For Baby's Sake

Stomach churning, she locked her front door and followed him across the yard. With the monitor in her hand, she was reassured that Sybbie was okay. The small, grainy image of the baby kept Lila from imagining the worst-case scenario.

She had assumed James would suggest they sit in his comfy living room to have their drinks. He must have thought that was too cozy, because he took the wine into the kitchen, opened it and poured two glasses. He offered her one and invited her to sit down.

Despite the late hour, there was nothing intimate or suggestive about the locale. The overhead illumination was bright. The refrigerator hummed quietly.

Finally, she couldn’t bear his silence any longer. “You said you wanted to talk.”

He nodded, his long, tanned fingers playing with the stem of his glass. “May I ask you a question?”

“I suppose.” Her stomach tightened.

“I honestly thought you didn’t like kids, but when I watched you with Sybbie, your face lights up. You are tender and caring and I’m pretty sure you already love her almost as much as if you had given birth to her. Am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong.” She’d been trying to decide whether or not to open up all her skeleton-filled closets. James had cut to the chase and simply asked. Flat out. “I do love children,” she said. “I always have. And yes...Sybbie stole my heart the first moment I saw her.”

“So what’s the problem? Tell me, Lila-belle. I want to understand.” The goofy nickname was not fair. It made her yearn for a happier time with James.

For her to explain was only going to make it more certain that the two of them were never ever getting back together. Perhaps this was for the best.

“I used to babysit,” she said simply. “A lot. From the time I turned thirteen. I took a class offered by the Red Cross at the hospital. Received my certification. I was responsible and dependable and kids gravitated toward me.”

“So far, I’m not hearing any negatives.”

“I had a very scary experience when I was in the eighth grade. I was babysitting after school for a woman who had a mentally and physically challenged three-year-old. He only knew a few words, but he was extremely sweet and cooperative. His walking was jerky, but he could do it.”

“Was this a one-time thing?”

“No. I had a regular job with this lady. She cared for him all day, and by the time I came to her house after school, she needed a break and a chance to cook dinner for her family. There were two other children and a husband.”

“Okay.”

James was completely tuned in to her story, his expression intense. She felt like a bug under a microscope. Wine in hand, she jumped to her feet and paced. “One day, the little boy and I were playing with Lincoln logs in the living room. He was old enough not to put little pieces in his mouth.”

“But he choked on something.”

James’s attempt to finish her story made her smile, though there was no humor at all in the memory. “Not exactly. He went into a seizure, fell and bashed his head on the glass coffee table. Blood went everywhere. I screamed. His mother came running and knew immediately what had happened. She told me to call 911, and she held him so he wouldn’t hurt himself further.”

“You must have been terrified.”

“I was. She had never mentioned that he might have a seizure. The whole family made sure I knew it wasn’t my fault that he hit his head. But it traumatized me. He could have died. On my watch.”

“Is that it?”

She could tell James was waiting to tell her how silly she was...that all kids had accidents. “No. That’s not all. The next incident happened two years after that. I was older then. This time I was in charge of three children ranging in age from five to nine. They rode the school bus home together. My job was to give them a snack, make sure they did their homework and sometimes start a portion of the dinner meal before the parents rolled in at five thirty.”

“That sounds like a lot for a—what were you? A fifteen-year-old?”

“Yes. But I had been doing it almost four months. The children respected my authority. The parents were thrilled with how smoothly their evenings went after I had been there. I was making good money and socking it away for college.”

“Has anybody ever told you your storytelling skills are a downer?” His anticipation of what was coming was accompanied by a rueful grimace.

“You asked for this.” It wasn’t as if she enjoyed rehashing some of the worst days of her life. “It was getting close to the holidays. The cat got under the Christmas tree and chewed on an electrical cord that was already frayed. The tree skirt caught on fire, but only smoldered at first. Then at some point, the drapes were involved, and after that, the room was engulfed in flames.”

“What about smoke alarms?”

“Dead batteries,” she said soberly. “It was a perfect storm of bad decisions by the parents...critical things they had overlooked. I was in the back of the house in the den watching TV with the children. When I smelled smoke and tried to get them out of the house, the rear hallway was on fire. Our only escape was through the front door. I had to put wet towels over the kids’ heads and hustle them past the flames and out into the yard.”

“My God, Lila. That’s horrific. Were you hurt?”

“They treated all four of us for mild smoke inhalation. By the time the fire engines arrived, most of the house was engulfed. It wasn’t a total loss, but the family had to live in a motel for three months.”

She finished her tale and ran out of steam, sitting down abruptly. Even now, years later, retelling the story made her queasy.

James stared at her, his eyes narrowed as if trying to see inside her head. “Is that it?”

Seven (#ulink_3fdb3698-7c5c-5fbf-b1e8-5f69e2e84cd2)

“Isn’t that enough?”

James heard the snap in her voice. Maybe he had been trying to get a rise out of her. He wasn’t sure why. But if she was still dealing with guilt about things that had happened a decade and a half ago, she needed to let all of it go.

“I’m not sure what any of that has to do with you and Sybbie.”

Lila tucked her hair behind her ears. At one time, she’d threatened to cut it. He’d made her swear not to. It wasn’t likely that a woman felt bound by a three-year-old promise. Even so, the beautiful blond hair was still long. When she dressed for work at the bank, she wound it up in a complicated chignon that always made him hot.

Lila gave him a look of frustration. “I’m not good in a crisis,” she said. “It terrifies me to think of everything that can go wrong when you have little ones to take care of, and that’s not even taking into account disease and illness. The accident possibilities alone scare me to death. Especially because I’ve never cared for a baby. If the experiences I had with other people’s children shook me so badly, I don’t even want to know how I would react if the kid were mine.”