A Baby for Easter (2 page)

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s fine. I was just focusing too much, I guess.”

He handed her two cookies in a plastic baggie. “I was told to
give you these.” The action and tone were strangely intentional for such a
casual gesture.

She blinked in surprise and looked down at the chocolate
chip cookies, which Jessica must have baked. “Oh. Thank you.”

Alice assumed he would walk out now, since his assigned task
was accomplished, but he didn’t. He just stood there. In anyone else, she would
have thought he felt awkward, but this was Micah.

Even as a kid, he’d always been the king of every room.

“How’s it going?”

She frowned in surprise but answered easily enough. “Fine.
I’m just finishing up the bulletin for church on Sunday.”

“Oh. I meant…I meant in general.” He cleared his throat and
fiddled with his keys. He must be making an extra effort to be polite with her
instead of so standoffish. “Do you like working for the church?”

She finally realized what he was asking. “Oh. Yeah. It’s
fine. I’m happy for any job at this point.”

“Would you rather work for a library?”

“Of course. I’d love it if I could get a full-time job at a
library, but there just doesn’t seem to be anything available.”

His eyes were resting on her face as if he were really
listening, but he still wasn’t smiling. “But you have a Master’s, don’t you?”

“Yeah. In Library Science. But tons of people have the same
degree, and there aren’t that many available jobs. University libraries aren’t
able to add many positions these days, so most jobs are replacements, when
people move on or retire. And other candidates have PhD’s, or double Master’s
degrees, or a lot more experience, so I’m just not a top candidate.”

“So are you looking at public libraries then?”

“Yeah. But it’s really a different career path, and there
are budget cuts there too. I’ve been talking to the library here, and they’ve
given me ten hours a week, but that’s all they can do right now.”

His expression shifted slightly, although she couldn’t
exactly interpret the shift. “So you’d be okay staying in Willow Park?”

Her eyes widened. “Yeah. Of course. I’d love to live here
again if I could get a full-time job. There’s just not much in this area, so
I’m having to look farther out.”

“I thought maybe you wanted a bigger area like Asheville.”

She wondered if he thought she’d become some sort of
big-city snob who didn’t like small-town living anymore.
 
It couldn’t be farther from the truth. “I
liked Asheville fine and would be happy to stay there, but I love Willow Park. Mostly,
I just want a job, and I want to move out of my parents’ house—however that
happens. Even the two jobs I’m doing now aren’t enough to afford rent in this
town.”

“Rent here is crazy overblown, because it’s so hot with
tourists and retirees.” Micah’s forehead wrinkled as if he were thinking hard.
“You know, I don’t know if it could work for you, but I’ve got a—” He broke off
whatever he was going to say when his phone chirped with a text message. He
pulled it out and glanced down at it.

Alice turned back toward her computer, since she assumed the
conversation was over. She didn’t know why he’d stopped to talk to her so much
today. They hadn’t had such a long conversation since they’d both been in high
school. Maybe Daniel had been lecturing him on treating his assistant so aloofly.
Or maybe Micah had finally realized that she wasn’t chasing him.

It would be nice if he’d smile at her once in a while,
though.

She told herself to remember her fourth rule—about not
making up stories about men’s intentions and motivations—and forced herself to
stop wondering.

She could feel Micah still standing there, next to the desk,
and she suddenly felt flustered. She was tempted to look over to discover what
he was doing, but that would be getting dangerously close to breaking her
fourth rule.

So she kept hitting letters on the keyboard, even though
they weren’t making any intelligible words.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat again. “It looks like
you’re busy. I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

She stopped typing and smiled at him, still feeling confused
and disoriented. “Yeah. Have a good afternoon.”

So he walked out. She watched him leave, trying not to
admire too much the sight of his firm butt and long legs in his jeans.

Girls all over town were crazy about him, from age eighteen
to thirty-five. Any one of them would jump if he showed any interest in them.
There wasn’t any sense in Alice thinking in that direction. Just because they’d
had the one summer together, when she’d believed him to be sweet and funny and smart
and devout and everything she could ever want, didn’t mean anything now.

She’d never been deluded about her own desirability. She was
okay-looking—with long curly brown hair and big blue-gray eyes—but there was a
reason that, when she was twelve, Micah had coined the nickname “Dormouse” for
her. It had been a play on her name, of course, since instead of looking like
Alice in Wonderland, she instead looked like the Dormouse—tiny, with a too-big mouth
and too-small nose, and by nature more of a reader than a talker.

She was just finishing the bulletin when Jessica came out of
Daniel’s office.

“Thanks for bringing me lunch,” Alice said. “It was really
nice of you to think of me.”

“Of course. No problem at all.” Jessica was smiling, but her
smile faded as she glanced around the office. “Did Micah take off already?”

“Yeah. He left a few minutes ago.” There wasn’t any reason
for him to stick around, but Alice thought Jessica looked surprised and annoyed
for some reason.

“All right.” Jessica sighed and then straightened up. “Hey,
are you free for dinner on Friday evening?”

“Yeah.” It didn’t take any thinking to figure this out.
Alice was free on every night of the week she wasn’t working.

“Come over to our place. I’ve having a few people over. Do
you think you can make it?”

“Sure. Thank you.” Alice had known Jessica all her life too,
since they’d all grown up in Willow Park together, but Jessica was a year or
two older, so they’d never really been friends. It was very nice of her to be
making an effort, though. Alice didn’t like to be pitied, but she wasn’t about
to refuse a kindly offered invitation. “Can I bring anything?”

“No, you don’t have to—” Jessica broke off, and her mouth
twisted wryly. “Well, actually, would you mind bringing a salad? I’m always stressed
out over meal-planning, so it helps if I don’t have to make everything myself.”

“Sure.” Alice grinned, appreciating the other woman’s
honesty and good-humor. “How many will be there? Just so I know how big a salad
to make.”

“I’m not sure. Four or five. No more than six.”

“Okay. Thanks for asking.”

Jessica was smiling, as if she were very pleased with
herself, as she left.

Alice looked at the door out of which the other woman had
disappeared. Jessica was quiet and unassuming, never trying to be the center of
attention. Growing up, she’d always been like Alice—not one of the popular
girls, not the one the guys always went after.

But Jessica had managed to snare a fantastic husband anyway.

It should be encouraging, but it wasn’t. Alice reminded
herself that it didn’t matter anymore. She was resurrecting her life—and doing
things better this time. She had what was most important. Plus, she had her
rules, and she wasn’t going to break them by dwelling on what she didn’t have.

She’d been stupid about men for too long. Jeff, her first
boyfriend and her first fiancé, had evidently moved on long before he’d ever
bothered to tell her. And she, being stupid, had ignored all the obvious clues
that something hadn’t been right between them.

And then she’d known that she and Bill had different views
about marriage and, in particular, the role of wives, but she’d assumed they
could work it out—until he refused to budge in even the slightest of ways and
finally broke the engagement because she wasn’t properly submissive.

Now that it was over, she was glad to be rid of both of
them, but she knew she was to blame for letting herself get into the
situations. Stupidity had consequences, after all. So, four months ago, she’d
developed a set of rules. She didn’t think they should be universally applied
to all women, but they were what she needed to keep from being stupid again.
They were helping her be content with her newly established life, and they
would protect her heart.

There were five of them.

1. Never assume a man likes you unless he both tells you and
shows you.

2. Never go out of your way to encourage a man to ask you
out.

3. Never trap a man in a conversation about his feelings
that he doesn’t want to have.

4. Never analyze a man’s behavior or read into his
motivations and intentions toward you.

5. Never, ever,
ever
daydream about a future unless he’s promised you a future.

Those were her rules, and she was determined to keep them.

***

A couple of hours later, Daniel went
to visit someone in the hospital, and Alice took that opportunity to haul the
piles of books from the credenza into his office and start shelving them on the
bookshelves there.

She’d organized Daniel’s books when she’d first gotten the
job, so they were all in a clear, logical order, and she knew where each one of
them went.

She could dress as casually as she wanted to work at the
church—at least, that was what Daniel had told her when she’d gotten the
job—but she always made an effort to look somewhat professional, since people
stopped by fairly often and she was the first person they saw.

Now, however, Alice was regretting her random impulse that
morning to put on a skirt, since she was on her knees in front of the
bookshelves, putting the last of the commentaries back in place.

At least no one was around, since she was in a rather
undignified position, with her skirt pushed up to her thighs to give herself
freedom to move.

“Daniel,” a voice came from outside the office. “Daniel!”

She recognized the voice, but he was in the office before
she could move or pull down her skirt. She froze as she looked over her
shoulder, befuddled by Micah’s sudden appearance.

He seemed equally startled to discover her on the floor, after
his eyes scanned the room for his absent brother. “Oh,” he said, standing in
the doorway.

It took her a minute to pull herself together, but when she
did she managed to smile. “He went out to the hospital to see Mrs. Cooper.”

“Oh.” Micah was such a self-assured man that it was strange
to see him look so stumped.

Then there was a different sound in the office. It took
Alice a few seconds to even identify it. It was so unexpected that she was sure
it wasn’t right.

It sounded like a baby whimpering.

Finally, her eyes drifted down to something Micah was
holding. A baby carrier.
A baby carrier
.

“Is that a baby?” she asked, her voice hoarse with surprise.

He looked down at the carrier as if he’d forgotten he held
it. “Yeah.”

She scrambled to her feet, rather clumsily, and hurried over
to look at the baby as he set the carrier on Daniel’s desk, right on top of the
printed copy of sermon notes for Sunday. He was carrying a bag over his
shoulder, but he didn’t set that down.

She peered into the carrier and saw the baby—maybe four or
five months old—wearing a pink sleeper. Her eyes were blue and grumpy, and her
whimpers were quickly turning louder.

Instinctively, Alice reached out for the girl and pulled her
up to rest against her shoulder, patting her back in a comforting manner.

Alice had always liked kids. She’d never had baby-fever, but
she certainly knew what to do when one was starting to cry.

“What are you doing with her?” she asked Micah, who’d been
staring at the baby with that same glazed look of bewilderment.

“I…I don’t know.”

“Well, whose is she?” Surely this baby hadn’t dropped from
the sky into the back of Micah’s truck.

His features twisted slightly—maybe anxiety, maybe
disbelief. “That’s the thing. I think…I think she’s mine.”

“What do you mean, she’s
yours
?”

“I mean she might be my daughter.”
 
Micah still looked almost frozen, as if he
hadn’t fully taken in what was happening.

Alice shifted the baby from one shoulder to the other,
jostling her slightly as she continued to whimper. “But how…where did she come
from?”

“Her mom died in a car accident last week, and her
grandparents just showed up and said she’s mine.”

“So they’re taking care of her? They just want you to…to
know her?”

He shook his head, his eyes fixed on the baby’s profile.
“They said they can’t raise her full time.”

Alice swallowed, trying to understand this, trying to get
her mind to work. She felt as stunned and paralyzed as Micah looked. “They don’t
want her?”

“I think they do, but they’re not in great health and they
don’t think they can anymore. They said I’m the father.”

They stared at each other for a minute, and Alice felt
strangely like they completely understood each other, in a way they hadn’t
since they’d been working at the summer camp.

“What am I going to do?” Micah breathed at last.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head hard, as if that might
clear her mind. “I guess you need to figure out if she’s really yours and if
her grandparents are serious.” She glanced down at the baby, who was making
soft little gurgles. “Poor little thing. What’s her name?”

“Cara.”

Cara lifted her head and peered at Alice’s face
inquisitively. Alice couldn’t help but smile at the round blue eyes.

“Those do look like your eyes,” she murmured.

“I know.” Micah’s tone was subdued, slightly stretched.

He was a single guy who hadn’t spent a lot of time around babies.
Having one thrust on him was probably the last thing in the world he wanted or
expected.

“Okay,” Alice said. “I can watch her, if you want, while you
go and try to figure out some answers. Why do they assume you’re the father? Where
did her grandparents go?”

“They were going to the hospital for some sort of procedure.
I guess I should have gotten more…I was so stunned I just…”

Alice felt an intense wave of sympathy for Micah, who really
looked like he might just buckle under the weight of this development. “I’ll
watch her so you can do what you need to do.”

“Are you sure?” He rubbed his jaw, which was slightly
scratchy from half a day’s stubble. “I know you have to work—”

“No, it’s fine. I’m finished here for the day, and I don’t
have any hours in the library today. I might just take her home.” She faltered,
thinking about how her mother would hover, asking questions, if she showed up
at the house with a baby in tow. “Or…”

“You can take her to my place,” he said, obviously seeing
her hesitance. “If that’s okay with you. It might be easier.”

“Yeah. Good.” She went to put Cara back in her carrier.
“You’re in that house on Plymouth Street now?”

Micah was always in the process of flipping a house. He
bought a rundown property, moved in, and worked on it in his spare time. When
it was fixed up, he sold it—for a huge profit, since real estate was a hot
commodity in the picturesque mountain town—and bought another property to do it
again.

“Yeah,” he said. “The one on the corner with the oak tree in
the yard.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. As he spun one
off, he added, “Here. Are you sure you don’t mind? I know I just kind of dumped
this on—”

“It’s fine,” she assured him, pocketing the key and then
strapping Cara in the carrier. “It’s really fine. I like babies.” She smiled at
Micah’s anxious look. “I’m serious. It’s really fine.”

This evidently reassured him because he picked up the
carrier as Alice went to get her purse and shut down her computer.

They left the church and headed to Alice’s car.

“Oh,” she said, as she opened her backseat. “We might have a
problem.”

Micah just stared at her.

“They didn’t give you a base to the car seat, did they?”

“No. They just gave me the bag and that.” He gestured to the
carrier. “I guess we need a car seat.”

“I think that is the car seat, but I thought they latched
into some sort of base.” Alice tried to remember the last time she’d seen an
infant in a car seat, and she couldn’t even remember. “Maybe it hooks with the
seatbelt.”

 
“The seatbelt would
hook to this thing? What would it hook to?” He peered at the carrier but
obviously didn’t know what he was looking for.

“How did you get her over here?” She suddenly had a vision
of his putting Cara in the bed of his pickup with his tools.

“I just set it on the floor of the passenger seat.” His face
twisted in guilt. “Shit, I’m terrible at this.” Then he gave a start. “Sorry.”

She shook her head to dismiss his concern about his
language. “Okay, let’s see if we can strap it into the backseat.” She lifted up
the fabric lining the bottom of the carrier and perked up. “It’s got these
grooves here, so maybe the seatbelt is supposed to go through here.”

So they put the carrier into the backseat and both leaned
over to try to hook it in.

They tried several different belt positions, but couldn’t
seem to make it work in a way that made the seat feel secure.

When they kept bumping heads in the small space, Alice went
around to the other side to give them both more room to work.

The whole time, Cara just stared at them alternately with
big blue eyes, clearly mesmerized by all the activity.

Alice was getting more and more frustrated with their
inability to figure out the car seat. Plus, she was getting hot in the stuffy
back of the car.

“We already tried it that way,” she said, when Micah tried
to belt the carrier in a familiar configuration.

“Well, how is it supposed to go? Don’t you know how to work
these things?”

“Why would I know? I’ve never had a baby.
You’re
supposed to be the one who’s
mechanically inclined. Why can’t you figure it out?”

“I sure wouldn’t have designed this ridiculous contraption
in a way that’s impossible to attach.”

“Oh wait,” she said, remembering something she should have
recalled earlier. “I think it’s supposed to face the other way.”

“That can’t be right,” Micah said, turning the carrier as
she’d indicated. He was leaning over, and he looked just as hot and frustrated
as she felt. “Why would they make the poor babies look at nothing but the back
of the seat?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s safer or something. Let’s just try
it. Maybe the belt goes through like this.”

Micah fed the belt through the loops, and the buckle got
stuck at one point. “Shit,” he muttered, trying to free the belt. “Shit.” Then
he glanced up at her. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have to keep saying sorry,” she said, slightly
snippy. “I’ve heard worse, you know.”

“I know you have.” He sounded just as bad-tempered as her.
“But do you really think I should be teaching her bad language?”

“She can’t even talk yet.”

“Well, she can hear.”

“Fine,” Alice grumbled, tilting the carrier slightly to make
room for Micah’s run of the belt. “Try to watch your language then.”

He gave her a cool glare, but it changed when Alice was able
to snap the seatbelt closed.

They both tested the carrier to make sure it was stable, but
they couldn’t get it to move more than a few inches, no matter how they tugged
on it, so they assumed it would do for the short ride to Micah’s house.

Alice sighed in relief as she finally climbed out of the car
and walked around to the driver’s side.

Micah was leaning against the car, wiping sweat from his
forehead with the back of his hand. He looked exhausted, defeated somehow.

Despite her annoyance just the moment before, she felt
another pull of sympathy. She reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s
going to be all right.”

“Is it?” he asked, opening his eyes and meeting hers.

“Yeah. We’ll figure this out. We don’t know anything yet.”

“But what if she’s mine? What if her grandparents really don’t
want her? What if I’m the only parent she has? I can’t even manage to get her
strapped into the car.”

“You’ll figure something out. Something that’s good for her.
First, figure out what the whole situation is. Then you can go from there.”

He let out a sigh and straightened up. “Yeah. Thanks. I’m
not sure how long I’ll be.”

“That’s fine. Just give me a call if you’re going to be a
long time. I’ll be at your place.”

He handed her the bag he’d dropped to the ground. “She has
some stuff in here. Bottles and stuff.”

She nodded, relieved the grandparents had thought of at
least that much. “Okay. We’ll be fine. Just do what you need to do.”

She got in the car, and Micah stood there watching until she
started it and pulled out of the lot.

He was still standing there, by himself in the otherwise
empty church parking lot, tall and strong and handsome and somehow lonely, when
Alice turned the corner and lost sight of him at last.

***

Five hours later, Alice was sitting
on the couch in Micah’s house, waiting for him and wanting very much to
strangle him.

He hadn’t called. She’d called him three times, but he
hadn’t answered. She had no idea what was happening. When he’d be back. Whether
he’d found out any answers about Cara. If he even remembered they existed.

What was wrong with the man, anyway?

She’d fed and changed Cara twice now. She’d played with her
a little bit, and Cara had watched her fix a sandwich from the very slim
pickings in Micah’s refrigerator. Now Cara was sound asleep on a blanket on the
rug, and Alice was sitting and stewing.

If Micah didn’t get back or at least call her soon then she
would…well, she didn’t know what she was going to do. She’d like to storm out,
but she could hardly storm out with Cara, since, whomever the baby belonged to,
it definitely wasn’t her.

She was a really sweet little girl, though. And really
pretty with her perfectly shaped little head, chubby cheeks, and shaded
eyelids, like they’d been applied with lavender eye shadow.

But Micah was an insensitive ass for just abandoning both of
them like this for hours without a word.

Alice had called and complained to her mom, since her mom
would otherwise be wondering where she was. But she didn’t have anything else
to do. There was a television, but nothing good was on, and all of Micah’s
books were about espionage or carpentry, neither of which was her cup of tea.

She was working herself into a high temper when she finally
heard the side door bang.

She jumped off the couch and was standing to meet him when
he came into the room, looking even more tired than he had earlier.

“It’s about time you managed to show up,” she said in a
harsh whisper, so as not to wake up Cara.

He blinked in surprise. “I’m sorry. I—”

She shushed him, indicating Cara sleeping not far away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in a low murmur. “It was a fiasco, but
I didn’t realize it was so late. Did you have somewhere else to be?”

He looked genuinely contrite, which stifled her temper
slightly. “No. But I asked you to call, which you didn’t do. The least you
could do was call me back after I called you.”

His eyes widened and he pulled out his phone. “Shit,” he
said. “It was silenced. I didn’t know you’d called. I’m sorry.”

Now, she felt like she’d been unreasonable and pushy, since
he looked so taken aback. That just made her more annoyed. “Okay. But it would
have been nice if you could have given a thought to me and Cara, waiting here.”

He’d walked over to where Cara was sleeping and was peering
down at her, reaching out like he would touch her but then stopping himself.
But at her words, he turned back to Alice. “I was thinking about you. I just…”
He groaned and collapsed onto the couch. “I made a mess of this whole thing,
but I should have done better by you. I should have done better…” He trailed
off, his eyes fixed on the sleeping baby.

Alice went over to sit next to him on the couch. “It’s okay.
I’m sorry if I was grumpy. I was just sitting and worrying and had no idea what
was going on. What did you find out?”

“Well, it seems like she might be mine. I’ll need a
paternity test to be sure, but her folks say that Heather always said that I
was the father. It’s on the birth certificate.” He handed Alice a folded
document.

She unfolded it and saw that it was indeed Cara’s birth
certificate, with Micah’s name as father. “Heather,” Alice said, reading the
name on the line for the mother. “So she really died?”

“Yeah. It was that accident on 77 last week. Did you hear
about that on the news?”

“So the grandparents want you to just take her?”

“I guess so. It sounds like they’ve done most of the childcare
up to this point anyway, since Heather was kind of wild, but they’re not in
good shape physically, so they just can’t raise a kid full time. They said
they’d help out however they can, but they seemed to assume that I would…”

“You—” Alice stopped and cleared her voice. “You didn’t know
about Cara before?”

“Heather never told me. They live in Dalton, so it’s not
like I would’ve just heard it through the grapevine. I had no idea she got
pregnant.” He wasn’t looking Alice in the eye. He was staring at the empty
fireplace.

“You dated Heather?” She asked the question delicately,
feeling uncomfortable about the topic but like she needed to know.

Or, at least, she
wanted
to know.

Micah didn’t look surprised by the question, but he still
didn’t meet her eyes. “Not…really.”

“It was a one-night stand?”

“Yeah.” His eyes shot to hers quickly. “We used protection.
At least, I think we did. But I was drunk.”