to...” She hesitated.

  “Dump a baby, a wife, seven siblings and a whole new lifestyle on her all at the same time?” Hank supplied bitterly.

  Kate nodded. “Yes,” she said softly.

  “She’s always wanted to be part of your family, Kate. She’s begged me for years to leave her here and go away. When she runs away from me, I’ve always known where to find her. She’s always here.”

  “She’s run here because it’s safe and to get your attention.” She hated pointing it out, reminding him. “She’s run here because—” she snapped her fingers “—my doors are open and it only takes me that long to decide to take on a
kid. But since you and I started...dating...she’s run from here, too.”

  The pain was deep, an ache with a sting beneath it. “She always comes back.”

  “So far,” Kate agreed. “But who’s to say what she’d do or where she’d go if she couldn’t get your attention because you were too busy giving it to me or the baby or one of the other kids. She used to tell Li how much she hated you for the way you’d come home from work and she felt like she’d stop having a mother because Gen paid all her attention to you.”

  “Yeah,” Hank said tightly, “and I used to get it from Gen for how much time I spent paying attention to Megan. God.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, smeared unexpected emotion away. “I didn’t even know I remembered that.”

  He hunched his shoulders, turned to look out the window. “I used to feel like a toy they fought over, like it wasn’t up to me how to divide my attention, but them. It didn’t happen all the time, just sometimes, family junk, you know? Like I’d walk into some battle I didn’t know they were having because I was out of the loop so much. Meg’d tell me one thing, Gen’d tell me another. She was my wife—who was I supposed to believe? That’s why I want to be here for this one, because I don’t want to be out of the loop again.”

  “I’m not arguing that, Hank. I only want to do what’s best for the kids. And I don’t know how best for any of them it’d be to bring Megan, you, a baby and an uncertain marriage into their lives full-time all at once. I mean, Li’s already started covering up something for Meg, I can feel it. She’s never done that before. The way Megan behaves affects them, affects you and me—and all she has to do is walk into a room. If she’s happy, great. If she’s in a mood...” She grimaced, let Hank draw his own conclusions.

  “There’s a lot of lives we’ve got to consider here, Hank, and if you and I can’t start out—” She grinned lopsidedly, using Mike’s phrase. “If we can’t start out on the same page, where’re we going to end up? I mean, I didn’t go into being a nun to quit, or because I thought I was making a mistake, I thought I was pursuing my life’s vocation. I was wrong. Being a mom, that’s right. Being a wife...I don’t know if I could do that, Hank. And marrying for the sake of convenience... What would that say to the kids? Life’s a throwaway as long as it’s convenient? That’s not fair to any of us, and how good is it going to be for Meg, when we’re not even sure about it?”

  “I’m sure,” Hank said quietly. “I lie awake nights thinking how sure I am. I want you in my bed, in my life, in Meg’s life. I want to be in yours and the baby’s and your kids’. I never make promises lightly. I will be here because absentee parenting is a crock.”

  Bele looked at Mike. “A father,” he breathed.

  “He could really be our dad.” Mike fairly trembled with excitement. “And he wants to!”

  “An’ if they got married today,” Bele suggested, “he could ’dopt me ’fficially with Ma next Tuesday. Then I’d be a Mathison like Meg and the baby, not an Anden.”

  “No,” Mike objected. “You can’t be a Mathison if I’m an Anden, then we wouldn’t be brothers.”

  “Yes we would, you dork.” Bele punched him. “Cuz we’d make him ’dopt you, too, as part of the deal.”

  “Ooh,” Mike said, drawing it out clownishly, making a show of light dawning. He pursed his lips. “What about Li?”

  “I dunno.” Bele shrugged. “Maybe we should ask her.”

  They dashed back around the house in pursuit of Li and the dream they’d just begun to have.

  “But again you’re talking about parenting, Hank,” Kate said flatly. “Not marriage.”

  “Damn it, Kate.” Tired of arguing, Hank swiped a hand across his face and through his hair. “Parenting is what this is about right now.”

  “Like hell it is,” Kate shot back. “Be honest. Is that what you’re going to tell Meg? Tell her it’s okay to walk into marriage, whether you love someone or not, because there’s a baby on the way? Then will you also tell her why Gen really died?”

  He regarded her mutely, an answer without voice. “What’s Gen got to do with this?”

  “Maybe a lot. Did you see Meg’s face when I told everybody about the baby? You have to tell her, Hank. It might not make—”

  “Tell her what, Kate? That the mother she idolized wanted another child so badly she lied to me about how it would affect her, then told me not to worry about it she was on the pill, anyway, then she went ahead and let me get her pregnant? That I trusted Gen, but she was so stubborn and so selfish that the only thing she could see or hear was what she wanted, and that she didn’t think twice about what she might do to Megan or me? I can’t trash her mother’s memory. Even if I wanted to, why would she believe me now?”

  “She needs to know so she can make her own decisions about it, Hank. Whether she believes you at first or not, you have to treat her like a grown-up and tell her, now that she’s old enough to understand it. She needs to know you got hurt, too, and she needs to mourn the real reasons her mother died so maybe she can move forward to something new. She needs to learn to trust you and herself, but mostly she needs to see you trust her emotionally with a truth you’ve hogged to yourself since you found out Gen was pregnant.”

  He studied her, torn between humorless laughter and disbelief. God, what pap. How had she ever survived the life she’d led, being so naive? The way he’d been raised, a man did not dump his personal pain, his marital problems on his child, no matter what the provocation. He didn’t ask his child to shore him up, when what he was supposed to be doing was taking care of her.

  Ruthlessly he ignored the little voice inside his head reminding him that not so long ago, the staff psychologist had told him much the same thing. Of course, five years ago, she’d told him the opposite. But that was then. Five years, for him, in terms of growth and maturation was very little time. Five years for Megan had taken her from childhood to adolescence to being a sometimes mature, sometimes immature, young adult. Kate and the psychologist were probably right about what he should tell her. Trouble was the how and when.

  God, it was hard trying to grow up with your children. Trying to know when to treat them like adults and how to do it...

  “Life’s not as simple as telling anybody anything, if they can’t or don’t want to see it for themselves, Kate.”

  “Maybe not,” Kate agreed softly. “But people—especially kids—need to be told things anyway and—”

  Tai stepped into the kitchen wiping his hands on a towel from the mud room, where he’d washed up after turning the llamas into their fields for the day. “They still at it?”

  Li placed a pitcher of juice on the table. “You mean you weren’t outside listening under the window like Bele and Mike?”

  “Fat chance,” Tai returned. “I’m older’n that.” He waited half a beat, then couldn’t help himself. “They hear anything interesting?”

  Li grinned. “I thought you were too old.”

  “Spill it, small fry, or I’ll give you a noogie.”

  “Real mature, Tai. Carly’s going to many you?”

  He made a gesture of mock threat.

  She laughed. “Okay. All they heard was Hank say he wants to be out here with all of us, which they translated to mean him adopting them and being their dad, too.”

  Tai’s brows raised. “Wow. I never thought of that.”

  “Me neither. I’m still trying to get used to her actually dating. You think Hank has? Or Megan?”

  “You got me.” Tai shrugged. “But you can bet Ma’s thought of it. Talk about your blended families.”

  They were silent a moment. Then Li said cautiously, “I wouldn’t mind if he wanted to adopt us. He’s not at all like Meg said. I think he’d be a good dad.”

  “Yeah.” Tai nodded. “But it’s not up to us.” He shook away his own vague wistfulness. “Anyway, speaking of dads, you seen Meg? I need her to help me with Harvey. He looks a little lame this morning.”

  “No, and she was sup
posed to help me with breakfast.”

  They looked at each other. This wasn’t the first time in the past several weeks that Megan hadn’t been where she’d told them she’d be.

  “You think we should worry?” Li asked.

  Tai puffed up his cheeks, blew out a shrugging breath. “Got me. You know her better than I do. Maybe she’s just off someplace trying to...I don’t know, put it all together or something. It’s sorta a lot to take in at once.”

  “I dunno,” Li said doubtfully. “She usually takes Harvey for a walk when she’s tryin’ to figure something out.”

  “Maybe she’s helping Ilya and Jamal in the woodshop?”

  “You didn’t look?”

  “Why would I do that?” Tai asked, and went, chuckling, when Li picked a spoon off the table and threw it at him.

  “Turkey,” she muttered, disgusted. Then she ran to the door to yell after her brother. “Tell ’em all to come in. Breakfast’s ready.”

  Hank cut off Kate’s lecture on the merits of people telling other people things. “Why did you invite me into your bed last night?” Speaking of things people—he, personally—wanted to be told...

  Caught off guard, she had the grace to blush and look guiltily away. “I wanted to know what it felt like to sleep next to you all night.”

  His grin was almost smug, torn out of him in spite of his best efforts to contain it. “We could sleep together every night, if we were married.”

  She wanted to smack him. She settled instead for pointing out the norm. “We sleep together a good part of almost every night even though we’re not.”

  His grin slipped. “You mean it’s okay to sleep with me, but not marry me? You used to be a nun.”