Father On The Brink

The only problem was, Cooper had no idea where the other members of his newly formed family could be.

Four (#ulink_4b1eae0f-e6ff-59d7-9c48-2971cdeff66b)

Normally, Cooper couldn’t get out of the supermarket fast enough Normally, he stood in the check-out line shifting his weight restlessly from one foot to the other, and shaking his head in amazement at the headlines that screamed out from the tabloid racks about alien Elvises, mutant gerbil children and man-eating dieffenbachias. Normally, all he wanted was to escape the legions of slow-moving blue-haired ladies, screeching, whiny toddlers and single guys like himself who knew of no other aisle outside the frozen food section.

But he hadn’t been feeling normal for some time now, and today he didn’t mind lingering behind the woman ahead of him in line. And not because of her cascade of blond hair or the slim, tanned legs extending from her tight cut-offs, either, although he had noted those things about her right off. What held Cooper’s attention now was the woman’s baby.

He had no idea how to gauge the age of the infant strapped into the carrier that had been settled in the seat part of the grocery cart ahead of him. Nor did he have a clue as to the baby’s gender. It could be a two-week-old boy or a seven-month-old girl for all he knew about babies. Hell, before today, the only time he’d been this close to one had been the night he’d delivered—

But he wouldn’t think about that. He wouldn’t think about Katie and Andrew Brennan and the fact that the two of them still haunted his dreams nearly two months after he’d last seen them. He wouldn’t think about how he’d gone back to Katie’s house in Chestnut Hill—at least, what he’d thought was Katie’s house in Chestnut Hill—only to find it inhabited by an elderly couple who’d called the place home since 1958, and who had never heard of any family in the neighborhood named Brennan.

He wouldn’t think about the fact that there were no Brennans in the Philadelphia phone book that had a Chestnut Hill address. Nor would he wonder yet again why Katie had given the hospital a phony Las Vegas address as her own. God knows he wouldn’t recall yet again his concern about being named Andrew’s father on the baby’s birth certificate. And he wouldn’t think about the fact that he had absolutely no hope of ever finding Katie or Andrew again to demand answers for all the questions that would trouble him for some time to come.

Instead, Cooper focused again on the baby in the grocery cart, who stared back at him with a steady, unblinking gaze, eyes huge and brown and mesmerizing. Then the baby smiled, a wide, toothless grin that crinkled its eyes at the corners and wrinkled its little nose, and it stuck its tongue out at Cooper and uttered a heartfelt, and very wet, “Spthibble.”

The baby’s unabashed commentary made Cooper laugh. He hadn’t even realized he’d reacted in such a way until the leggy blonde turned around and began to laugh, too.

“He likes you,” she said. “He doesn’t usually smile that way at strangers.”

Cooper glanced up long enough to acknowledge her comment, then looked back down at the baby. “It’s a boy, huh?”

The woman nodded. “As of the last time I changed his diaper, anyway.”

Cooper smiled. “How old?”

“He’ll be five months next week.”

“Cute kid.”

“Yeah, I think so, too.”

“Is he a lot of trouble?”

The woman chuckled. “Oh, yeah. The whole time I was pregnant, all of our friends with kids kept saying, ‘You can’t imagine how much your life will change once you have that baby.’ And my husband and I kept saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, we know. We’re ready for it.’” Her chuckle turned to laughter. “We had no idea. You really can’t imagine what a huge life change it is until you have one of your own.”

This time Cooper was the one to nod.

“But he’s worth it,” the woman said as she stroked her son’s cheek. Her voice oozed affection, and her eyes shone with happiness. “He’s just so wonderful. You can’t imagine that part, either, until you have one of your own.”

“Yeah, maybe…”

His voice trailed off, leaving unfinished whatever he’d intended to say. The cashier barked out a total to the woman in front of him, and he watched as she wrote her check, picked up her purse and began to roll her cart away. Seemingly as an afterthought, she turned around to Cooper again.

“Thinking of having one of your own?” she asked with a smile.

He shook his head resolutely. “Nope. Just curious.”

She laughed again. “Better watch yourself. That’s what I used to say.” And with that, she turned around again and exited the supermarket.

Cooper watched her go, finding some solace in the fact that a person could have a child and still be interesting, attractive and happy, not to mention maintain a sense of humor. For some reason, he’d thought all that would dry up once a person became a parent. Wasn’t that how it usually worked? You had a kid, you bought a house in the ’burbs, and you started worrying about aphids and driving a minivan. You picked up weight and lost your hair, and you started saying things like, “Turn that music down” or “When I was your age” or “Finish your broccoli—children are starving in Europe.”

Yet there went a woman who, if she hadn’t been married, he probably would have asked out. She didn’t seem like a mom. She seemed like…fun. She was even kind of sexy. Go figure. Who knew?

It was a thought that came back to taunt him that evening when he answered the knock at his front door and opened it to find Katie Brennan standing on the other side.

Just like that.

For a moment, he could only stare at her, half convinced she was nothing more than a mirage, a simple refraction of light resulting from the bloodred sun that hung low in the sky behind her. Immediately, however, he realized she was not. Because if she was a mirage, he would be seeing her as he had the last time, and this Katie was entirely different from the one he had met two months ago.

For one thing, she was much thinner—too thin, really. And her hair was a bit longer, though it lacked the luster and softness that had been present before. Her face was paler now than it had been even in childbirth, the skin drawn tightly over high cheekbones and a narrow nose. And dark circles stained the undersides of her eyes, making them appear even larger and a stormier gray than they had before.

She looked more exhausted than she had the last time he’d seen her. More fragile. More frantic. And Cooper could scarcely believe his good fortune that she had come back to him.

For one long moment, he could only stand stock-still staring at her. Then a baby’s soft cooing punctured the silence, and Cooper dropped his gaze to the infant she clutched in her arms. Where Katie seemed to have deteriorated into almost nothing, Andrew was fat and pink and thriving. It was as if the baby had taken his vitality from Katie, as if she had literally given of herself to keep him hale. He gazed up at Cooper with a bland expression in his blue-gray eyes, then turned his attention back to his mother. Cooper didn’t know much about babies, but he could have sworn Andrew looked worried about his mom.

“Help me.”

They were the first words Katie had spoken to Cooper so long ago, on a cold, snowy night when her child’s welfare had so clearly superseded her own. Now it was springtime, a bright, balmy evening full of promise, and she repeated the words again with exactly the same intonation. She was asking for help for herself, but she was obviously demanding it for her son.