All That Remains

India hadn’t been that upset. Her Grandma Olson had been there, and half a dozen friends from preschool with their parents chiming in the birthday song. She’d gotten lots of presents, and when he did finally make it home had taken great pleasure in showing them to him one at a time, putting each carefully away before presenting the next. That was India, congenitally organized.

It was Carlene, predictably, who was furious, certain that Alec was teaching his daughters that they couldn’t depend on him. The words she’d said that night still gnawed at him when he let his guard down. It was only a few weeks later that she’d packed one day while he was at work and announced when he got home that she and the girls were going to her mom’s.

He swore under his breath and tried surreptitiously to flex muscles that ached.

Cupcake was considerably more restless than her mommy. Having her under there was unsettling, like sleeping with a cat that had burrowed beneath the covers. She snuffled and wriggled and periodically woke crying. The first couple of times, Wren barely regained consciousness, and only after Alec shook her awake. He had to unbutton the front of her shirt and help the baby find a nipple. The whole experience was weird and so intimate he tried not to think about the fact that he was groping in the dark for this woman’s breasts and moving her body around so that the strange small creature between them could suckle on her.

He tried to keep the blankets pulled high to maintain the baby’s body temperature. The air outside the coccoon they’d created was winter cold. During one of his periods of wakefulness Alec realized that he couldn’t hear the rain. Incredulous, he lay listening to the silence. Had it finally stopped? Forty days and forty nights. No, it hadn’t actually been that long. He remembered Wren saying that the day felt surreal, as if it had gone on forever and only now mattered. He felt that way about the storm. After the days of gray, slanting rain, bobbing on floodwaters, hauling soaked, scared people until their faces were interchangeable and his tiredness grinding, this attic was an oasis.

He should have slept like a baby, he thought, then smiled as he gently settled Cupcake on her back and pulled blankets higher over her mother, who was already burrowing onto his shoulder. Okay, maybe not. If he had made it home to his own bed, he might have slept like a log. Not a baby.

Probably he should have checked if Cupcake was wet, but he was damned if he was going to bare her butt or try to figure out an alternative he could wrap her in.

With a groan, he did slide his hand under her to make sure she wasn’t soaking the comforter, but so far it was dry, thank God. He seemed to remember that a woman’s breasts didn’t produce much actual milk the first day or so. The trickle of colostrum apparently wasn’t overwhelming Cupcake’s bladder.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was to the gray light of day and to the contented sound of a baby nursing. What the hell…? Alec blinked gritty eyes a couple of times and oriented himself. Attic. Childbirth. Brown-feathered Wren and her wrinkly, red-faced baby.

No weight on his shoulder. He turned his head and saw Wren curled on her side supporting Cupcake’s head. She smiled at him, her face so close he could see the lighter flecks in her brown eyes.

He stretched and discovered that pretty much every muscle in his body ached and he was hungry.

“Damn,” he muttered. “What I’d give for a heaping plate of scrambled eggs, crispy bacon and country-fried potatoes.”

“After a hot shower.” Longing suffused her voice.

“Yeah. Definitely after a shower.”

WHO NEEDED TELEVISION or a morning newspaper when you had a new baby and a gorgeous man around?

Since waking, Wren had spent most of the time—well, half the time—minutely studying her daughter. Less exhausted this morning, she felt wonder bubbling in her like champagne shaken until it threatened to pop the cork. To think that she had created this beautiful, perfect, little person! Wren loved everything, from the tiny, fuzzy eyebrows to the pink lips that pursed and occasionally smacked, to the curve of cheeks and high forehead. When she nursed or bobbed against Wren’s shoulder, Cupcake’s head fit in the cup of her hand as if made for it. She weighed hardly anything, but as Alec had pointed out yesterday, she was doing well, so if she was a week or two early it obviously hadn’t mattered. Wren could tell how relieved he was when he said that. She suspected he, too, had hidden a few shudders at the thought of how many things could have gone wrong.

Astonishingly enough, watching him sleep, and gradually wake, had been almost as engrossing as staring at her beautiful baby. Every so often she looked away from Cupcake to study Alec’s hard face, only slightly relaxed in sleep. No open mouth or drooling; somehow he managed still to seem guarded. And yet there was something about his closed eyelids, the dark lashes fanned on his cheeks, that gave him an air of vulnerability. He was dreaming; his eyelids quivered, and a couple of times his nostrils flared and his mouth tightened. One hand lay on top of the covers, and she saw his fingers twitch, make a fist, then relax again.

At last his lashes fluttered and his eyes opened. For a moment he stared blankly at the empty rafters before his head turned sharply and his deep blue eyes pinned her in place.

She smiled as if it didn’t feel even a tiny bit strange to wake next to him.

His first words told her their minds were in sync. A chocolate energy bar didn’t sound nearly as good this morning as it had yesterday. She could almost smell the bacon.

Wren sighed. Hungry as she was, she’d give up breakfast for a hot shower.

“Oh, well, we don’t even have soap.”

Alec laughed, a low, husky sound. “What would you do with it if you had it? You can’t tell me you want me to dip some floodwater up for you to bathe in.”

Wren scrunched up her nose. “I suppose it’s cold.”

“Safe to say.” The humor left his face. “Not very sanitary, either. The town septic system got overwhelmed, and God knows what’s floating around out there.” He rose to his feet as easily as if he hadn’t spent the night on a hard floor the way she had. “It’s not raining.”

“No. I noticed it quit.”

“Damn,” he said softly. “I should have filled some jars with rainwater yesterday.”

“Will we run out of water?”

He went to the window. “No.” The tension in his voice had dissipated. “No, it’s still drizzling. I’ll start collecting water.”

He figured out how to hang a jar out the window before coming back to discuss breakfast.

“I’ll have apple and cinnamon,” she decided.

“Not chocolate?”

“Who has chocolate for breakfast?”

He chose peanut butter. Suspicious, she asked if he was trying to leave the tastiest ones for her, but he insisted he didn’t care. There were more peanut-butter bars than either of the other flavors, so that’s what he’d eat.

Then, before Cupcake fell asleep, they took advantage of daylight to refold and smooth their bedding, pile the wet or bloody clothes in one place, sort through what was left for suitable diaper or menstrual pad material and continue searching boxes for anything that might be the tiniest bit useful.

“Hah!” Alec exclaimed when he unearthed a trunk of old quilts.

Taking them out, one by one, Wren breathed, “Ooh, look at these. They’re handworked. This one is from the 1920s, I think. Look at these fabrics. And I’ll bet this one’s even older. Alec, the fabric is so fragile. I hate to use them.”

“I don’t.” While she still kneeled in front of the trunk, he lifted out the entire pile and carried it to their pallet. “I don’t know about you, but my whole body hurts. That floor was hard.”

She giggled a little at his indignation. “Didn’t you ever camp?”

“You mean outside? Good God, no. I’m a city boy.”

“You don’t look like a city boy,” she said thoughtfully.

He glanced at himself. His jeans were faded and fit as if molded for him. They were also dirty, the denim stiff from wetting and drying—probably repeatedly. The equally well-worn red chamois shirt stretched across broad shoulders. It had a long tear above one cuff. He was walking around in saggy wool socks. His dark hair stuck out in every direction. The dark stubble on his cheeks was going to be a beard in another day or two.

In fact, he’d confessed as he dug through boxes, that he was wishing for a razor. Even an old-fashioned straight razor.

“Dull would be okay,” he’d muttered.

“Remember? No soap.”

“I just want to scrape it off.” He cast a look of dislike toward the first-aid kit. “If the scissors would just open farther—”

“I have that knife.”

“Did you look at it? It’s worse than dull.”

She shook her head, then smiled. “You look good in a beard.”

He scowled. “I itch.”