Muriel Jensen - Jackpot Baby

She tried to pick up the pace, but the complicated burden she carried forced her to slow down. She noticed the snow drifting over and around them in silent strokes. Snow was so much a part of winter life here that it was just another fixture of downtown, like the lights and the trees they’d planted in better times.

Dusk had fallen and the streetlights were on. Downtown was a little fantasy world, every shop outlined in white outdoor lights. The merchants had gotten together to trim their businesses for Christmas two years ago, and everyone had liked it so much, they’d left them up. The relatively small amount it had upped their power bills was a small price to pay for casting a glow in the middle of a cold, dark winter.

She hurried up the six steps to her cottage, smiling when her new sensor porch light went on. She fitted her key in the lock, reached in to flip on the living room light, then closed the door quietly behind her, the baby still asleep.

The cottage looked very different than it had when her mother had decorated it. She’d loved Victorian-style furnishings and had had the place cluttered with medallion-back sofas, chairs with doilies on the arms and spindly little tables covered with knickknacks. Shelly had sold everything but a little desk she’d put up in her bedroom and decorated in a plainer, more comfortable style. She had a red-and-cream-check sofa, a big beige chair by the brick fireplace, two wicker rockers she’d painted Chinese red with cushions she’d covered in yellow-and-green-flowered fabric.

There’d been a dining room right off the living room, but she’d taken out the table and chairs, since she never got to use them, and extended the living area into one great room.

The kitchen woodwork, which had been the same shade of blue as the restaurant, was now a mossy green color. She’d painted the walls a soft pink and pulled the colors together with a border of potted flowers in yellow and pink. A little square table that could seat four but was really more comfortable for two sat near a window that looked out onto her large backyard and the rolling hills beyond.

She always loved coming home. The restaurant was her life, because it had been her parents’ life, but as a child she’d always been eager to come home after going to the restaurant after school. As an adult, she’d taken even more pleasure in her home. Though she spent precious little time here, it was a haven. A lonely haven, but still a haven.

She put the carrier on the table and placed Max in it while she put the other things down and removed her coat. He woke up instantly and began to cry. The cry turned quickly to a screech of displeasure. She changed him and tried to feed him, but he was too busy screaming.

“Okay, okay,” she placated, picking him up again. “We’ll just have to cook with one arm.”

She learned, over the next hour, that that was not as easy as it sounded.

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