Sweet and Sassy Baby Love

by Alicia Street

  Chapter Two

  Three weeks later…

  Emma sat across from Alice Foster, the adoption lawyer, and her face paled. “Today? You want me to take Teddy with me now?”

  “Look, I know this is highly unusual, Emma, but Mickie is dying. There isn’t a lot of time left. She had a scare yesterday and has finally faced the truth. As much as she wants to, she can’t give him the care he needs anymore.”

  The agency’s lawyer and Emma had been meeting for weeks. Emma knew Mickie’s sad story of love and loss. Alice leaned forward, her voice dropping. “I think she had an attack and became unconscious. What broke her heart was that when she woke up on the floor, Teddy was in the bedroom screaming. Thank God he was safe in his crib. It scared her silly. She called me almost incoherent and begged me to speed up the process.”

  “Speed up, yes. But now? That’s fast-tracking at a ridiculous rate. I’m not prepared for him yet. His bedroom is almost ready, but it still needs the last-minute touch-ups. Thank God his furniture arrived yesterday, and I paid the delivery fellow to set up the crib. But that’s all I’ve gotten done. I expected more time with her to tell me what he likes, his favorite food and toys and—”

  “None of that matters in the big picture, Emma. You know she picked you out of a rather large selection of my other clients, wanted you from the moment she’d seen your video. She’s even made you a beautiful baby book and packed his belongings. Good thing because the doctor is demanding she go into the hospital today, and she needs to know her baby isn’t being shuffled from place to place before he lands up with you anyway. That won’t happen if you take him now. I have the final papers here for you to sign. She’s already filled in her section.”

  Emma’s pulse went from normal to cardiac arrest speed when she saw the actual forms ready for her signature. “Where is Teddy?”

  “He’s with Mickie in the other room. They’re waiting for the outcome of this meeting. I’m sorry, Emma. This was just passed onto me this morning, and I’ve been rushing around to get the last-minute documentation ready. I left you a bunch of messages to get back to me, but you never did.”

  “That’ll teach me to turn off my phone. It gets crazy some mornings, and when I have too many things on the go, I often resort to shutting it down.”

  “Emma, I know it’s a lot to ask, but she needs this right now. She’s hanging on by a string, her lips are blue, her breathing is erratic, and she needs to be in the hospital, but she’s fought against it until she can personally hand Teddy over to you.”

  Dazed, Emma sat back and closed her eyes. From the first day she’d started the process, weeks ago now, it’s like she’d been riding a tidal wave of continuous events forcing her to this occasion. She’d known Teddy was her choice from the first moment she’d seen his photograph. Then she’d eventually met with him and Mickie and the dye was cast. She’d fallen so hard for the little guy that every waking moment, and a few sleeping ones too, he’d been on her mind, burrowing his way into her heart.

  It was now or never. She could be a mom with the stroke of the pen. Little Teddy, the beautiful six-month-old baby could be coming home with her today. She thought back to the introductory video depicting him with Mickie’s voice in the background describing their circumstances. About how she’d loved Teddy’s father, Justin, a boy as young as herself, and her story of romance and commitment had all but broken Emma’s heart.

  From then on, they’d had numerous meetings where she’d learned the story of how Teddy had come into the world. The sad tale about his father, the boy that Mickie had fallen in love with, gotten pregnant with and had intended to live the rest of her life with.

  Only God had different plans. He’d taken Justin early a totally unnecessary incident of hit and run by a drunk driver who’d ended up taking her own life because of the accident.

  The series of sad tales hadn’t ended there. During Teddy’s birth, the doctors had discovered Mickie’s advanced heart defect called Dilated Cardiomyopathy, and from then on, precious time had been limited for everyone involved.

  In the tell-all video, Mickie had described Justin, Teddy’s father, showed pictures of the good-looking young man and talked about their falling in love, saying his only living family member was an older brother, Joel. A man Justin had really looked up to.

  Unfortunately, though Mickie had tried to find him and explain about his brother’s sudden death, all the avenues she’d explored had gone nowhere. The man, an investigative reporter, had a habit of disappearing on different offshore assignments from time to time, and she had no way of knowing where or when he’d show up. All she’d been able to do was leave messages with some of his acquaintances, in hopes they’d be able to reach him in time.

  As Mickie explained, it had been up to her to find parents for her beloved Teddy through adoption lawyers. Ones she’d heard about because a girl she’d gone to school with had a mother who worked in a similar firm, and that remembered information had sent Mickie searching to find a reputable place to help her.

  The church had pulled off a miracle when she’d gone to Father Michael with her story. He was able to team Mickie with Alice, a kind-hearted mother who did pro-bono work from time to time. After hearing Mickie’s sad tale, she’d taken on the adoption with zeal.

  When Emma had asked Mickie about her own family, she’d been told that they were highly religious, lived in Baltimore and had forced her out of the house years earlier when she’d refused to become a nun.

  The fact that she was now having a baby out of wedlock – her and Justin’s wedding ceremony hadn’t occurred because he’d been killed the day before – her pious parents would denounce her beautiful baby as a bastard. She had no doubt they would refuse to have any relationship with him whatsoever. His birth status would taint him forever in their eyes, and they’d label her a jezebel.

  She explained it all to Emma during one of their many meetings. She couldn’t do that to her happy little boy, whose smile of joy lit up the room every time she went to bring him out from his crib. Knowing how grumpy and curdled her parents were, their small-minded views and ridiculous strictures, fearing, yet rejoicing in God’s wrath rather than loving his humble forgiveness, she didn’t want her boy anywhere near such destructive behavior. Her own upbringing had been a bitter, lonely road and no way would she let them destroy her son.

  Alice finally broke into Emma’s musings, the lawyer’s obvious tension showing in the way she’d moved papers around on her desk, only to replace them in the piles she’d originally had them in. “You’re killing me here, Emma. What are you going to do?”

  “Sign the papers, of course, go and wish Mickie the best and collect Teddy. What else can I do? I love the little guy – more than I can say. He’s the perfect little black-haired cherub, and his baby blue eyes get to me every time he flashes them with his big smile. They caught my heart from the first moment he shone them my way.”

  “He is a handsome little man, isn’t he? Hell, if I didn’t already have three monsters of my own, I’d have been tempted to beg Mickie for the chance to raise him too. After we investigated all the medical background details and found that Mickie’s heart problem is one of those rare, unexplained phenomena that seldom occur and wouldn’t be an inherited condition, I even mentioned Teddy to my husband who almost collapsed from fear I might force the issue. When I told him the mother was born with a defective heart that caught up with her, he started hyper-ventilating. I dropped the subject before he began packing his bags.” Her grin showed the lawyer to be joking, but her eyes looked wistful. “Thank God, Teddy was spared, and he’s perfectly healthy.”

  Emma pulled the papers closer and added her signature under Mickie’s. “There, it’s a done deal. I’m Teddy’s new mom.”

  Alice’s grin lit up her face. “It makes my heart sing to think you and Teddy will be together from now on.”

  “It’s my own heart I’m worried about when I show up in the office with Teddy, and my secretary hands in
her resignation. She warned me not to rely on her for any babysitting, but I have an important client this afternoon who’s on the verge of buying a high-end property, and I can’t let this negotiation slip through my hands. This sale will mean a lot to our firm. My fee will ensure I’ll be able to slow down for the next few weeks until I have Teddy comfortable.”

  “Your secretary… does she like flowers?” Alice’s wicked smile encouraged Emma.

  “Good thinking! I’ll stop at the florist next door and pick up her favorite pink roses… two dozen.”

  A knock sounded as the door simultaneously opened. “Excuse me? I’m looking for Michele Bond’s lawyer?”

  Chapter Three

  Heart locked in his chest with a hundred-pound weight burning a hole in his conscience, Joel Stronge drove into Manhattan toward the office where a meeting was happening, dealing with the adoption of his nephew. Filled with pain from losing his younger brother and not being around when he was needed, Joel struggled to concentrate.

  ***

  Poor Justin had had bad luck from the day they brought him home from the hospital. As a kid, he’d had many of the children’s afflictions that bypassed Joel. Starting with meningitis, he’d gone from there to pneumonia, measles, appendicitis and a bunch of lesser ailments – more than Joel could remember. Then Justin had hit the teen years and other than a bad case of acne, things had begun to improve.

  Their old man had quit drinking around that time, not because he’d wanted to, but a dose of lung cancer and threats from Mom that she’d leave him, had proved to be the perfect combination to steer him on the right path.

  By then, Joel had begun his career as a freelance journalist and had taken the investigative route where he often followed stories all over the USA or to other countries, many of them third world. The old undercover journalism from the past had all but disappeared, but there was still a bundle to be made for a story that broke the boundaries… in politics especially.

  He’d been out of town, working on a story in London about a subway bombing, on the terrible day his parents had been involved in a head-on car crash in Arizona. They’d both been killed, and Justin had been alone when the uniformed officers had arrived at his door with the bad news.

  Though Joel had made it back in time for the funeral, guilt had begun to fester. To offset it, he saw that Justin was well set up for money and a place to live for the future with an older roommate who promised to keep an eye on the younger man.

  Responsibility for his brother had been shifted. This worked well until Lance eventually got married and moved out of town. But, by then, Justin had reached his twenties and was able to make do on his own.

  A few times, Joel had tried to set Justin up with internet and a smart phone, so that rather than contacting Lance about Justin’s welfare, he could reach Justin himself. The fact that they’d be able to stay in touch meant a lot to him, and he was floored when his brother showed no interest whatsoever. What person nowadays didn’t care about technology? Justin had never cottoned on to today’s social media or the ways of correspondence. Instead, he insisted on writing letters from his end and letting Joel be the instigator for phone calls when he had the opportunity.

  Sadly, Justin seldom had his phone turned on which meant they were often out of touch.

  As for Joel, the search for a story and the adventures that followed lured him away time after time. He’d seen little of his brother over the ensuing years. Sometimes guilt would ride him, but his love for journalism had been strong, a draw that wouldn’t subside, his drug of choice… the ultimate story.

  Believing in the necessity of truth, he knew a world without it would be a world where nothing could be relied on. In the same way, he knew that his fellow journalists were driven to find the truth for their reports, and in some cases revealing corruption and even treason. Thankfully, Joel had a reputation for being a digger and getting to the facts about economic and world news that many of the studios were willing to pay big bucks for.

  As a younger man, he’d loved the adventure, the danger and the lifestyle. As the years passed, Joel had gotten more involved with politics and world affairs – exposés he’d worked on time and again.

  Recently, he’d located to Guam to cover stories of North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un. Due to Joel’s reputation for being an honest correspondent, a huge leak landed in his lap. It was a story so interesting that he’d left his newest ladylove, a girl he’d met when he’d landed there, one he had no attachment to, and went to work.

  Despite his vast amount of knowledge about the workings of the internet, it often slipped his mind that it didn’t function because of some unseen magic. It relied on a very physical, some might say boring, infrastructure to continue supplying the world. Hundreds of thousands of miles of undersea internet cables are snaked under the world's oceans, traversing the Atlantic, Pacific, and along the coast of South America. These insulated lines carry the bulk of the world's international data traffic. When one sends an email overseas, the information is likely traveling through one of these fiber-optic, garden hose-like cables.

  And Guam is one of the world’s landing places for these various lines to receive electricity. According to his source, the newest storm-resistant facility being constructed had some hanky-panky going on between the American construction company, Bon and Sons, and their Korean counterpart.

  To be storm-resistant, the electronics and generators must be elevated high enough off the ground so they shouldn't flood even in a big storm. That's crucial, because this structure will power the repeaters, or "optical pumps," that the cables need to boost the laser signal as it travels through the fiber, losing energy over distance.

  Except the sneaky corroborators had decided they could save a lot of money if they purchased much of the building’s steel from a Chinese company with an inferior product. The money saved would be landing in the pockets of those involved with the scam.

  After working the lines of communication from his informer and digging personally into the sticky situation, he’d gathered enough videos and photos to prove the wrongdoing. Deciding early on that this disgusting crime had to be publicly exposed, he intended to go live with his story – probably an editorial with the Times. But first, he had a connection in the FBI who he trusted explicitly, and that would be his primary place to drop this particular bomb.

  Even sitting on this blockbuster and knowing the reactions it would spark, the old thrill had begun to wane. The danger of some of these adventures had lost their luster. The faster this one ended, the better.

  Not that he had any complaints about his life’s choices. He’d had plenty of female companionship, he’d lived a life with no restrictions, no rules, lots of partying – a life most men would envy.

  Maybe now, because he’d hit his mid-thirties, settling down had begun to appeal. He’d found himself deliberating seriously about accepting the offer from the New York Times as a senior editor on their night staff. Once he finished the final details on the exposé he’d been concentrating on, he’d hand it in and make the change.

  Since reading his brother’s last letter, the one that had followed him halfway around the world, his options had solidified. He needed to come home, meet this paragon of loveliness Justin wrote that he intended to make his wife and play uncle to the newest member of the family, Justin’s baby. According to the date on the letter, the child would have been born about six months earlier.

  ***

  Once he’d landed in New York City, established himself in the hotel room he’d rented close to downtown, he’d gone searching for Michele Bond, Justin’s girlfriend. Rereading Justin’s details about his sweetheart, he knew she’d originally come to New York from Baltimore. After using many of his resources in his search, he finally found her family in Baltimore, only to be told Justin’s girl was estranged from them – thank goodness if their behavior on the phone was any indication of their true personalities. After his polite request for help to locate their
daughter, and why, he’d been preached to in a pious voice, telling him about their daughter turning to the devil and ending with the ringing announcement… “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Ephesians 6:1.”

  Unable to stop himself before clicking off, he’d delivered his rebuttal, one he’d memorized after using it in a story he’d written about social media and how it had begun to unravel under the stresses of modern society. This particular quote from the good book suggested that everyone follow the basic rule set out by the only One we all could trust. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

  An insulting silence greeted him, and then a woman’s icy voice ended the call. “Our daughter is dead to us. Don’t call here again.”

  ***

  When he’d first arrived home, Joel had rushed to Justin’s apartment to find another person living there. He’d gone back a number of times to that area of the city, to the pubs and cafés nearby in hopes of running into someone he recognized… someone who’d known Justin.

  Luck was finally with him this morning, and he’d run into one of Justin’s friends at the nearby restaurant. “Josie? I’m Justin Stronge’s brother. Do you remember me?”

  The anorexically thin redhead bobbed her head, but her smile never cleared the cloudiness in her eyes. “Sure. Hi. I’m so sorry for your loss. Justin was one of the good guys.”

  “Thank you. Look, I’m trying to find his girlfriend, Michele Bond. Would you happen to know where she lives now?”