First Came Baby

by Kris Fletcher

  He definitely owed the kid an amazing first birthday present. Could he ship an alpaca to Canada?

  Cash, at least, seemed to be on his side. He was full of questions about Peru and Machu Picchu and Project Sonqo—not the interrogation that Boone had been braced for, but questions that, he knew, came from genuine interest.

  “My brother runs a charitable foundation associated with the family dairy,” he said at one point. “You might want to apply for a grant through them.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a conflict of interest? I mean, given that—” Boone broke off, unable to think of a simple way to say that Cash was dating Boone’s sister-in-law. Though given that Boone and Kate’s marriage was a mere formality, soon to be ended, maybe Cash didn’t see that as an issue.

  Kate, however, seemed to know the dangerous waters that this conversational canoe was headed for. She sent him a sympathetic smile and turned to Allie.

  “I totally forgot to tell you—Boone and I opened up that cupboard that you and I found.”

  “What cupboard?” Maggie asked. “Have some more ham. I’ll be eating it for three weeks.”

  Boone reached for the platter. Maggie scowled. Very deliberately, he forked a large slice onto Kate’s plate.

  “It was in the middle bedroom upstairs,” Kate said. “The one I had before we moved here.”

  Then, as Maggie watched, Boone gave Kate a wink and took more ham for himself, as well.

  Under cover of the table, Kate poked Boone in the thigh. He stared at his plate to hide his grin.

  “It was built into the wall,” Kate continued, all innocence, “and someone had papered over it a couple of times. Allie was with me when I stumbled across it, scraping the walls.”

  “And why were you doing that job?” Maggie’s word choice made it very clear who she felt should have been wielding the scraper.

  “Because Boone was wrestling with a toilet.”

  Boone was impressed. He’d had no idea that Kate could lie so quickly or effectively.

  “So, was there anything in it?” Allie asked.

  Kate was momentarily distracted by Jamie lunging for a dinner roll—he had just learned the joys of grabbing everything within reach—so Boone answered. “There was a painting of the house.”

  “Of my parent’s house?” Maggie’s eyes softened, and for a second Boone glimpsed the sentimental woman he’d suspected was hiding behind her Mama Bear coat.

  “The colors are different,” Boone said. “And the turret isn’t there. But it’s definitely the same place.”

  “No turret?” Maggie stared at him as if she suspected him of trying to trick her.

  “That’s right. It threw me for a moment, too. But it’s definitely the same house. The window details and the porch are hard to miss.”

  “And it was a different color?” Allie asked.

  Kate picked up the story. “Mmm-hmm. The porch was silver and the shutters were white instead of yellow, and the rest of this house was a gorgeous shade of blue. Not navy, not robin’s egg, but something like...” She glanced around the room, then sat back in her chair, squinting at a quilt hanging on the wall behind Allie. “Like that line in the middle of the ruby quilt.”

  Everyone turned to check it out. Boone, who had given it only a cursory glance before, was now caught by the detail work in the quilt. It was a riot of colors—a brilliant yellow background with the vibrant blue line outlining the center. Green circles seemed to be randomly sprinkled throughout while gray rectangles clustered in the middle. Deep red diamond shapes all around the outside edge were, he assumed, the reason Kate referred to it as the ruby quilt.

  Something she had said tickled his memory.

  “Didn’t you say that Daisy was a quilter?”

  “Right.” Kate handed Jamie a spoon. “Here you go, Jamiekins. You can’t choke on this. Daisy made that quilt, right, Mom?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Boone wasn’t trying to butter up his mother-in-law, at least not this time. The quilt truly was a work of art. “Project Sonqo works primarily with weavers and knitters, so I don’t have much knowledge about quilts. But there are different patterns and designs that are used over and over, aren’t there? Or does everyone reinvent the wheel?”

  Maggie’s expression was guarded but her voice was surprisingly neutral when she answered. “That’s right. Gran—Daisy, that is, she was always Gran to me—generally used the traditional patterns, but there were times when she went out on her own. Story quilts, they’re called. When you make one that’s designed to tell a story or remember an event.”

  Allie was following the conversation intently. “I didn’t know that.”

  Maggie shrugged. “You never asked.”

  Boone came close to choking on his mashed potatoes. Had he just been the recipient of a sort-of indirect compliment from Maggie?

  Kate caught his eye over Jamie’s head, her own pleased surprise all over her face. There was a brief tap on his thigh—so quick it was as if she’d started to give him a pat, then remembered the ground rules.

  He liked it better when she forgot.

  “So that one is a story quilt, Mom?” Kate rushed into the question. Trying to keep herself on track? “What’s the story behind it?”

  Maggie turned sideways to study the quilt. “You know,” she said, drawing the words out slowly, as if she were physically sifting through her memory banks, “I don’t think she ever told me. In fact, I know she didn’t. I asked her a couple of times while she was working on it, but she laughed and said that if I was supposed to know, I would figure it out.”

  “That’s not fair,” Allie said.

  Maggie shrugged. “Gran set her own rules.”

  Boone thought he heard Cash mutter something about it running in the family. He focused on the quilt to keep from snorting.

  That blue line... Something about it kept beckoning him. He could swear he had seen it before.

  “Gran did say,” Maggie said, then stopped, a serving spoon of corn suspended in her hand. “Now, that’s odd. I haven’t thought of it in years, but I know there was something about Uncle Fred. Well, he was my great-uncle, but he was the only one I had, so he was just Uncle. Anyway, I have this memory...it’s all foggy. But I remember her showing the quilt to Fred and him looking it over and saying something about her getting it right.”

  “Maybe he was just examining her needlework.”

  Maggie sniffed. “Hardly. Fred couldn’t care less about things he considered women’s work. Food, maybe, but other than that, nothing.”

  “Sounds like yet another unsolved Hebert family mystery,” Cash said. “Right up there with whatever Charlie might have—”

  “It’s the house.”

  Boone’s outburst startled him almost as much as it did everyone else at the table, but he was too excited to worry about politeness. He practically jumped from his chair and circled the table until he was in front of the quilt.

  “This line.” He traced the route of the blue line, making sure to keep his finger far enough away that there was no fear of accidental grease marks. “Look. It’s the shape of the house. The foundation. The footprint.”

  Kate saw it first. “Without the turret. You’re right.” She bounced in her seat, pointing to the quilt. “That’s the porch at the bottom, and there’s the little alcove off the bedroom, and the mudroom at the back.”

  Cash whistled. Allie squinted, but he could see the comprehension dawning in her face. Even Maggie seemed...well, not impressed. But intrigued? Absolutely.

  “So we have a painting of the house without the turret, and a quilt that sure seems to show the same thing from a different approach.” Kate, ever practical, ticked points off on her fingers. “So—coincidence?”

  “Since Uncle Fred was the one who lived there,” Maggie said in an oddly straine
d voice, “I don’t think so.”

  Boone had spent the last decade-plus in a town built on ruins. If there was one thing he knew, it was that sometimes the past had a strange way of making itself known in the present.

  He grabbed his phone. “Maggie, could I get a picture of this?”

  “What for?”

  “I want to compare it to the painting.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess that would be all right. As long as you don’t copy it or anything.”

  “Mom, really?”

  Boone grinned at both Maggie’s reluctance and Kate’s impatience as he snapped the photo.

  “So Fred and Daisy were in cahoots. Do you think they were trying to tell you something?” Allie asked.

  “Sure.” Cash snickered. “It’s a treasure map. Boone, look carefully and see if you can find the hidden X.”

  Boone joined in the laughter as he made his way back to his seat. But when he glanced at Kate, he noticed her expression as her gaze lingered on her great-grandmother’s work. She’d looked the same way while debating opening the cupboard—like a kid on Christmas morning who’d just opened the gift she didn’t know she wanted until she saw it.

  And he couldn’t help but wonder if there would ever be a way that he could be the one to make her look like that.

  * * *

  A FEW DAYS LATER, Boone eased his aching self into a kitchen chair, inhaled about half his glass of lemonade in one draw and sighed.

  “I hurt all over,” he announced to whatever dust motes might have sprouted ears.

  It had been a productive morning. Kate and Jamie were running errands, so he’d doubled up on work, trying to make up some of the hours lost to Kate’s ankle. Not that he begrudged the time. Other than the frustrations caused by helping Kate undress that first night, it had been kind of a trip to live her life for a few days. And it had definitely forced him to step up his game with Jamie—a prospect that had scared the crap out of him at first, but which he now gave thanks for every time that little mouth flashed him a one-toothed grin.

  But with the house to himself, he’d spent much of the morning on the roof, prepping it for shingling. It wasn’t a job that lent itself to interruptions. He’d lost count of how many times he’d gone up and down the ladder, but the burning in his legs told him that the number was up there in the three-, maybe four-aspirin range.

  Unbidden, he remembered the time last year when he went for his first post-Canadian-winter run. This was worse. Not just in agony, but because last time his healing had been spurred by a seriously welcome massage from Kate. He could still hear the way she’d laughed as she’d teased him about his lack of conditioning, could still feel the sweet heat of her hands moving up his calves and thighs and...

  “Torture yourself much, Boone?”

  He downed more lemonade and opened his laptop. Distraction. That was what he needed. He’d rest his legs, check his email, maybe even hear back from the bank about his loan application.

  It was almost a relief when he saw how many Sonqo-related requests and reports were waiting for him. He had a decent break ahead of him. Better yet, there was an email from Jill, updating him on the events and people he’d left behind.

  The social media interns had some great plans for their Facebook page... Everyone was doing well... They’d had another one of those tourists, the ones who want everything to be just like home but with alpacas...

  Boone read it all with a smile. All those familiar names and places, all those situations he understood. He might be sitting in a green kitchen, savoring lemonade while he read, but in his mind he was back in Ollanta, listening to the voices rolling in from the streets, smelling the potatoes that would usually be cooking around this time of day. It was almost a shock when he looked up and noticed the collection of glass bottles on the windowsill. Part of him had expected to see the familiar photo of Jamie that sat on his desk in the Project Sonqo office.

  He returned to the email, rereading more carefully. Jill was skilled at writing everything she wanted him to know and hiding the items she wasn’t ready to reveal. Boone had always suspected she was a master at sleight of hand, but he had developed a new appreciation for her ability last year when he was in Ottawa. Jill and Craig had been dealing with Craig’s illness for months before they let Boone know that anything was amiss. Since then, he’d made sure that no email was taken at face value.

  Though, as Jill had pointed out when he said something to her about wishing they had told him sooner, what would have been the point?

  “You couldn’t have done anything differently,” she’d said. “Your job was to finish that course. You could hardly have done that if you had come bouncing back down here. It’s not like you’re a doctor, Boone. Besides, you had your own affairs to attend to.” Which had sounded perfectly innocent until she’d elbowed him in the ribs.

  He laughed silently to himself. Jill was the ultimate romantic. She hadn’t said anything, but Boone was well aware that she was certain he and Kate were actually madly in love but simply didn’t know it yet. He knew that she was dying to have Boone bring his wife and child back to Peru so she could spoil Jamie the way she spoiled the kids that wandered in and out of the project office.

  Huh. He had to admit, there was something about that picture that appealed to him, too.

  For a moment he let himself wonder. What if he were to suggest it to Kate? Not a move there, God no, but she herself had said that she wanted to meet Jill and Craig soon. Maybe in the fall? Before she went back to work, before winter made travel complicated...

  He shook his head. What was he thinking? Kate’s life was here, in this town, in this house. His job was to make sure she could continue that way.

  You’re supposed to make things better for her, remember?

  “Back to work,” he told himself. “The sooner you get through these reports, the sooner you can get back to working on the house, the more you can do for Jamie and Kate.”

  With the goal in mind, he returned to the task at hand. He reviewed a couple of résumés from potential interns, looked over the grant application prepared by their current co-op student and checked on the plans for their major fund-raising drive to be held in June. There were emails from the medical foundation in the same village to discuss some joint activities, a couple from various funding agencies in need of periodic updates and—his favorite—a picture from Jill, of her and Craig laughing in the office while modeling scarves. She looked relaxed. Craig still looked a bit frail, but better than he had a few months back. Simply seeing their smiles eased the part of himself that was wound tighter than he’d realized.

  They were doing okay.

  Better yet, once he saw that picture, it was like he’d received permission to ease up. To relax. And to think about himself and his other responsibilities a bit more.

  He’d suggested twice-yearly visits when he and Kate were discussing the separation agreement. Finances and his wariness about his parenting ability meant he didn’t dare commit to more than that. The way he figured, it was better to show up more often than expected than to do it the other way around—not that he had any personal experience with parents who didn’t deliver on their promises, no, not at all.

  But they hadn’t discussed how long each visit would last. Now, though, working his way through the remarkably large chunk of items that he was able to tend to from afar, he had hope that his times in Canada could be along the lines of a month, maybe even a month and a half at a stretch. Just like this one. That shouldn’t overwhelm anyone, should it? If he could do that two or three times a year...

  Okay. It wouldn’t be like having a father around all the time. But it could still be good. He could still be a dad to his son, the kind of dad he wanted to be. Could still be a help to Kate.

  And what about when she meets someone else? What about when she remarries and has other kids?

  He pushed
those thoughts firmly away. He refused to cross that bridge until there was no other choice.

  Instead, he clicked through to the next email—and saw that his loan application had been denied.

  * * *

  THAT FRIDAY, KATE sat in her lawyer’s waiting room and realized that this was the first time she had been truly alone in almost six months.

  She was a wreck.

  Even though she knew she hadn’t received any new messages, she pulled her phone from her purse and checked. Boone had tried to hide his nervousness about pulling solo parent duty. She had swallowed her own apprehension and assured him he would be fine, reminded him yet again that there was expressed milk in the freezer if needed, then stopped herself just before she gave him a kiss for luck. She’d slipped up enough times already. She wasn’t about to add to the total.

  Allie, of course, would assure her that her slips were undeniably Freudian in nature. Kate had an unsettling suspicion that in this, at least, old Sigmund might have had a point.

  Since she’d taken her phone out anyway, she scrolled through some of the pictures of Boone and Jamie that she’d been taking almost nonstop. She went back to the first ones after Boone arrived, melting a little at the worry lines around his eyes when she had insisted on him holding Jamie. Compare that to the most recent—Boone at the kitchen table, Jamie on his lap. One hand curled around the baby’s tummy while the other tapped on the laptop in front of him. Best of all were the matching expressions of concentration on their faces, complete with two indrawn bottom lips.

  That shot was going in this year’s Christmas card.

  She flicked through a few more, mentally chiding herself. For almost six months, she had dreamed of being able to do a solo dash to an appointment or the library or just go for a walk. No diaper bag, no mountain of equipment, just her and freedom. And what was she doing with this long-anticipated time? Looking at pictures of her baby.