Another Man's Child

“Here.” Regina showed him a small tape recorder tucked in among the baby’s other technical paraphernalia. “Shortly after the baby was born, Dr. Cartwright recorded stories and songs on cassettes, and we play them for Sara twelve hours a day. We use it to help set her biological clock so she’ll know the difference between night and day, but more importantly, so that she’ll learn to recognize her mother’s voice first and foremost, and to bond with it.”

Marcus nodded, his gloved hands stiff at his sides.

“Would you like to hold her now?” Regina reached for the baby.

“No! I’d rather not, no,” Marcus said. “I’d just like to stand here a few minutes, if I may.”

“Certainly, Mr. Cartwright. You can stay an hour if you’d like,” she said, pushing a rocking chair closer to the bed before she moved away.

Marcus ignored the chair. He ignored his own longings. He ignored everything but the baby girl lying stark naked in front of him. She’d been alive six weeks and still hadn’t had so much as a diaper around her bottom.

“You just wait, little one,” he said softly, leaning over just enough to be sure she could hear him. “Your mother is a clotheshorse, and she’s already got a closet full of designer duds for you. Just as soon as you split this joint, she’ll be changing you so often you’ll wish you could go around naked as a jaybird again. Don’t worry, though. She’s got great fashion sense. You’ll be the prettiest little girl on the block.”

At some point over the next half hour he pulled up a stool, which allowed him to sit very close to the baby. She’d fallen asleep in the middle of his recitation, but he kept talking to her, anyway.

“You have to be strong. Your mama needs you so much. More than she needs me, I think.” He stopped, looking over his shoulder to see if anyone had heard him make such an asinine comment. It probably wasn’t something a grown man should say to a kid. Even if it was true.

To his relief, the nurses were all keeping a respectable distance.

“I know this is all kinda rough right now. I know you must really hurt sometimes. But your mama will make it up to you. No little girl will ever be loved more than you are. But your mama won’t smother you with it. Not her. Nope. She’s really good about that. She’ll be there for you, supporting you, always trying to understand, doing what she can to make your dreams come true. But she won’t be one of those parents who try to live their own lives vicariously through their children’s. She’ll let you have your own. ‘Cause she has her own, too, you know. She’s a doctor. A fantastic one. She takes care of sick kids, too. And she’s also my wife. But don’t let that bother you any. We’ve got that all worked out.”

Marcus continued to prattle on to the baby, unconsciously relieving his mind of things that had been running around inside it for months, until a full hour had passed and he knew it was time to go. Pushing the stool back into the corner where he’d found it, he stood over the crib one more time to say goodbye, then dropped his hospital attire in the basket Regina had shown him earlier and let himself out the door.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I DON’T THINK this is going to work.”

Beth’s heart froze. She’d been a fool to believe that anyone as experienced, as distinguished, as Oliver Webster would take more than a passing interest in her. A fool to think she could find love more than once in a lifetime. “Why not?” she said anyway.

They were sitting outside on his patio, barely finished dressing from the latest of their afternoon rendezvous. Oliver leaned forward in the lawn chair he’d pulled up close to hers and took her hand in both of his.

“Because, my dear, it’s getting harder and harder to let you go each day. I don’t just want stolen moments with you. I want to share dinner with you every night, to see your face next to mine when I wake up in the morning.”

“And that’s bad?”

“I find myself wanting more than I can have, and I th

ink we should stop before things get out of hand.”

They’d been lovers for weeks. Wasn’t it already out of hand?

“So you want us to stop seeing each other.” She’d been prepared for this from the beginning, hadn’t she? Oliver was endearingly old-fashioned, and they had too many strikes against them.

He nodded. “It might be for the best.”

“Do I get any say in this?”

He looked at her, his eyes sad. “Of course.”

“Well, good,” Beth said, something deeper than reason driving her on. “Because I think we’d be fools to walk away from the happiness we’ve found. I know you feel guilty about Barbara sometimes. I feel guilty about John, too, but do you really think either one of them would begrudge us a little more happiness and love? Are we supposed to walk around half-dead because they’re no longer with us?”

Oliver frowned, deepening the lines around his eyes. “Of course not, but—”

“I’m not ever going to take anything away from Barbara, Oliver. The part of you that she has she’ll always have, just as the part of me that I gave to John will always be his. But I have other parts of me, some I’m only just discovering. I’d like to give them to you, if you want them.”

“Oh, I want them, honey. Don’t ever doubt that.” His eyes were fierce now with self-condemnation. “I want them so much I’ve acted like a dirty old man.”

Beth smiled in spite of the tears forming in her eyes. “You aren’t old, Oliver. You’re twenty years younger than Ronald Reagan was when he ran for his first term as president. And what about Charlie Chaplin? He was fathering children in his seventies.”