If I Loved You

“And they had Laila,” Molly guessed.

Brig nodded, still gazing down at the baby. Her tiny hand closed around his little finger, and his heart melted, which happened about ten times a day.

“They had Laila,” he echoed, his tone husky. “Then, while she was still in the hospital with her mother after the birth, a bunch of insurgents hit the place. Boom. In the bombing, Laila’s mom died instantly.” He paused. “Her name was Zada. You know what that means?”

“No.”

“The lucky one. But that day she wasn’t so lucky...and Sean lived just long enough to make sure Laila was okay.”

Molly’s eyes had softened. “This must be hard to talk about. You don’t have to go on, Brig.”

Why was he surprised at her words? Molly had always been sensitive to other people. Once, she’d even been sensitive to him. Now he swallowed the pain that sometimes threatened to consume him. His anger over Sean and Zada was easier to feel and just as hard to forget.

“But I ask you, Molly—what kind of thing was that? A man goes to see his wife, his new daughter, the happiest kind of day for a young couple in love—a family for the first time—and he ends up dead. They do,” he added.

Molly seemed to be holding her breath. “What about the baby? How did Laila survive that ghastly explosion?”

“The nurses claimed they wanted to give Sean and Zada some time together. They took the baby back to the nursery at the other end of the building minutes before the device went off. She didn’t get a scratch, which is a miracle in itself. I spent the past two months entangled in red tape before I got permission to bring Laila to the States.”

Molly’s gaze brightened, as if a light had been turned on. “Your friend...asked you to keep her. If anything happened to him.”

Brig nodded again. “We all make wills,” he said, “before we deploy. Kind of a downer, wouldn’t you say? But necessary when you think about it. I’m officially Laila’s guardian now. Not the best choice of ‘parent’ for her in my opinion, but, yes, I promised Sean. Who would have guessed that he and Zada would both...that Laila...” How was Brig going to care for the little girl, though? She could stay with his folks when he was in the field, as they’d already agreed, but that arrangement would be temporary, and now he had to find them first.

Molly briefly touched his arm. “You’ve had a really bad time.”

“Not just me,” he said, wanting to change the subject before he totally fell apart. “I’m sorry about your husband. Mom told me.”

There was another long silence while Molly appeared to gather herself, and Brig wondered if she felt as uneasy talking about this as he had about Sean and Zada.

“Thank you,” she said at last, her voice husky. “Andrew was a great guy.”

And I wasn’t. She had a point, even unspoken. Brig couldn’t fault her for not wanting to dredge up her sorrow. But still he went on.

“I remember Andrew Darling from school,” Brig said, “but I didn’t know him very well. He was a couple of years ahead of me. Two, I think. He always seemed quiet, but he was friendly. A serious kind of guy.”

“He had this laugh, though,” she said. “It always surprised me—when he wasn’t the type for surprises. We were a lot alike, really, I guess. He was so steady, settled...”

Not like me.

The next words almost stuck in his throat. “Were you happy, Molly?”

He needed to hear her say yes, so he wouldn’t continue to feel guilty for leaving. Yet he dreaded hearing her say just that.

“We were,” she said at last, “but not nearly long enough. While we were together, yes, we were happy. Can we stop talking about this now?”

She fell silent, as if lost in her memories, and Brig knew again that the topic would have been better left alone. Like Sean and Zada. Still, this was his and Molly’s starting point. A crazy sort of catching up.

In the next second Brig stiffened. Warmth had spread through his sleeve. But not from the touch of Molly’s hand, which had dropped from his arm. He held out Laila and saw a widening stain on the fabric.

“She’s wet,” Molly noted with that little frown he remembered so well. “When was her diaper changed?”

Already feeling guilty, Brig checked his watch. “About five hours ago.”

“Five hours?”

“On the hard floor in the customs area at JFK while we waited for our bags. I never had time between planes to buy more diapers, and at Frankfurt we ran low. I’ve been rationing Laila’s changes.”

Molly’s soft eyes had turned steely, and her face appeared pale under the festive red heart stuck to her face.

Both he and the baby must look like dirty laundry, wrinkled and thrown together. Now they were both damp and not getting any drier. To Brig, that meant he was losing his grip on the situation—which had happened the first time Laila had screamed on the military cargo plane out of Bagram airfield near Kabul.

“Overseas,” he said, “a local woman took care of Laila while I took care of business. Guess I’m not doing so well now.”

Molly raised an eyebrow. Her expression challenged every one of his insecurities.

“You can use the spare room upstairs to change her.”

Brig could hear the doubt in her tone, and his male pride kicked in. Their brief rapport—if it had even been that—was over. And here he’d thought he and Molly were doing okay as long as they avoided any mention of his betrayal of her.

“You think I can’t change a diaper?” he asked icily.

That was pretty close to the truth.

Not waiting for her answer, he took Laila, the half-finished bottle, and stalked out of the room.

* * *

“WONDERFUL,” MOLLY MUTTERED. “Why not just give a lecture or four or five to a man who’s already half dead on his feet?”

And clearly hurting. The loss of his teammate and the orphaned child had shaken Brig. Just as Brig’s questions about Andrew and Molly’s marriage had shaken her.

She had noted the weary slump of his broad shoulders, and how he held the baby to him like a security blanket.

But Molly pushed aside the observations. There was a party going on, and for the next few hours she had to play hostess. With the rain still falling, she supervised the younger children’s game of indoor tag. She refereed a fight over a TV basketball game. Pop should have known better than to get involved. She comforted her teenage cousin’s angst and soothed toddler tears.

She taught four-year-old Ernie Barlow how to play pin the tail on the donkey—or, rather, on a SpongeBob SquarePants poster—then pretended not to see how her sister, Ann, ignored Ernie’s dad, a new local sheriff’s deputy who seemed to have a thing for her.

And Molly tried not to notice that Brig never came back downstairs to eat or to show off the baby.

By evening, when the festivities wound down, the house resembled a giant trash basket filled with broken toys and exploded balloons. As her guests prepared to leave, every child under the age of five was crying—a sure sign in Molly’s experience of too much stimulation and total but happy exhaustion. For everyone but Molly, the party had been a huge success.

After all the guests left, she hurried upstairs. She found Brig in the spare room, where her offer to heat a late supper for him died on her lips. Brig lay sprawled on the double bed, sound asleep. Clearly he was down for the count. His face told her nothing, which was probably what he wanted after Molly’s earlier criticism. Lying beside him, with Brig’s arm over her like an anchor, the baby stared wide-eyed at the overhead light, flinching each time thunder rumbled in the night sky.

Now at last Molly gave in to the urge churning inside her during the party and slipped to her knees next to the bed. Brig must have dozed off in the midst of dressing Laila for the night. Her right arm was in one sleeve of an aquamarine sleeper, the other, still bare, waved in the air. Half the snaps on the sleeper were undone.

“You giving your old man a hard time?” Molly whispered.

At the sound of her voice, Laila turned her head as if searching for her. Molly reached out, brushing Brig’s arm without meaning to, and quickly touched the baby’s silky hair. Laila’s gaze, dark as a midnight sea, met hers.