Dr. Mommy

“Yeah, but you’re no fan of children, are you?” he charged.

“Hey, I like kids just fine,” she told him. “As long as they belong to someone else and keep their distance.”

He nodded, making no effort to hide his disappointment. “So you can probably sympathize with the woman who left that little bundle of joy on your doorstep, can’t you? You’d probably do the same thing if you found yourself saddled with a baby you didn’t want.”

Claire knew there was little reason to dignify that allegation with a response. But she couldn’t quite help herself from retorting, “I would never abandon a child. Nor would I conceive one I couldn’t care for. So no, I don’t sympathize with her. But I do think it’s wrong to summarily judge and sentence her without knowing the circumstances of her situation.

“Still,” she hurried on before Nick could interrupt, as he clearly wanted to do, “I can see how a guy like you would see the situation as either-or. You never were much good at distinguishing shades of gray, were you? It was always Nick’s way or no way with you.”

She could tell there was more—a lot more—that he wanted to say on that particular matter, but he set his jaw resolutely and instead asked, “What else can you tell me about this episode that might be helpful?”

For the next quarter hour Nick asked a lot of questions about the baby’s abandonment that Claire did her best to answer. For most of them, however, she could provide nothing helpful. Everything had just happened so quickly, and she’d just been so surprised by it all, that few details had registered in her brain.

Finally, though, Nick seemed to run out of questions, so he clicked his pen again, flipped the notebook closed and tucked both back inside his coat pocket. Then he spared another backward glance toward the sleeping baby and turned back to study Claire with clear concern. She waited for him to pose another question about her unexpected visitor. But very softly he asked, “How’ve you been, Claire?”

The quick and unexpected change of subject—not to mention the unmistakable tenderness in his tone—caught her off guard, as did the glimmer of genuine affection that briefly lit his eyes. Gone, for an instant, was the antagonism and accusation that had heated the air between them earlier. Gone was any sign that he felt anything other than honest curiosity about her well-being. For a moment, Claire had no idea what to say. Because for a moment, she honestly didn’t know how she’d been.

“Um, fine,” she finally muttered, shaking off the odd sensation that everything in her life was wrong. “I, uh…” She swallowed with some difficulty and glanced away. “I’ve been fine.”

“Just fine?”

She inhaled a shaky breath and released it slowly, wishing she could turn back the clock almost twenty years, to the day she’d first lain eyes on Nick Campisano at Overdale High School in Gloucester City. It really had been a lifetime ago. Back then, Claire had been the shy, skinny new kid, hiding behind big glasses and baggy clothes. Nick Campisano, with his dark good looks and gregarious disposition and total self-confidence, in his red-and-gold, multilettered football jacket, had seemed like a Roman god. Even as a sophomore, he’d already been making a splash on the varsity teams. And Claire, as a lowly freshman, hadn’t entered his sphere of existence at all.

No, that hadn’t happened until she was a junior, and he was a senior. When she’d gotten contact lenses and gone through a second puberty that had rounded her out nicely. They’d been in study hall together, where fate—and Mrs. Ballantine—had thrown them together at the same table. It had taken all of five minutes for Nick to charm Claire into going out with him. After that, there had been no turning back for either of them.

Not until the day she graduated from Princeton with a BS in biology and an acceptance letter to Yale med school. That was the day everything began to unravel.

“Yes, fine,” she told him when she remembered that his question required an answer. “I’m fine,” she repeated yet again, as if by saying it often enough, she could make the statement true.

“Yeah, well, I guess I can’t disagree,” he told her, his voice low and appraising. “You look terrific.”

A tiny splash of heat ignited in the pit of her stomach at his carelessly offered observation. Immediately she extinguished it. No sense getting fired up over something that wasn’t going to happen, she told herself. Unable to stop herself, however, she replied, “You look pretty good yourself.”

He shrugged the compliment off quite literally, then waited until she was gazing at his face again before he continued. “Nice house,” he remarked with absolutely no inflection one way or another. “Guess you’re doing pretty well these days.”

“I do all right,” she concurred.

He expelled a single, almost derisive chuckle. “All right,” he echoed. “You probably paid more for this house than I’ll make in ten years.”

She couldn’t contradict him, because she knew he was right. So she said nothing.

“Guess you got everything you wanted, huh, Claire?”

Well, not quite everything, Nick.

“How would you even know what I wanted?” she asked softly, without bitterness. She didn’t want to return to their earlier acrimony, but she wasn’t about to let him get away with thinking that what had happened between them was all her fault. “You never even bothered to ask.”

His easygoing demeanor quickly vanished, and he went back to being brittle and wary. “There was a time when you and I wanted the same thing,” he said. “I didn’t need to ask.”

Although that wasn’t quite true, Claire didn’t call him on it. She only told him, “We were kids, Nick. We couldn’t possibly know what we wanted then.”

“Hey, speak for yourself,” he countered. “I knew exactly what I wanted.”

“Then maybe you should have taken better care of it,” she replied.

Nick studied Claire in the faint, golden light of the very expensive-looking lamp that shone from the other side of the room. And he tried with all his might to make his heart stop pounding against his breastbone the way it was. Nothing had brought him more happiness back then than taking care of Claire Wainwright. Nothing. And he couldn’t think of anything that would bring him more joy now.

But there had been other things that were more important to her than Nick Campisano. And for that, more than anything else, he couldn’t forgive her. He’d offered to build his entire life around her and the family they would have created together. And for that, she’d dumped him. Because that wouldn’t have been enough for her.

God, she looked incredible, though. Better than he could possibly have imagined. Better than she had ever looked before. The last time he’d seen her, he’d been too stunned and overwhelmed to say anything to her. All he’d been able to do was stare at her from across the dance floor of the Knights of Columbus hall, telling himself to ask her to dance, then cursing himself for wanting to.

By now, they should have been celebrating their tenth or twelfth wedding anniversary. They should have had a house full of rug rats crawling and running all over the place. They should have been worrying about carpooling and school plays and orthodontists and how old Nick, Jr. should be before they’d let him get a golden retriever.

They should have been a family, a great, big, boisterous—and very happy—South Jersey family. Instead, they were both alone. And speaking for himself, happiness—real, honest, genuine happiness—was one thing he’d never quite been able to find.

“I listened to you, Claire,” he defended himself softly. “I just didn’t think you meant what you said. I couldn’t believe you’d think there were other things that were more important than us.”

Her lips parted in what was obvious surprise, but she said nothing, neither to deny, nor to confirm, his allegations. Instead, she only wrapped her arms around herself more tightly, as if she were trying to keep herself from falling apart.

“So, um, what are you going to do about the baby?” she finally asked.

He told himself he was relieved by her question, was glad she was no more willing to revisit the past than he was. Somehow, though, the change of subject didn’t sit well with him. As it had been for so many years, things just didn’t seem settled between the two of them.

“To be honest,” he said, “I’m not sure. I should call Social Services, but there was no answer there earlier, so I’m not too hopeful that there’s going to be anybody there now. And even if there is, with the weather being the way it is, I don’t think there’s much chance that anyone’s going to want to venture out here tonight.”

Claire went pale at his assessment of the situation. “But…but…someone has to make it out here tonight,” she said, clearly anxious.

Nick shrugged noncommittally. “Yeah, well, I’ll give it my best shot, but don’t get your hopes up.”

“But someone has to.”

“Claire, I—”

“They have to, Nick,” she interrupted, her tone of voice bordering on panicked.

Nick grew puzzled at her reaction. Hey, he knew Claire was no fan of kids—of course, that was something he didn’t find out until the day she’d told him to take a hike—but her reaction now was still kind of surprising. It was just a baby, he thought. What was the big deal?

“I’ll make the call,” he assured her. “But in this weather, on New Year’s Eve, no less, I just wouldn’t count on seeing anybody anytime soon. It’d take a miracle to get someone out here tonight.”

“Then get me a miracle,” she insisted. “Now.”

“Why? What’s the big deal?”

She expelled one single, incredulous chuckle. “Because I can’t take care of this baby by myself,” she told him. “There’s no way.”

He smiled, feeling something warm and totally uncalled-for unwinding in his belly. “Hey, don’t sweat it. Even if we can’t get anybody from Social Services out here tonight, you won’t be by yourself.”

She eyed him curiously. “I won’t?”