Right by Her Side

by Christie Ridgway

  When he hung up, the hands of the clock on the waiting room wall had slowed to a snail’s pace. So he called his brother Danny.

  “Just checking in,” he said when he heard his brother’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “You okay?” Danny asked.

  “Of course. Are you?”

  A sigh sounded. “Trent, I just hung up with Katie. I know how things are.”

  “Then you know that I can handle them.” Though he was glad to hear his brother’s voice, it was Trent who had always looked after Danny, too. When he’d been miserable at the military school their parents had sent him to, it was Trent who had insisted their father remove him. When Danny had fallen into the gutter of drugs and alcohol, it was Trent who had pulled him out and brought him back to life and back into the family business.

  “You can handle anything,” Danny agreed.

  Certain the assertion would settle him down, Trent ended the call. The chairs were hellishly uncomfortable, so he remained standing. His legs had the jitters so he paced. He tried reading an old issue of Business-Week, but even an article he’d missed on the CEOs to watch in the twenty-first century—he was mentioned—couldn’t keep his interest.

  He went to the phone again. This time when he heard his brother’s hello, the facade he’d been keeping, for maybe as long as forever, cracked. “I have a problem,” he heard himself say.

  “Who is this?” Danny replied.

  “Your brother, for God’s sake. I have a problem and I don’t know what to do next.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

  “Danny, are you there?”

  “Sorry, first I was pinching myself and then I was considering exactly how to determine if hell has truly frozen over.”

  “Very funny.”

  The humor in Danny’s voice dried up. “I know it’s not, Trent. It’s just that you’ve been wearing your superhero cape for so long that it’s strange to see you without it.”

  “Superhero. Give me a break.”

  “We never did, did we?” Danny countered. “Not Mom, not me, not our sisters, not Dad when he handed all the headaches over to you, whether it was the responsibility for your siblings or the responsibility for Crosby Systems.”

  Trent frowned. “I’m damn good with all that.”

  “Yeah. So what aren’t you good at?”

  “Rebecca.” That word spilled from his mouth, and then more. “Maybe I made a mistake with Rebecca.”

  “First a problem, and now you’re admitting to making a mistake?” Danny laughed. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I said maybe. And why the hell are you laughing harder now? For the first time in our lives I’m calling you for help and you’re amused.” He took a breath. “I’m afraid, Danny. I’m afraid I’ll lose Rebecca.”

  “Hell, Trent.” Danny’s voice turned gruff with the emotion of having lost both son and wife himself. “She’s in good hands at Portland General, right?”

  Trent closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly. “I think she’ll be fine physically. But I’m scared that after this she’ll leave me.”

  It was out. And the fear wasn’t any prettier or easier under the harsh fluorescent lights.

  “Don’t let her,” Danny said hoarsely. “Hang on tight. Hit her with whatever you can to keep her beside you. Never give up.”

  Trent rocked back on his heels. “Crosbys never give up.”

  “No, they don’t.” And the certainty in his brother’s voice told Trent that he was thinking of Noah, who’d been gone for four long years but who lived every day in his brother’s heart. Then Danny gave one last piece of advice. “Call Katie. Tell her everything you’ve told me.”

  Trent surprised himself by doing that very thing. And then, in the blink of an eye, it seemed, he was bemused to find her at his side, plying him with coffee and a sandwich. Rubbing a hand over his face, he tried to figure out if Katie was really there in the waiting room or if he’d dreamed her up.

  “What are you doing here?” he said. The coffee felt hot. The sandwich was pastrami, his favorite.

  “Taking care of you, for once.”

  “Oh-kay.”

  “And dispensing my best piece of advice in person.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “What’s that?”

  “If you want to keep Rebecca in your life, Trent, you’ve got to tell her the truth. You’ve got to take that big risk, big brother, and tell her you’re in love with her.”

  He pretended the idea didn’t plunge an icy, sharp claw through all that convenient numbness he’d been experiencing. “How do you know I haven’t?”

  His little sister snorted. “There’s a stupid question. I know because, Trent, I know you.”

  Thirteen

  Lying on her side on a bed, Rebecca awoke, but kept her eyes shut. It was night. Not that she could see through her eyelids. But she could feel it. She could hear it in the hush of the hallway outside the door of her hospital room.

  Hospitals were busy places that muffled the noise of their bustle as well as they could in the evening hours, but it was a muffle that Rebecca knew well. Staying overnight hadn’t been necessary, of course. But her friends on the hospital staff had insisted, and she’d been so preoccupied with other thoughts that she’d agreed without protest.

  She’d miscarried the baby.

  Thinking it yet again, her legs automatically drew up toward her chest, as if to protect the life growing inside her. But it was too late.

  “Rebecca?” a female voice said softly. “Are you awake?”

  A nurse coming in to take her blood pressure or her temperature, she thought. She let her eyes drift open.

  Instead of a co-worker, it was Katie Logan who had spoken from one of two chairs pulled up near the bed. Beside her sat Trent.

  “Yes, I’m awake,” Rebecca said, speaking to them both. Trent was wearing the same clothes he’d been in when he’d taken her to the doctor’s office—slacks, a dress shirt, no tie, a sports jacket. There was the slightest hint of whiskers along his chin, but other than that he appeared impeccable, as always. “What time is it?”

  His gaze not leaving her face, he shrugged.

  Katie turned her wrist to check her watch. “Nearing eleven. I should get going, but I wanted to talk to you before I left.”

  Rebecca blinked. “Did you need something?”

  Katie shook her head. “No, no. I only wanted to tell you how sorry both Peter and I are and to ask if you needed something.” Tears sprang into her eyes and she shot Trent a guilty glance. “I’m not getting weepy. He hates weepy.”

  “I don’t need anything, Katie.” Except my baby back. “But thank you very much for asking.”

  The other woman reached over to pat Rebecca’s hand. “I—” She broke off with an audible sniff.

  “Say goodbye, Katie,” Trent put in, his voice calm but implacable. “We don’t want to have to call in flood control.”

  His sister made a face. “Goodbye, Katie,” she parroted. Then she leaned over to kiss Rebecca’s cheek. “Goodbye, Rebecca.”

  The other woman’s belly looked round and healthy and beautiful. Rebecca couldn’t take her eyes off it, and wondered if the signs of someone else’s pregnancy would always stab her in the heart. But she managed a smile. “Goodbye, Katie. And thank you again.”

  That left her alone with Trent. She took in a long breath, then let it go. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”

  “Where did you expect me to be?” Leaning forward, he propped his elbows on his knees and rested his linked hands on the mattress.

  She shrugged, her gaze fixed on his fingers. They were long, slightly tanned. There were calluses on their undersides from the grip of his racquetball racket, she knew. They added a masculine roughness to even the most gentle caress. His nails were clipped close, and for the first time she noticed that the knuckles of his right hand were scarred.

  With the tip of her forefinger, Rebecca touched one. “How
did you get these scars?”

  He didn’t bother looking at them. “Punched a wall.”

  Her gaze flew to his face. “You?” Punching walls seemed a bit hotheaded for Trent Crosby, Mr. In Control, the invulnerable businessman.

  “It was after Danny’s wife died.”

  The words were said with dispassion. But how he’d behaved after his sister-in-law’s suicide—Rebecca remembered that—suggested that Trent had been filled with fierce emotion. That Trent could feel fierce emotion was something she’d never seen from him, though. “That must have been a difficult time.”

  “Yeah.” He straightened in the chair. “But enough about that. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  He cocked a brow.

  “Tired. But nothing hurts, if that’s what you mean.”

  His mouth opened as if he was about to say something, then it closed. With an odd little movement, he gestured toward the wheeled table beside the bed. “People have brought things.”

  “Oh.” She leaned up on an elbow and pulled the table closer. There was an immense bouquet from the OR and some smaller arrangements from Rebecca’s closer friends on the staff. “I suppose the news about the miscarriage is all over the hospital by now.”

  “Yes.”

  The way he said the word had her staring at him again. She caught a new expression on his face—actually his first expression. Ever since she’d told him about the miscarriage that morning he’d been so noncommittal. Good Lord, had it only been that morning? It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Eisenhower’s lifetime.

  Her heart squeezed, raining sadness like a squeezed sponge. Rebecca dropped back against the pillows, her head clogging with tears.

  He hates weepy, Katie had said.

  Rebecca closed her eyes so Trent wouldn’t know how close to weepy she was.

  He cleared his throat. “I brought you some things, too. Nightgowns and such. Katie put them in the little closet over there. But the orchid plant is from me and the silver balloon and the chocolate golf ball.”

  A chocolate golf ball? She opened her eyes and looked at Trent again, surprised once more by that funny expression on his face. It was as if he was awkward or uncertain or…

  Sad.

  She hadn’t been thinking that losing the baby was his loss as well. But he’d been so stoic through the whole thing, since last night when she’d called his name in such a panic at the dance, that she hadn’t thought about what he might be feeling.

  What was he feeling?

  As if to avoid her gaze, he started fiddling with the controls that powered the wall-mounted television and the bed.

  Maybe they should share their thoughts with each other. Maybe that would make them both feel better. Maybe that would make her not feel so alone.

  The television suddenly clicked on. Both she and Trent turned to it automatically. “In local developments,” the newscaster said. “Everett Baker, held without bail on charges that range from burglary to kidnapping in relation to the Sanders case and others, fired his public defender today. He’s pleading guilty to all counts.”

  Everett Baker. All counts.

  A chill walked down her spine.

  Rebecca had rarely thought of Everett Baker since that night that she and Trent had eaten dinner at Katie and Peter’s. That night when Trent had whispered to her, Let’s make a baby. She’d let herself believe that night they had.

  But now she remembered. Now she had to face the truth, didn’t she? She had been pregnant with Trent’s baby because of a malicious prank. Trent hadn’t wanted a child, he hadn’t wanted Rebecca.

  They’d both been foisted on him, thrust into his life.

  The emotion she’d just glimpsed on his face was probably relief. He didn’t have to be saddled with navy-brat Nurse Rebecca any longer. Tears of self-pity stung the corners of her eyes again.

  He would have made a fine father. She knew that. But the fact was, there was no baby any longer.

  And no reason for Trent to be married to her.

  Everett Baker had slept well the night before. Slept well for the first time in months. Maybe years.

  Maybe since he was six years old.

  When the guard delivered his breakfast, he thanked the man and then he asked him to pass along his request to those detectives working his case. “Tell them I want to talk. Tell them I have even more they need to know.”

  As he’d suspected, it didn’t take long for the guards to move him into an interview room. It wasn’t dingy like the ones they showed on his favorite TV show, both in prime time and reruns—Law & Order. It was freshly painted; the plastic table’s top had a woodgrain finish. The chairs were cushioned. The detectives weren’t anything like Lenny or Ray or the LT on Law & Order, either. They didn’t exchange any fast-paced dialogue, and there weren’t any witty one-liners.

  In the past weeks, Everett had learned that being held for his crimes was nothing like watching an episode from the show, either. Of course, committing the crimes themselves was nothing like TV had prepared him for, though sometimes he had pictured himself as a character in a story while carrying them out. It made it easier to think of it as someone else breaking the laws.

  Not Everett Baker.

  Which made sense, when he thought about it. He looked up as two men settled into chairs across the table from him.

  One was Detective Abe Levine, from the Portland Police Department, the man he’d called when he’d decided to turn himself in. The detective was average height, stocky, with salt-and-pepper hair. His nose looked as broken-in as his rumpled suit. The other man with him was FBI Agent Drew Delane. He had sharp features, a sharply pressed black suit, a sharp way of speaking.

  Everett clasped his hands on the table in front of him and decided to get it out as quickly as he could. “Everett Baker isn’t my real name.”

  The two men glanced at each other. “What?” Detective Levine said. “We ran a check on you, Everett. You have a social security number, a driver’s license. There are high-school and college transcripts, your transcripts. I saw the attached photos myself.”

  “I know.” Everett nodded. “Let me start from the beginning, all right?”

  The men shared another look. “Finally. You’re going to tell us everything?”

  “Yes, I’m going to tell you it all.”

  “Why now, Mr. Baker?” Agent Delane didn’t go in for first names. He was the most hard-nosed of all those in authority whom Everett had spoken with since he’d confessed.

  “Nancy,” he answered. She’d visited him the day before and now when he said her name, he could see her face, her kind hazel eyes framed by a fringe of brown bangs. He could hear her laugh. He remembered how from the beginning she had reached through the barrier of his shyness with her friendly warmth. And then, later, with her generous passion.

  “We told you, Everett,” Levine said, “we’re not charging her with anything.”

  Agent Delane didn’t blink. “But we might.”

  Everett sent Detective Levine a grateful smile and ignored the FBI agent. “I’m telling the whole story because Nancy makes me believe that good might come out of the truth. That maybe I’m not solely to blame for all that happened.”

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Agent Delane lifted a brow. “So who is to blame, Mr. Baker?”

  Mr. Baker, of course. But such an answer would only confuse them. Everett opened his mouth, ready to start from the beginning as he’d said, but then found himself stalled again. It was hard to say aloud. So hard to conquer his shame and his sadness.

  “Mr. Baker, don’t play games with us. What is this new information you want us to know?”

  “It’s about…about…Charlie Prescott.” Okay, it wasn’t the beginning, but it was a place to start.

  He explained to them how he’d met the other man. When he’d moved to Portland and landed the job at Children’s Connection, he’d hadn’t known anyone in the city. “I found a local place, The Pub. It’s n
othing fancy or hip, but I’d go there for a drink and a cheap meal nearly every night. That’s where I met Charlie.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Agent Delane said impatiently. “We know about Prescott’s involvement from the computer files and phone records. We know that over a couple of drinks, the two of you decided to go into the baby-stealing business.”

  Everett pushed his hair off his forehead. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about, all day, every day in my cell. I’ve been trying to think how this happened, how I got into this mess, step-by-step, following the trail backward. I’m trained as an accountant, and I think I finally see how it all adds up.”

  “And how is that?”

  “I—I always wanted money. That accountant thing again, right? We moved around a lot when I was a kid. The people who raised me drank their paychecks if they had any jobs at all. The security of a stockpile of extra cash appealed to me.”

  Agent Delane narrowed his eyes and his voice filled with disgust. “So, hey, why not take someone else’s kid?”

  It sounded sick the way he said it. It made Everett sick to think of it. “I remember telling Charlie about the black market for babies. I’d overheard a couple of social workers in the cafeteria talking about how it worked. He latched on to the idea and kept bringing it up every night. How we’d be doing nothing different than what Children’s Connection did—giving kids a home. Just different homes. And we’d profit instead of Children’s Connection.”

  Everett pushed his hair away again. “The more he brought it up, the more I started to drink. Charlie was buying.”

  “If it was really all Charlie Prescott’s idea, why didn’t you walk away from him, Everett?”

  Staring down at the table, he shook his head. It was so hard to explain and he was so deeply ashamed. “Because…because finally I had a friend. I was lonely in Portland, I don’t join groups easily, and Charlie seemed to like me. Then, the more we talked about the black-market scheme, the more it started to make sense. A twisted sense, I see that now. But Charlie started calling himself the Stork and telling me how we’d profit from the babies. We saw ourselves as a pair of entrepreneurs on the road to riches.”