Do You Take This Baby?

by Wendy Warren

  Wariness furrowed Ethan’s brow. “How do you prevent it?”

  “Permanency planning,” Jeanne stated. “If Samantha can’t be located, or if she is contacted, but doesn’t want to cooperate with DHS, we would terminate her parental rights and begin to look for the best possible placement for Cody’s needs, both his present needs and the ones we can reasonably anticipate given his exposure to drugs.”

  The kitchen fell silent except for the soft sucking sounds of Cody working on his bottle.

  Something in Jeanne’s tone and physical demeanor put Gemma on edge. She looked at Ethan and saw him tensing for battle.

  “I have no intention of allowing my nephew to be tossed around like a pigskin on a football field,” he told Jeanne in no uncertain terms. “If you’re going to give up on his mother, then Cody is staying with me.”

  “Ordinarily that’s the solution we’d be hoping for,” the woman agreed carefully. “In this case, though...” She shuffled through a manila folder. “You made it clear when we first contacted you that you’re not a permanent resource. ‘I travel a lot’ and ‘I’m not a daddy type’ are the quotes I wrote down. And we haven’t even touched on what happens when training camp and your season begin. You’re struggling now.”

  The silence that followed rang with the echo of the damning quotes.

  “We’re not struggling anymore. Not with Gemma here.” Adamance warred with desperation in Ethan’s tone.

  Jeanne didn’t have to state the obvious again. Gemma wouldn’t be here for the long haul.

  Genuine compassion filled the social worker’s brown eyes. “You want Samantha to mother her son, but historically speaking, the chances are slim. Even if she shows up eventually, her history of relapse would make the placement precarious at best, unless she’s consistently and willingly in a recovery program and absolutely dedicated to being a mother. Parenting Cody may present extra challenges his whole life.”

  Swallowing hard, Ethan looked at Cody. His obvious struggle had the backs of Gemma’s eyes suddenly burning.

  With what Gemma recognized as characteristic practicality, Jeanne asked, “Have you been attending the parenting classes I told you about? And, by any chance, have you read these?” Digging in her large bag, she withdrew her copies of the Prenatal Drug Exposure Handbook and Coping Skills for Parents of the Special Needs Infant.

  Ethan shifted uncomfortably. “Actually, what with losing the last nanny—” he glanced around the room, seeming to grope for excuses “—and then, you know, looking for help, I haven’t really had the opportunity.”

  Though Jeanne’s slow nod seemed sympathetic enough, Gemma could tell the woman was more than a little frustrated. “I understand the strain of single parenting—that’s one of my big concerns. But, Ethan, you’ve had these books since we placed Cody with you. And attending classes was part of the agreement when we gave you an emergency foster certification to care for your nephew. The classes are mandatory.” Resting her open palms on the stack of books, she offered, “The classes could put your mind at ease. You’ll meet terrific couples—two-parent families, some of whom already have experience parenting drug-and alcohol-affected kiddos and are eager to do it again. To be frank, I’m a strong proponent of having two parents in the home when dealing with all the needs Cody could present. There’s a lot of mediation for birth families, too. You could have regular contact, including visitation, with your nephew.”

  “I’m not going to have visitation with Cody. He’s going to stay right here.” Raw with emotion, Ethan’s voice pierced Jeanne’s practical wisdom like an arrow. Jeanne’s lips thinned.

  “We’ll both take the classes!” Gemma blurted. “I’ve been thinking seriously about adopting on my own. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to help out with Cody—to get 24/7 experience. I’m totally dedicated. We’ll take the classes and...and catch up on all the reading. Ethan is wonderful with the baby. He really—”

  Feeling her hand being squeezed as if it was in a vise, she caught Ethan’s message. Quit while you’re ahead. Sort of.

  Perhaps feeling her agitation, Cody released his hold on the bottle’s nipple and began to fuss.

  Jeanne gathered her things. Pushing herself back from the table, she stood. “I have to say, I appreciate your attitudes. And for all involved, I hope you can do it. Without Samantha here, the department can’t wait too long before preparing a permanency plan for Cody.”

  Chapter Nine

  Though Gemma had lain awake for the past two hours, watching the numbers on her digital clock progress with agonizing lethargy toward midnight, the knock on her door was still startling. She bolted up in bed as Ethan’s silhouette hovered uncertainly in the spill of hall light.

  “Gemma?” he whispered. “You awake?”

  Heart thundering, she gathered the covers around her and sat up. “Yes,” she whispered back. “Is something wrong?”

  Quietly, Ethan entered the room. The baby stirred but, thankfully, didn’t rouse.

  Moonlight streamed through her window to reveal the strained lines of his face.

  “I can’t sleep,” he admitted.

  “Me, either.” For once, Cody was the only one who seemed peaceful.

  The mattress dipped under Ethan’s weight as he settled at the edge of her bed, his head lowered.

  After Jeanne had left that morning, Ethan had gone for a long run, returning drenched in sweat, but no less troubled than when he’d set out. Gemma had asked if he wanted to talk, receiving a bleak, “Not right now, thanks.” She’d gotten that same answer when she’d asked if he wanted lunch. He’d spent most of the day alone, sequestered in his study, making phone calls.

  Twice when he’d emerged to get water and aspirin, he’d looked at Cody with such bald angst, Gemma had physically ached with the desire to help. But how? The teacher in her wanted to sit him down and insist that he read the materials Jeanne assigned. And why hadn’t he attended the classes? The friend in her wanted to hug him and say everything would be okay. Realistically, however, she knew Ethan and Cody were standing on a rug that could be pulled out from beneath them, and she was scared.

  After several moments of heavy silence, Ethan turned to face her. “I spent the day on the phone with the investigator I hired. No progress in finding Sam yet. I called my lawyers next, and they were able to recommend a family law group that’s supposed to be tops in custody issues around adoption. I have an appointment with them in a few days, but the attorney I spoke with today said there are a few strikes against me already. First, I made a mistake telling the social workers that I only wanted to keep Cody until my sister could be found. To be honest, I didn’t want to take him at all. I just wanted to talk some sense into Sam until they told me she’d disappeared.”

  “Those are honest reactions,” she said. “But now you know Cody, and you can explain that your feelings have changed—”

  “It’s not that simple.” He sounded as agitated as he looked. “There are things...” He stopped, seeming reluctant to continue. “It wouldn’t be smart for me to try to keep Cody if the best I can give him is me and a series of nannies. No judge is going to want to picture a kid raised by nannies, anyway. Not if someone else can give him a two-parent family, like Jeanne said.” His eyes were bleak as he looked at her. “The lawyer said that before I meet with him, I should think long and hard about Cody’s needs and my own capabilities and commitment.”

  No. Gemma’s heart beat too hard. No, don’t say you’re going to let him go to another family. She respected the concept of adoption—she wanted to do it herself—but losing Cody...it was wrong. It just felt wrong.

  “Ethan, you only spoke with Jeanne today.” She glanced at the clock and amended, “Yesterday. Isn’t it too soon to make decisions? I mean, it’s still possible things could work out with Samantha—”

  “Things will work
out. I believe that.” As always when he spoke of his sister, his tone became adamant. “But I can’t wait for her. I need to make decisions now for Cody’s sake. For my own sake, too.”

  For perhaps the first time in her life, Gemma understood what it meant to feel as if her heart literally sank. Tears stung the back of her throat and eyes. Silly, she chided herself, Cody isn’t your baby. When all this is over, you’ll go back to hearing about Ethan from your mother and in magazines, so get a grip. But in her gut, she knew that little baby was exactly where he belonged.

  “When I got off the phone,” Ethan said slowly, staring down at his hands, “I did what the guy said—I thought about it. I prayed. Every time I asked the question, ‘Am I capable of this?’ the answer came back, ‘Hell, no.’ Cody deserves a lot more than I can give him.”

  Oh, Ethan.

  He rubbed his hands over his face. “I guess I’m about as selfish as you can get, because I called the Eagles and made plans for early retirement. I don’t have too many years left to play, anyway.” He turned his head toward Gemma. “I’ve got to show DHS I mean business. I do mean business. Cody’s not going to another family. He’s staying with me.”

  He barely got the last word out before Gemma gasped in surprise and threw her arms around his neck. “I’m so glad! Oh, Ethan, you’ll never be sorry. Never! I know you don’t think you’re a family man, or the right person for this, but you are. Look at how much you care about your sister, and you’ve always hung around my family. My mother was right—if George Clooney can change, you can, and... Oh, my gosh, I’m so relieved!”

  It took a couple of moments to realize she was hugging Ethan and that he was hugging back. Sort of. His large hands were splayed across her back, holding her lightly, almost tentatively. She pulled away slowly, and they stared at each other. Unreadable blue eyes gazed into hers, and his mouth made a tiny move toward a smile.

  Gemma’s heart gave one extra-hard thump that served to wake her up. “So...early retirement. Is that really okay with you?”

  Ethan nodded. “Yeah. I want to do it. And I appreciate your enthusiasm,” he murmured, his smile appearing again briefly, “but this isn’t a touchdown yet. I’m not a poster boy for the perfect guardian.”

  “Jeanne hasn’t seen the paternal side of you yet,” she pointed out. “She’ll come around.”

  Ethan began shaking his head before she finished. His grip on her arms tightened. “Listen. You told Jeanne you were interested in adoption.” Through the light and shadow, he looked at her intently. “Why did you do that? Were you trying to con her for my sake?”

  “No, of course not! I wouldn’t lie to a social worker,” she insisted, then softened. “Not even for your sake.” Realizing she needed to tell him about her plans, she felt the need to shift a few inches away, and he let go of her arms. Pulling the light covers up around her body again, she confessed, “I am thinking about adopting. Or becoming a mother some other way.”

  “Now?” he asked, obviously surprised, his tone somewhat less than lukewarm. “Alone?”

  “Well, not right now. And not alone, no. I have family, I have friends. And I live in Portland. There are single-parent support groups. I’ll meet a lot of great people, I’m sure.”

  “Single-parent support groups,” he muttered. “Probably happy hour with toddlers.”

  “Don’t knock them. You’ll probably be using them yourself.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t you remember what Jeanne said about two-parent families? She thinks they’re best for kids with special needs like Cody’s. She’s not alone in that philosophy, either. The lawyer said I could easily come up against a judge who believes the same thing.”

  “Still, successful one-parent families do exist. She can’t deny that.”

  “No. But she can make it tough on me. I’ve made it tough on me.”

  “Ethan.” Throwing aside the covers entirely, Gemma swung her legs off the bed to sit side by side with him. Even though she wore her favorite summer pj’s—shorts and a pale pink T-shirt bearing a skull and the Shakespeare quote, “To sleep, perchance to dream”—sitting beside him felt more...businesslike...than hiding under the covers. “So, listen,” she said, feeling suddenly calm and practical and surprisingly alert given the hour, “you have to stop looking at the past. Forget what you’ve said before. Give Jeanne time to get to know the real you.”

  Putting both hands on his face and rubbing, Ethan made a guttural sound. “If she knew the real me, she’d take Cody in a heartbeat.”

  “What are you talking about?” Over the past few days, there’d been a couple of occasions on which Gemma had the strange feeling there was something not quite right with Ethan. She made a face. That didn’t sound right. She didn’t know what she meant exactly, only that sometimes she thought she was getting to know him well and then other times she felt she didn’t know him at all. It was weird.

  Suddenly it occurred to her that they were in a bedroom after midnight, involved in something hugely important together; she had every right to insist on an answer.

  Turning toward him, she asked, “What do you mean Jeanne would take Cody if she knew the real you?” at the very same time he dropped his hands, looked at her and queried, “Gemma, will you marry me?”

  * * *

  I suck at proposals.

  Mostly, that was all Ethan could think as Gemma stared at him, her eyes so huge he could see the white part even with no illumination other than Cody’s night-light and the dim glow from the hall. She didn’t say anything at first, but then he heard a weird choking sound.

  She stood up, body ramrod straight. “Downstairs.” Sounding like Minerva McGonagall scolding Harry Potter, she jabbed a finger toward the door. “We will discuss this downstairs.” She took two steps, turned back, swept the blanket off the bed to wrap it around herself, then marched all the way to the kitchen, flipping on lights as she went.

  Yeah, he totally sucked.

  He sensed his best tactic was silence while she filled two mugs with milk, put them in the microwave, punched a button, then pulled a can of hot cocoa powder and a glass jar filled with mini marshmallows from the pantry. Unscrewing the lid on the jar, she withdrew several of the marshmallows, filling her mouth and chewing before she tilted the jar toward him. “Do you want some?”

  He shook his head, which appeared to disgust her.

  “Men,” she scoffed. “You drop bombshells, and you don’t even want to eat. William told me about Mademoiselle Allard right after we got takeout from a new Thai place. Then he left me with all the food, saying he felt too bad to eat anything.” Shaking a handful of marshmallows at him, she said accusingly, “I ate an entire serving of mee grob and half a pad thai.” She shoved more of the small white puffs into her mouth, making her cheeks look lumpy.

  He decided to risk a beheading by easing the jar away from her, afraid she’d hate herself in the morning.

  “Okay, look,” he began, “I could have approached that question with more finesse—”

  “Ya think?”

  “—but how? It’s the last thing you expected to hear. Before tonight, it was the last thing I expected to say—”

  “Give me the marshmallows.”

  “—because marriage isn’t something I ever thought I’d be any good at. Just hear me out. You want to adopt. I asked the lawyer if it would be easier for a couple to adopt Cody, and he said it’s always easier for a two-parent family to adopt. Always, Gemma, even in your case.”

  She set her fists on her hips and challenged, “Even if they’ve been married for two seconds?”

  “I thought about that. We’ve known each other since high school. Would it be so far-fetched to tell people we fell in love? And that Cody gave us the extra push we needed to make it official?”

  He could see her consternation. The timer on the microwave dinge
d, but he doubted she noticed. Standing next to the massive island in his kitchen, wrapped in the blanket, her bare toes painted with multicolored glitter this week and her brows drawn together, she looked small and angry and adorable. And hurt. He didn’t want her to be hurt.

  “I can give you what you want,” he said, trying to explain his reasoning. “If we get married, you’ll be in a better position to adopt. I’ll be in a better position to keep Cody. And I think you and I... I think we like each other pretty well.”

  She reached for the marshmallow jar. He held it up, compressing his lips before admitting, “I never planned to propose to anyone. I’m not good at this.”

  “Big. Fat. Understatement.”

  Strange thing about his relationship with Gemma: the more she glared at him, the more he relaxed. Feeling a smile push the corners of his mouth, he resigned himself to telling the truth, at least about her. “What I meant to say, what I should have said, is I like you. I feel better around you than I’ve felt around just about anyone. I trust you. And you look good in your pj’s.” His smile grew. When she’d put her fists on her hips, the blanket had slipped to reveal the front of the skimpy pink sleepwear. “Real good.” Sans bra, her full breasts were impossible to miss and equally impossible not to appreciate.

  Despite all the worry he’d been carrying, Ethan felt his body react. Any red-blooded male would react to the pint-size bombshell that was Gemma. Her brain added to the allure...and also made him so wrong for her, but he couldn’t allow that to stop him now.