Jacqueline Diamond - Excuse Me? Whose Baby? - Excuse Me? Whose Baby? / Follow That Baby!

The single room looked smaller and darker than usual, by contrast to the expansive scale of Jim’s house. Dex didn’t see anyone, but she heard a tuneless mumble coming from the tiny kitchen. She had to close the door to take a look, because the kitchen was behind it.

Cora Angle, her large frame cramped in the small space, was wiping a dish and carrying on a conversation with herself. “I shouldn’t hang around,” she muttered. “She’s obviously busy. She did promise to see you. I’ll only be in the way.”

One glance at the open cabinets showed Dex that her thrift-store dishes had been rearranged. They were stacked in an orderly manner, the plates and saucers on the lower shelf, cups and glasses on the upper one.

“Oh, hi!” The tall freshman stopped wiping and gave her a tentative smile. Pale blond hair straggled down Cora’s pudgy cheeks, and there was a dust smear on the shoulder of her tan smock.

“You’ve been working hard.” Dex decided not to point out that the new arrangement, while more efficient, put the cups too high for her to reach easily. She could always switch them back later.

“I like to organize things.” The chubby girl watched her apprehensively, as if expecting a rebuke. She reminded Dex of herself not many years ago.

“Well, thank you.” She indicated the half-full coffeemaker. “Care for something to drink?”

“Okay. Sure,” said her guest. “I’m sorry for just showing up. I mean, I know you weren’t expecting me.”

“It’s okay,” Dex assured her. “I told you to drop by, right?”

“Right.” Cora cleared her throat. “Listen, I just came to tell you I decided to drop out. I guess college is too hard for me.”

“If you were smart enough to get in, you’re smart enough to do the work.” Dex frowned as she poured the coffee. She hated to see anyone leave, especially after less than a year. “A lot of people have trouble adjusting. How are your other classes?”

Cora put two spoonfuls of sugar in her coffee and slouched in a seat at the counter. “Cs and a few Ds. College is costing my parents a lot of money, and I’m not doing well enough to justify it.”

“Do you want me to see if there’s financial help available?” Dex refused to give up easily. True, the young woman’s papers and tests had been mediocre and sometimes worse, but she might blossom.

“I’ve already got a partial scholarship.” The young woman shrugged. “Originally, my parents said I should just get a job, but when I won the scholarship, they agreed to help. The thing is, I knew from the first few days that I made a mistake by coming here, but I didn’t want to admit it.”

“What makes you think so?” Dex asked.

The freshman’s forehead wrinkled. “The other kids all seem so sure of themselves. I never know what the teachers expect. I keep trying to guess, and getting it wrong.”

With relief, Dex realized that she might be able to help. “Maybe that’s the problem. You’re too busy trying to second-guess the professors instead of expressing your own point of view.”

“But who would care what I think?” Cora nibbled at the split ends of her hair.

“I do,” Dex said. “Listen, I’ll make you a deal.”

“What kind of deal?” The young woman fiddled with her coffee cup.

“You promise to stay in college for the rest of the semester,” Dex said. “In exchange, I’ll critique your papers in advance for your other classes. I can’t in fairness help you prepare for Professor Bemling’s class, since I’ll be grading you, but what you learn should apply to everything.”

“I—I can’t afford to pay you much,” the freshman said.

“No charge,” said Dex.

“I can’t accept such generosity.” Cora pressed her lips together before continuing. “Besides, I’m sure there are more deserving students.”

I’m going to rescue you whether you want me to or not. “First of all, you deserve my help as much as anybody. Second, I’m not being generous. Consider this a loan,” Dex said. “Next year, you can tutor a freshman who’s having problems, and she can pass the favor on to someone else the following year, and so forth. How’s that?”

Reluctantly, the woman nodded. She must be eighteen or nineteen, and yet she seemed very young. At twenty-six, Dex had considered herself still a kid. Until today.

Now she was a mother. And a tutor. Next to Cora, she felt practically ancient.

Then she remembered that she was going to be staying at Jim’s. “Let me give you another address. I’ll be helping out a friend with some baby-sitting for a week. You can contact me there.”

She hated to hedge, but people gossiped like crazy around campus. The discovery that James Bonderoff had a daughter by Helene Saldivar, and that the biological mother was a mere teaching assistant, would fan the flames to wildfire proportions.

Cora accepted the slip of paper gratefully. “I can’t believe you’d do this for me.”

“That’s why I’m in the teaching field,” Dex said.

After the freshman left, she mulled over the conversation. Was she in education because she enjoyed helping people? That hadn’t been mentioned anywhere in her parents’ expectations.

She did enjoy her time in the classroom on those occasions when Hugh was ill or at a conference. The problem was that college-level instruction required researching and writing professional papers, which she did not enjoy. Also, the lectures were often delivered to large groups of students with little or no personal contact and the grading left to an assistant.

Well, it didn’t matter. She didn’t belong in any other world, so she had better make the best of this one.

After tucking a few changes of clothes and her personal care items into a backpack, Dex opened her desk drawers and flipped through the notes she’d accumulated for her dissertation. She really ought to finish it this coming summer, which was only a few months away.

She’d chosen to write about how the structure of Shakespeare’s plays prefigured movies and television. While watching Kenneth Branagh’s movie version of Henry V, Dex had been struck by how visual it was and how well the scenes, with little adaptation, worked on the screen.

Her parents had agreed that it was an interesting subject. Her mother had sent a long letter with suggestions for how to approach the matter, and her father had urged her to publish the thesis as soon as possible to gain critical attention.

That had been a year ago. Since then, Dex hadn’t been able to muster any interest in working on the dissertation. It seemed to belong more to her parents than to her.

Oh, grow up, she told herself. As soon as she returned from Jim’s, she would buckle down and get to work.

A short time later, she locked the door and set off with her backpack. En route, she stopped at a baby store and bought a bicycle seat for Annie. It was quite an extravagance, since she’d only be able to use it for a week, but perhaps she could give it to the adoptive parents.

Maybe Annie would stay in Clair De Lune. Maybe Dex would see her from time to time, riding in this very bicycle seat, whizzing around town behind some bearded man or long-haired woman.

Unexpectedly, tears pricked her eyes. It must have been the wind.

AFTER HIS LUNCH with Dex on Friday, Jim Bonderoff returned to his office for two hours. In that time, he made one hundred million dollars.

That was how much his stock went up when news was announced of a faster, smaller computer chip developed by researchers at Bonderoff Visionary Technologies. The company’s other investors became similarly enriched, and he declared a bonus for employees.

Word traveled fast. De Lune University President Wilson Martin was one of the first to call with congratulations and a hint about future donations.