“There are toys in her bag,” Kim said, starting to move that way.
Tate placed a hand on her arm. “I’ll get them. Go take care of your grandma, Daryn will be fine in the den with us.”
He wasn’t certain she would find reassurance in knowing he’d be near Daryn, since he’d had so little to do with the child thus far, but she smiled and nodded. “Thanks.”
Feeling somewhat obligated now, he kept an eye on Sandi and the baby when they entered the family room. Sandi directed Nelson to spread a blanket on the spotless hardwood floor, then she put Daryn down on her tummy with her toys within reach. Sandi sat cross-legged next to the baby, positioning herself so she could babysit and watch the game. The older children had left a few toys scattered nearby, but Sandi merely pushed those to one side.
Daryn kicked and squirmed and babbled, happy to be liberated for play time. Sandi cooed at her, eliciting giggles that delighted the woman and made everyone else in the room smile. Even Stuart chuckled a little in response to the sound, though Tate noticed that he did not look up from his tablet computer.
“Oh, look at her!” Sandi trilled when Daryn rose wobbly on her hands and knees and rocked back and forth. “Is she crawling already?”
“Not yet,” Tate answered from the couch where he sat next to Julian. “She’s almost there but hasn’t quite put the moves together.”
“She’ll be up and running before you know it,” Nelson advised from the recliner where he’d settled with an after-lunch beer.
“Very likely.”
“Hey, Tate—here’s that website I was talking about.” Julian passed over his smartphone, pointing to the screen. “How’s that for a honey of an old GTO?”
“Sweet,” Tate agreed, confident now that he could look away from the baby for a while.
For the next fifteen minutes or so, he divided his attention between Julian’s car talk, the ball game and occasional glances toward Daryn. Rusty and Mike were deep in low-voiced conversation on the other side of the room. They looked somber, and Tate wondered if they were talking about the state of Mike’s troubled marriage. He wondered why so many members of this particular family were unable to maintain long-term relationships. Sure, they had their flaws, but what family didn’t? Overall, they seemed decent enough, reasonably cordial despite the underlying frictions even an outsider could sense from the start.
A cell phone played a cutesy ringtone, and Sandi made a quick grab for her purse with an apologetic look to the others in the room. Seeing that Daryn was contently chewing on th
e ear of a rubber bunny, Tate turned his attention back to Julian, asking another question about the Mustang restoration. He had to concentrate to hear everything Julian said. The room was rather noisy with the ball game, occasional beeps from Stuart’s computer, jingles from Daryn’s toys, Sandi’s chatter into her phone, Nelson’s soft snoring in the recliner and unintelligible rumble of conversation from his sons in the far corner. In other words, a typical family gathering.
He hoped Kim was having a good visit with her grandmother. And that Kim and her mother would be able to part after this visit on at least reasonably good terms. Betsy was undeniably difficult, and Tate didn’t blame Kim at all for wanting to keep a cautious distance between herself and her mother, but he thought she would regret it if all ties between them were cut. He didn’t like to think of Kim being sad and alone.
“So, anyway,” Julian rambled on, “I plan to be on the lookout for a—”
“Daryn? Oh, my God!”
Tate leaped off the couch when Sandi screeched and threw her phone aside with a clatter. Nelson woke with a start in the recliner, saying, “What? What is it?”
Daryn lay on her stomach, her hands flailing, her face contorted. Tate felt as though he’d been kicked in the chest when he saw that the baby’s lips were turning blue. “She’s choking.”
Mass pandemonium followed. The men either froze or jumped to their feet. Sandi seemed close to hysteria as she wrung her hands and stared at the baby in horror, paralyzed with fear.
Without stopping to think, Tate snatched the baby up from the floor. He had taken a CPR class a few years earlier, after his dad had suffered a blessedly minor heart scare. Choking procedures had been covered in the class, and he only hoped he remembered it all now.
He checked inside the baby’s mouth. He could see something in her throat, but a quick sweep of his finger didn’t dislodge it. She made a noise that sounded like muffled gagging, but he could tell she was unable to cough, and he wasn’t sure she was getting sufficient air. Making an immediate decision, he leaned her head-down over his arm and gave her a quick, careful blow to the back, right between her little shoulder blades. He had to repeat the procedure before she expelled the object with a sputtering, gasping cough, followed by a loud shriek of fear.
Righting her so he could hug her against his shoulder, Tate patted her back as soothingly as he knew how. She screamed bloody murder in his ear, but he didn’t mind, since it took plenty of air to make that much noise.
“It’s okay, Daryn,” he murmured, rubbing her back in a way he’d seen Kim do. “You’re okay now.”
Clutching the collar of his shirt with one hand, she burrowed into his throat, her sobs subsiding to whimpers.
Kim appeared in the family room doorway, her eyes sweeping the room until she found Daryn and Tate. She moved toward them immediately. “What happened?”
“She choked.” Julian reached down to pick up a pink plastic doll shoe, holding it gingerly between two fingers. “On this. I guess one of the girls left it in here.”
“I’m so sorry, Kim. I thought I was watching her so closely.” Still wringing her hands, Sandi sniffled. “I thought all the other toys were out of her reach, since she can’t crawl yet. My phone rang and I looked away just for a few moments—”
“She isn’t actually crawling, but still she can squirm quite a distance.” Looking a little pale, Kim took Daryn, who had reached out as soon as she heard her mother’s voice. Kim looked her over quickly, seemingly satisfying herself that there was no lasting damage from the scare.
“Tate handled it perfectly,” Nelson assured his niece. “Cool as a cucumber. He had her snatched up off the floor and was doing some Heimlich thing almost before the rest of us knew what was going on. The baby will be fine.”