by Susan Meier
He slipped downstairs and into the kitchen where he put on a pot of coffee and began frying some sausages, knowing that would bring her out.
Two minutes later, just as he assumed, she walked out into the kitchen. Cooper turned from the stove. “Hey, good morning.”
She mumbled, “Good morning.”
Peeking at the baby, who appeared to be over her virus and actually looked bubbly and perky, he said, “Wow, look at Daphne. She’s back to normal.”
Zoe said, “Yeah, she’s great,” but her response was so subdued, Cooper peered at her. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were glassy. Oh, Lord! Unease squeezed his stomach. “You’re not sick, are you?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she walked to the stove. “What are you making that smells so awful?”
“Sausage.”
She gave him a dismayed look. “Oh, no!” she said, then shoved Daphne at him. “I think I have to throw up.”
Cooper just barely caught the baby before Zoe raced away. Holding Daphne at arm’s distance, he stared at her. She stared back. “This will only take a minute,” he told the baby, hoping he was correct.
She let out a yowl.
Cooper said, “Right,” then waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally, realizing something might really be wrong, he carried Daphne into the bedroom, around the bed and to the corner bathroom. “Everything okay in there?” he called.
Zoe opened the door and came out. “No. Everything is not okay. I’m really sick.”
A ripple of dread swept over Cooper. “What, exactly, does ‘really sick’ mean?”
“It means you’ll have to care for Daphne today…at least for a few hours. It was only a twenty-four-hour bug. I felt myself getting sick last night. I’ll be better by this time tomorrow.”
“This time tomorrow!” His eyes widened with horror. His stomach plummeted. “I can’t care for Daphne!”
“You have to,” she said, then fell to the bed facedown, as if she didn’t have the energy to get into bed like a normal person.
“You don’t understand. I can’t! I don’t know how.”
“I thought you had all kinds of experience with baby cows.”
“They don’t wear diapers.”
She didn’t even lift her head. “I’m sorry, Bryant. But you’ve got to do this. And you can. I didn’t have anybody teach me how to care for her. My mother’s in California, remember? I figured it all out myself. Except for special case scenarios like yesterday’s virus, Daphne is actually fairly self-explanatory.”
“You think she is, but…” He glanced at the bed. Zoe was out. He glanced at Daphne. She patted his cheek, then shifted her hand, grabbed at the stubble of whiskers on his chin and twisted.
“Ouch!”
Daphne laughed.
Cooper groaned. “Zoe?”
She didn’t even move. Cooper almost fell to the bed in frustration. He did not know one thing about caring for a baby, but it looked as though he was about to learn.
Chapter Four
“Okay, how hard can this be?” Cooper said, using psychology on himself as he walked Daphne out to the kitchen again.
Hadn’t he faced greater challenges?
Shoot, yes!
When he left Arkansas, he had about three hundred bucks. The only job experience he had was working for the family construction business with two brothers who didn’t like him, so he couldn’t name them on a résumé. Nonetheless, he found a company similar to the one he and his brothers had inherited when his parents had died, and he got a job as a laborer.
Because he really had been a construction worker and even had experience running the family company, he rose quickly through the ranks and not only saved lots of money, he also found a friend who wanted to be partners with him on a ranch. Once they bought the ranch, he easily got his commercial driver’s license—CDL—and found a trucking company that would employ him when he needed quick cash. The ranch couldn’t be depended on to make money, let alone provide instant funds when an unexpected bill came along. Driving truck didn’t require him to be on the job at 9:00 a.m. every Monday and gave him long stretches of time off. It was perfect.
The system worked so well Cooper drove truck a lot. First, he did it to get the resources he and his partner needed for improvements to the existing outbuildings on the ranch. Then he began saving to increase the herd so that he could finally retire from trucking and ranch full-time. Instead, the cattle money was going to pay off the mortgage, but that was okay, because it would only take a few years driving truck to restore it again. And then he really would be on his own. The ranch would be his. The herd would be paid for. No bank…no brother would have any claim on him.
When he wanted to be, Cooper knew he was resourceful. And determined. And strong.
Surely to hell he could take care of one measly baby.
“Last night your mother opened some applesauce,” he told Daphne, who screeched and slapped his cheek. “That’s what you’re having for breakfast.”
She hooked her fingers in his nose and twisted.
“Ouch! Geez, kid,” he said, catching her chubby little hand and holding it so she couldn’t grab anything else on his face. “You could disfigure me at the rate you’re going.”
She laughed.
Cooper sighed. “Right.”
Luckily the baby seat was still in the kitchen. Cooper buckled Daphne in and then retrieved the applesauce. He remembered his discussion with Zoe about feeding Daphne. He also recalled watching her slide the spoon into the baby’s mouth. He could do this.
He pulled a chair up to the table and popped the lid off the short, stout jar. He stuck the spoon into the ground apples, pulled out a healthy portion and aimed it for Daphne’s mouth.
Her eyes widened and her lips parted. Clearly, she was hungry. That was good.
He slid the spoon along her tongue, being careful not to shove it in too far or too fast. Daphne gulped the food. Unfortunately, before she swallowed, she grinned at him and applesauce came pouring out of her mouth.
“Shoot!” Remembering what he’d seen Zoe do the night before, Cooper caught the wayward applesauce with the spoon before it dripped off Daphne’s chin and onto her chest. Because if that happened he would have to change her shirt and he absolutely, positively was not doing that.
“Come on, kid. Work with me here.”
She laughed and patted her hands on her thighs.
“Okay. No yelping. I’m giving you another spoon of this stuff, so you need to calm down.”
Having learned his lesson, Cooper judiciously measured the second helping—careful not to give her so much the residual rolled out. He cautiously slid it into her mouth and when she grinned with joy there was no surplus to dribble out. Most of it stayed on the back of her tongue where he’d put it.
He damned near whooped with excitement over his success. But not taking anything for granted, he didn’t whoop until he fed her half the jar. After that she began to blow bubbles with it and Cooper had a theory. Anytime a woman started playing with her food, she was either on a diet, unhappy with the entrée or not really hungry. He chose number three and rose from his seat.
“Good job,” he said, then winced when he realized that was exactly what he told his horse when they returned from mending fences. But, really, caring for Daphne was a lot like dealing with an animal. She couldn’t speak. He was never really certain she understood what he said. And she didn’t realize that things she thought were fun could wound him.
By the time he got the applesauce in the refrigerator, Daphne was no longer spitting or slapping her chubby palms on her equally chubby thighs. In fact, she appeared to be downright calm. So calm she looked to be in the mood for an after-breakfast nap.
Fine by him.
He opened the refrigerator again and took out the last of her bottles. That would have panicked him, but he had more important concerns. He wasn’t entirely sure how this part went, but he suspected he couldn’t simply hand her
a bottle and tell her to go to sleep. In movies and on TV he had seen mothers feed bottles to babies while rocking them. Because that seemed like an excellent formula to get the kid back to sleep, he unbuckled her from her seat, plucked her out and headed for the rocker, bottle in hand.
With a sigh, and glad that absolutely none of his trucker co-workers could see him, he dropped to the rocker, arranged the kid across his lap, pillowed her head on his forearm and slid the bottle into her mouth. She began to suck. He began to rock. Too late, he realized he should have turned on the TV so he would have something to do while she drank her milk. But that ship had sailed. So he rocked back and forth, watching her suck down half the contents of her bottle and noticing that her eyelids quickly became droopy and began to drift shut.
He shook his head in amazement. This was so darned easy he really had to wonder why parents whined about caring for kids. When Daphne’s eyes had been closed for about two minutes, Cooper knew he could lay her down. But, as he rose from the rocker, congratulating himself on the good mothering he had just done, he realized that Zoe was asleep in the room at the back of the hall. Not only was she sick, but she’d thrown herself sideways across the bed.
Well…okay. That ruled out Daphne’s usual sleeping place. But no problem. He would take her upstairs.
He climbed the steps, intending to secure her on one of the two single beds in the room across from his, but they were too thin. If she rolled twice, she could fall off. So Daphne couldn’t stay in the spare room.
He carried her into the bedroom he had been using, but he realized that though this bed was wider than the singles in the other room, it was too high. If she rolled off, she’d fall so far she’d probably be hurt.
So, the first bed was being wholly taken by her mother. The second beds were too thin. The third was too far off the ground. He sighed again. At some point even Goldilocks found a bed that was just right.
Daphne stirred in his arms with a whimper. He quickly began to rock her back to sleep. “Shhhhh,” he crooned, then rolled his eyes heavenward. He was so glad there wasn’t anybody around to witness this!
But Daphne didn’t quiet down from the rocking or the crooning. Instead, she stretched, her eyes opened, her face puckered and she began to cry.
“Oh, no! No. No. No. Come on, kid! Remember, I’m not a pro. I need some…”
He stopped talking, then sniffed the air. Dear God!
“Oh, Daphne! Darn it, kid! I hadn’t yet worked myself up to change a wet diaper. I can’t handle what you cooked up down there!”
Daphne began to cry in earnest.
“Shhhhh,” he soothed, then groaned when he got another whiff of what he knew was in her diaper. “Your mom owes me big-time,” he said as he turned and jogged down the steps, holding Daphne about two feet away from himself.
Luckily he’d brought the diaper bag into the kitchen the night before. He grabbed it and pulled out a disposable diaper, but he suddenly realized there was nowhere to change her, so he turned and ran upstairs again, back to the room he was using with the bigger bed.
He laid her down and ripped open the front snaps of her one-piece pajamas. Not quite sure what to do then, he studied the situation and realized he would have to take her legs out of the pajamas to get her diaper off.
He did that. Then examined the diaper, noting the strips of tape on either side. With a resigned sigh, he yanked open both tape tabs and then groaned at what awaited him. Especially when he realized that he had left the diaper bag—and therefore the wet cloths—downstairs.
He didn’t have any choice but to make the best of the situation and eventually got her cleaned up and a new diaper installed. By the time he slid her legs into the pajamas again, she was laughing.
“Oh, yeah, that was really funny.”
She gooed delightedly.
He sighed and reminded himself he had not died. He had successfully completed the diaper change. And there was no point in being negative.
“All right. Let’s go downstairs and find something on TV.”
Daphne didn’t argue, so Cooper grabbed her from the bed and jogged downstairs. He found the remote, turned on the television and settled on watching a rerun of a docudrama. Unfortunately, he couldn’t lie on the couch with Daphne. That meant he was back to the rocker. But Daphne wasn’t happy. She squiggled and squirmed as if she wanted to get down. And Cooper supposed she could. The great room was huge and there weren’t a lot of things she could bump into if she rolled. The only problem was that he couldn’t be sure it was clean.
So he jogged up the stairs again, Daphne on his arm, yanked the spread from his bed, and carried it to the great room. One-handed, he managed to open it on the floor. Then he placed Daphne in its center. On a stroke of genius, he ran to her diaper bag and found a few toys. He tossed them to the blanket beside her. She looked up at him and grinned.
He grinned back. Success again. He was no longer so cocky that he would criticize any parent. But he had figured out some fairly sticky problems. He knew he wasn’t perfect but he thought he was pretty darned good at this.
Ultimately, Daphne played herself out. Without a word or help from Cooper, who had decided to watch television from a prone position on the sofa, she laid her head on the bedspread, made herself comfortable and fell asleep. Also played out from his morning, Cooper fell asleep, too.
Ten minutes later he heard a scream and launched off the couch as if someone had set off a starting gun. He immediately looked at the blanket where he’d left Daphne and much to his horror she was gone.
Luckily, she screamed again. Cooper pivoted in the direction of the noise.
“Oh, my God! Daphne!” he yelped, scrambling over to the section of the room from which her cries and frustrated screams and screeches were coming. She’d somehow gotten wedged between the television stand and a bookcase.
He caught her up in his arms. “How the heck did you do that?”
She sniffled and looked away.
“All right. It’s probably a trade secret. I can respect that. Want some more milk?”
He figured that if he fed her more of her bottle she would take another nap. He wasn’t sure how she had gotten herself wedged so far away from where he put her, but this time he simply wouldn’t go to sleep. He would watch TV with one eye on her in case she decided to roll again.
She drank the remainder of the last bottle, dozed off, and continued sleeping when he laid her in the center of the blanket on the floor again. He sighed with relief and went back to his television show. But what seemed like only a few seconds later she was crying. This time he found her wedged between the two chairs.
He picked her up again. “Okay. Two times means you haven’t learned some kind of lesson yet. I don’t even know how you’re getting where you’re going, but I’m hoping being trapped twice taught you your lesson.”
He sat her down on the blanket. She grabbed for a rattle. Cooper went back to TV.
This time when she howled, he found her on all fours backed into a corner and he suddenly saw what she was doing. “You can only crawl backward!”
She made a grunting noise while rocking on her knees as if trying to push through the wall behind her.
“You’ve got to come forward, kid.”
She screeched with unhappiness.
Cooper stooped down and moved her right arm forward. “This way.” He thought she would mimic the movement with her other arm and go forward. Instead she simply slid the arm he had moved back to its original position.
Given that she didn’t appear to be a quick learner and he wasn’t anybody’s teacher, he scooped her from the floor again. Unfortunately, he caught the aroma of something he didn’t like and he groaned. “Not again!”
She laughed.
In the bedroom he was using, he repeated the diaper ritual, but this time with all the necessary equipment. Clean and happy, Daphne again settled on the blanket to play, but she never did nap.
By the time evening rolled around, Coo
per was exhausted and Daphne wasn’t much better. She could play on the floor, but she couldn’t sleep on the floor because the second she awakened, she crawled backward into some kind of trouble. But the bed situation on the second floor hadn’t changed and Daphne’s mother was still using the downstairs bed. Zoe had only come out once to check on things, but she’d been so weak and feverish she’d damned near fainted so Cooper had shooed her back to bed.
Worse, Daphne had drunk the remainder of the last bottle. There were empties on the counter by the sink, but there was no milk to fill them. The only thing Cooper could give her was water and that earned him a bop with the same bottle he had filled for her.
As nine o’clock quickly approached, Cooper rocked a very cranky baby with no idea where he’d put her down for the night and absolutely positive he couldn’t hold her for one more second.
“All right,” he told sobbing Daphne. “I can’t do anything about the milk, but we’re going on a quest for a bed for you. And this time, we’re thinking outside the box.”
He carried the baby upstairs again, not even glancing at the single beds or the bed he had been using because he already knew they were worthless. He scanned the room, reminding himself to think creatively, and then he saw a wicker laundry basket.
Small, but somewhat tall, the basket had the look of a crib or cradle of sorts. He slid it out of the corner, positive he could put in on the floor beside his bed and hear Daphne if she awakened. It seemed perfect. But by the time he lined it with a blanket there wasn’t any room left for Daphne.
He glanced around the room again. With the wicker basket and the bed out of play, the only thing left in the room was a mirrored dresser. He frowned at it. He remembered reading a story in grade school about a poor family who had been forced to have their baby sleep in a dresser drawer.