Child on His Doorstep

by Lee Tobin McClain

  “I’d love that,” Samantha said, and meant it.

  “’Mantha.” A little hand tugged at hers.

  The feel of it warmed her heart, and she knelt to check on Mikey. “How do you like church?” she asked.

  “Wanna go play,” he said.

  Corbin was right behind him. “I told him about the nursery,” he explained. “He wants to go. Help me get him settled there?”

  “Of course.”

  As they walked through the church halls, she scanned the familiar banners proclaiming positive messages of faith. One in particular made her stop, wanting to drink it in: “We Are Forgiven,” it said, with an image of three crosses on a hill.

  Maybe, just maybe, the banner was right. Maybe she was forgiven for the sins she’d committed.

  It was hard to imagine that the Lord could forgive her for causing the death of her baby. But maybe He’d forgive some of the myriad of smaller sins she’d committed along the way. Like a wave lapping at the shore, forgiveness touched her, receded and touched her again.

  They walked into the nursery behind another family. She knelt to show Mikey the bin of stuffed toys, but he wasn’t interested. “Blocks!” he shouted, looking beyond the stuffed animals, and started toward them.

  She grabbed his shoulders to keep him from escaping. “Wait for Corbin to check you in.”

  Corbin was discussing Mikey’s needs with one of the caregivers as the family who’d been ahead of them turned to leave. From her position kneeling beside Mikey, Samantha caught sight of the father, and her heart stopped as heat flooded her face.

  Don’t let him see me, please don’t let him see me.

  He was talking to his wife and she thought she’d escape notice, but then he glanced down. His eyes widened. “Samantha Alcorn?”

  “Hi, Jack.” She rose slowly, still holding Mikey’s hand, and nodded to Jack and his wife. “Nice to see you.” She attempted to sidle away, and Mikey helped by tugging her toward the blocks.

  Jack touched her sleeve and cleared his throat, stopping her. “Uh, Samantha, this is my wife, Nadine. Nadine, Samantha Alcorn. I met Nadine at college,” he added to Samantha, as if she would want to know. Then he looked at Nadine and nodded sideways to Samantha. “Samantha and I were...friends, back in high school.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Samantha said, smiling at Nadine so widely her face felt stretched. “Oops, got to go!” She nodded down at Mikey, who was still tugging, bless his heart. Corbin had sat down at one of the tiny tables and was filling out an index card, no doubt information about Mikey, and Samantha was glad. Somehow, she didn’t want him to get involved in any interaction with Jack.

  She managed to escape, following Mikey and helping him dig into the block bin as emotions roiled in her chest. Jack Reddin. She hadn’t thought about him in quite a while, but she thought about the consequences of what she’d done with him almost every day.

  She’d approached him as soon as she’d learned she was pregnant, that crazy summer after senior year, but she hadn’t really expected much. They hadn’t had a close connection; put baldly, it had been no more than a hookup. Still, she’d felt like he ought to know.

  And when he’d started sweating and ran his hands through his hair until it stood on end, when he’d apologized over and over but said he just couldn’t become a father right now, that he had one more year of college and a bright future, she’d shrugged and patted his arm and said she’d take care of it.

  The relief on his face had been a little sickening, because she’d suddenly realized how that had sounded, what he’d thought she meant.

  But explaining that she’d go ahead and raise the baby alone, just like her mom had raised her, well, it hadn’t seemed like it was worth her time, given his reaction.

  She blinked and brought her attention back to the present, the nursery, as Corbin came over and started talking to Mikey, who’d found a big plastic truck and was crashing it into a heap of blocks he’d made. Jack had obviously married and started a family and moved on with his life, and Samantha was glad. She didn’t wish him ill. But she also didn’t want anything to do with him.

  “Are you okay?” Corbin asked quietly, and she looked up and met his steady gaze and got a little lost. Instinctively she knew that if anything of the sort had happened with Corbin, he would have insisted on taking responsibility for the baby. Just look at how he was embracing guardianship of Mikey.

  Corbin’s eyes flickered to something behind her just as Samantha heard a throat clearing. She looked up into Jack’s distressed face.

  “Can I speak to you for a minute?” he asked.

  She blew out a breath, thought about refusing, and then decided she’d get it over with. He had a right to know what had happened, if that was what he was after. Maybe he just wanted to make sure she’d keep quiet about it all.

  She stood. “I’ll meet you out in the sanctuary,” she told Corbin.

  He stood, too, and took a step closer to Jack. “Is everything okay?” he asked her, putting an arm around her in a way that felt wrong and possessive and wonderful.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine. I’ll just be a minute.” She gave him a tiny smile as she shrugged out from under his arm and followed Jack into the hallway, robot-like.

  Once outside, Jack gestured toward the church library, where the lights were off and the door was closed. “We can talk in here.” He opened the door and held it for her, but didn’t flick on the lights.

  A small window provided the only illumination, a twilight atmosphere that felt fitting. Dust motes danced in the single ray of sunlight. She backed against the wall of bookshelves and crossed her arms, hugging herself a little. “What do you need, Jack?”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it. Gestured toward the nursery, and then met her eyes. “Is that... Is that little boy ours? And Corbin’s helping you raise him?”

  “No!” She felt her brows draw together as she tilted her head to one side. Whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that. She was twenty-three and Jack must be twenty-seven, the same age as Corbin. She’d gotten pregnant at eighteen. Their baby would have been four by now. Didn’t he know that? “No, that’s not our child. That’s Corbin’s little brother, Mikey. I’m just the nanny.”

  “Oh!” He glanced over that way again, his square shoulders relaxing a little, then nodded. “Oh, right, I guess I wasn’t thinking straight. Um...so where...” He huffed out a breath. “I heard you were planning to keep the baby.”

  She stared at his handsome face, his creased brow, his slightly receding hairline. She so did not want to go into this with Jack. “You heard that and you didn’t look me up?”

  He met her eyes and then stared at the floor. “I’m sorry. I was a jerk. A complete jerk, and I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me, but... I have a kid now, see, and I understand—” He broke off and looked at her again. Outside the library door, more people walked back and forth, their voices slightly audible. In here, though, they were in their own unhappy little bubble of space.

  “You understand that kids are important and you shouldn’t run away from the responsibility? Yeah.” She tightened her arms, still crossed over her chest. “I had a miscarriage at six months.”

  “Six...oh, man.” He took a step closer, then seemed to take in her body language and sank into a chair at the end of a shelf of books instead, dropping his head in his hands. “I’m sorry. That must have been awful.”

  “It was,” she whispered as the blood and the fear and the pain, physical and emotional, rushed back. Mom had come to the city to be with her for a couple of weeks, and that had helped, but her mom had grieved, too. And Mom had died without ever having a grandchild.

  It had been her fault. If she’d taken care of herself as she should have...

  Her throat tightened to where she couldn’t speak. Jack looked up at her, and she saw that his eyes were wet,
too.

  Whatever their differences and flaws, this loss belonged to both of them. She took a step forward and put a hand on his shoulder, cleared her throat. “We both made mistakes. Lots of them.”

  He nodded and looked up at her with bleak eyes. “Was it a boy or...”

  She cleared her throat again. “A boy.”

  He stared at the floor again, a muscle tightening in his jaw.

  He was processing the loss for the first time, while she’d had years to think about it endlessly, to grieve. And she could hear the organ music starting up. “What’s your daughter’s name?” she asked gently.

  “Misty. She’s...she’s great.”

  “Beautiful, too. So’s your wife.” Samantha patted his shoulder, and even though she ached inside, she swallowed and pulled herself together. “I’m glad you’re happy, Jack.” She turned away from him and headed toward the door.

  It burst open. “Jack, are you—” The woman who had been on Jack’s arm stopped still and stared from Samantha to Jack and back again. “What are you doing in here?” she asked, her voice staccato.

  Samantha tilted her head, wondering what to say, but there was nothing. And this part wasn’t her business. She glanced back at Jack, raised her eyebrows, and shrugged, trying to communicate that the ball was in his court, now.

  And then she walked past Nadine out into the hall, and past the nursery and straight out of the church.

  * * *

  As soon as the service ended and he’d picked up Mikey from the nursery, Corbin rushed home and into his house, tugging Mikey along by the hand. His heart pounded. Where was she?

  The mouthwatering smell of chicken gave him a clue, and he charged into the kitchen to find her stirring something on the stove. Relief and anger washed over him in equal parts as he surveyed her familiar form, now dressed in faded jeans and an old T-shirt. “What are you doing here?”

  She looked at him blankly. “I, um, live here? And I’m making lunch.”

  His fists clenched, and it was an effort to relax them. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.” Corbin heard a sniffle from Mikey but ignored it. “You left without a word to anyone. I was frantic. Mikey was frantic!”

  She knelt down and opened her arms. “C’mere, Mikey. Everything’s okay.”

  Mikey rushed to her. “Corbin yell,” he said, cuddling up against her.

  She hugged him and glared up at Corbin. “Corbin is mad,” she said, “but he’s not going to yell anymore.” She narrowed her eyes as if daring him to disagree.

  Of course, she was right about that if nothing else. “I’m sorry I yelled, Mikey. Everything’s fine now.” Even though it wasn’t. He patted Mikey’s back and then glared right back at Samantha. “Do you want to explain why you disappeared without telling anyone?”

  “I texted you that I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “I didn’t get a text.” He paced away from her and Mikey, both of whom were staring at him. She was just like his mother. Unreliable. Undependable. Always running off when she was needed.

  And he hadn’t overstated Mikey’s upset. When Corbin had let slip that Samantha wasn’t there and he didn’t know where she was, big tears had rolled down the poor kid’s face. He’d already been abandoned once, by his mother. He didn’t deserve to fear abandonment again, not for one second.

  “I’ll show you the text.” She stood, picking Mikey up, and walked over to where her purse hung on a hook by the door. He hated noticing that her T-shirt brought out the arresting gray-green color of her eyes. Actually, it was hard to tell what color her eyes were—lighter in the middle, darker around the edges and changeable as the Ohio sky. Right now, as she looked back at him, they were stormy.

  She tapped on her phone. “See? It’s right here... Oh.” She bit her lip. “I must not have hit Send. I’m so sorry.”

  “Why’d you leave church like that?” He couldn’t stop his voice from going loud again.

  She glanced at Mikey. “Let me get you boys some lunch.”

  “I want to know.”

  She opened a pot on the stove, scooped out a taste with the tip of a spoon, and tested it. Then she reached overhead to the salt container and shook a little bit into the pan. Next, she set Mikey down, grabbed potholders and pulled a tray of magnificent-smelling chicken pieces out of the oven.

  Corbin’s mouth watered, but that didn’t halt his irritation. “Why are you ignoring my questions?”

  She lifted her chin and looked directly into his eyes. “It’s not something I feel comfortable discussing in front of Mikey,” she said quietly, then added, “or at all.” She nodded her head sideways to Mikey, who stood looking from him to Samantha, his eyes hollow. “And you’re upsetting him.”

  She was the one who’d upset Mikey initially, but now, her dignity brought him to his senses. “I’m sorry,” he said. “C’mon, Mikey, let’s wash our hands.” He took Mikey by the hand, walked him over to the sink and hoisted him up.

  Mikey sprayed more water onto himself and the surrounding counters than onto his hands, but at least it made him giggle. Corbin helped Mikey dry off with the dishtowel, washed his own hands and then turned to Samantha, chagrined. “I’m sorry. We made a mess.”

  “It’s okay,” she said without looking at him. She was scooping mashed potatoes into a bowl.

  He helped Mikey into his booster seat, then held Samantha’s chair for her. When he sat down and surveyed the delicious spread, he felt even more ashamed. Chicken, potatoes, fresh asparagus and a fruit cup. Real Sunday dinner, and when did he ever have that?

  Mikey reached toward the bowl of fruit just out of his reach, and Samantha took his hand and pulled it back. “Let’s pray first, honey.”

  Corbin reached for Mikey’s other hand and then, after a moment’s hesitation, reached for Samantha’s as well. The feel of her hand grasping his made his prayer fly right out of his mind.

  “T’ank you, Jesus,” Mikey said.

  The sweet, high voice brought Corbin back to his right mind and he uttered a quick addition to Mikey’s simple prayer.

  As he dished out food for Mikey, then urged Samantha to serve herself, Corbin thought about why he’d gotten so terribly upset.

  The truth was, he’d gotten the strange feeling that there was something between her and Jack Reddin. Jack was good-looking, outgoing, active on the finance committee of the church and quite wealthy. None of that had ever mattered to Corbin until he’d seen how Jack was looking at Samantha.

  And yeah, Jack was married, but that didn’t stop a lot of people from following up on their extracurricular desires.

  Even if Corbin had read that right, though, he had no right to think about Samantha in the possessive way he was. He had no business monitoring her personal life.

  He took a bite of chicken, then one of mashed potatoes, and his worries started to recede. “This is good,” he said. “Really good.”

  “Good,” Mikey agreed. He was scooping bites of mashed potatoes with a spoon he held in his fist, and somehow, most of the food was landing in his mouth.

  “Try some chicken,” Corbin suggested, and reached over to shred a few pieces onto Mikey’s plate.

  “Chicken goes cluck-cluck,” Mikey said as he picked up a piece of meat and stuck his tongue out to taste it. Then he smiled, grabbed a whole fistful, and stuffed it into his mouth.

  “Slow down!” Samantha was laughing. She picked up a small piece of chicken from her plate and put it delicately into her mouth. “See? Like that.”

  Mikey stared.

  Corbin did, too.

  “And mmmmm, look at the asparagus. It’s like a little tree.” She held up a stalk, then cut it into small pieces and put a few on Mikey’s plate. “Sorry it’s a little overcooked,” she said to Corbin. “They say you should cook veggies until they’re really soft, for toddlers. I meant to take o
urs out ahead of time, but I forgot.”

  She’d put real effort into cooking for him and Mikey. Corbin put his fork down and looked at her. “Why the nice meal?”

  “Oh, I thought you and Mikey could use a little lift,” she said. “Truth is, I wanted a lift myself, and I like to cook.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Until you came in here like a charging bull.” One corner of her mouth quirked up, just a little.

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “I’m sorry about that. It’s not really my business what you do.”

  “No, but I can see why you got mad when I didn’t let you know I wouldn’t be riding home with you. That was me being distracted and I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You shouldn’t even be working on a Sunday. It’s just...” Should he say it? “You seemed kind of stressed out. In the nursery. With Jack.”

  “I was, a little. Maybe a lot.” She didn’t elaborate; instead, she turned the tables. “But you seemed awfully upset about my leaving, more than the situation warranted.” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”

  “When I figure it out,” he said ruefully. He didn’t want to admit how much he thought about her. That was way over-the-top. But he also had a dim memory of being the last kid at a Sunday school class, waiting and waiting for his mother, his teacher finally driving him to her house until Cheryl could be found.

  So maybe being ditched at church had hit him hard in more ways than one. “I hope, sometime, we can sit down and talk about...this stuff.”

  “What stuff’s that?” She toyed with her fork, spun it, put it down.

  “This getting emotional and all.” He looked into her eyes. Man, did she have pretty eyes.

  She looked right back, one eyebrow raised just a little, and his face heated.

  Her eyes widened a little and she looked away, her eyes lighting on Mikey. “Someone needs a nap.” Samantha stood and nodded over at the boy, who was rubbing his face with the backs of his hands and yawning. She picked him up and he immediately lay his head against her shoulder. “I’ll put him down unless you want to.”