Kathleen O'Brien - The Cost of Silence

The sun had almost dipped down to the horizon, and the buildings across the street lurked in deep shadow. The electricity was still on here in the empty shop, but the fixtures had been removed, and the bare-bulb glare was depressing.

They should be getting home. The brothers always went to Nana Lina’s Belvedere Cove waterfront house for dinner on Fridays, and if they didn’t hurry they’d be late. It was an hour back to San Francisco, though luckily on a Friday afternoon most of the traffic would be headed into Windsor Beach, not away from it.

“Shall we hit the road?” Colby put his hand in his pocket and extracted his keys.

Red shook his head, his decision suddenly made.

“You go,” he said. “I think I’ll get a rental car and stay here a couple of days.”

IT WAS 3:00 A.M., and Allison had walked at least a hundred miles. She must have worn a groove in the peach-and-green braided rug that covered the small living room. When she moved out, she’d probably have to pay her landlord a fortune to fix it.

Not that she had any hope of moving out anytime soon.

With only a full moon and the distant rays of the corner streetlight to guide her, she kept circling, humming an old Beatles song while she walked. A hundred and one. Her eyes drooped and her arms ached. So few hours between now and 8:00 a.m., when she’d have to meet the real-estate agent.

But still Eddie wouldn’t go back to sleep.

With a suddenness that startled both of them, Eddie sneezed that little snicking sound of his. It was hardly a noise at all, but it was enough to jolt him awake. He widened his eyes, as if someone had insulted him. Then he arched his back, straining away from her, and let loose a furious wail.

“Shh, shh, honey, hush.” She bounced him softly, holding the back of his head in her palm. He sneezed a second time, and she listened for wheezing in his lungs. If he was getting pneumonia again…

Nothing. The tension in her chest eased. So far, so good.

“Hey. Keep it down, why don’t you, kid? People are trying to sleep in here.”

Allison looked up to see Jimbo Stipple, her roommate, housekeeper, babysitter and best friend, standing in the hallway. He never wore a shirt to bed, and his sweatpants had so many holes in them he was barely decent. But Jimbo had lived on a navy sub for the better part of four years, and he wasn’t exactly the self-conscious type.

“Do you know what time it is?” He tried to sound annoyed, but his yawn got in the way. He leaned toward the kitchen to see the stove’s digital clock. “Oh. Shit. It’s three in the morning.”

Allison raised her eyebrows. They’d had a deal. As soon as the baby was born, Jimbo had to stop cursing.

“What?” He twisted his arm over his shoulder to scratch at the Rubik’s Cube tattoo on his back. “Come on. The kid’s only three months old. He doesn’t know that s-h-i-t is a cuss word. He thinks it’s an entertainment choice.”

Allison managed not to laugh. Life with Jimbo had its challenges, but it was never boring.

“Sorry,” she said. “His nose is stuffed up again. He can’t settle.”

Jimbo frowned. “Does he have a fever?” He crossed the room in three strides and put his hand gently on Eddie’s forehead. Against the flawless powder-pink of the baby skin, it was almost a shock to see the knuckles tattooed with black block letters.

B-A-C-K, this hand said. The tattoos on the other hand completed the threat. O-F-F-!

He let his fingers absorb the warmth for about three seconds. Then his features relaxed. “He feels okay.” He bent toward Eddie’s red, fussy face. “Don’t scare me like that, buddy.”

Eddie snuffled. Then, as he always did when he stared into Jimbo’s face, he broke out in a grin. He reached out to grab a fistful of the man’s spiky blond hair.

“Ouch!” Jimbo complained in a cartoon voice. All drama, designed to delight Eddie, which it did. The baby giggled and pulled even harder, his discomfort forgotten for the moment.

A rush of warmth moved through Allison. Jimbo was such a good, good man. She was so lucky to have him in her life. Maybe Eddie’s biological father had been a lying, cheating bastard who wasn’t interested in helping walk the floor at night, but thanks to Jimbo she wasn’t in this alone.

“How about I take him, and you get back to bed?” Jimbo glanced at her, his head cocked at a forty-five-degree angle so that Eddie could hold on. “You’ve got the closing with the agent at the crack of dawn, right?”

“Close enough. Eight.”

Jimbo groaned. “Any chance you could reschedule?”

“No way.” She shook her head emphatically. “I’ve waited too long for this day.”

He nodded. She didn’t have to say any more. He’d known her since she was four, lived with her since she was six. He was as close to a brother as anyone could ever be without sharing DNA. In her senior year of high school, he’d fixed her favorite tomato bisque soup while she wept over a cheating boyfriend. Five years later, he’d fixed up another big pot the day she signed her divorce papers and swore off men forever.

When her father died, even Jimbo’s food couldn’t help. But his tattooed hand had held on tight and somehow kept her from being swept away on a river of grief.

So he knew how much owning her own restaurant would mean to her—the security, the independence, the focus. The dream that had already been deferred three times. Almost ten years of disappointment could come to an end tomorrow.

As long as she didn’t sleep through the appointment.

He touched the side of her face. “Okay. Then let me wrestle with the little demon here, and you get some sleep.”

So tempting. But guilt nipped at her. Jimbo was tired, too. Eddie was her responsibility. But when Jimbo held out his hands, Eddie practically leaped out of her arms trying to get to his big, silly friend.

Laughing, she relinquished him. Her arms burned from the sudden release. “If he starts to wheeze—”

“He won’t.” Jimbo propped Eddie against his shoulder with the practiced skill of a true parent. He put his hand against Allison’s back and steered her toward the hall. “Nobody wheezes on my watch.”

She smiled. The truth was, if Eddie had trouble breathing, Jimbo would give the air out of his own lungs, literally, to help him. The forty-year-old chef/babysitter spoke three languages and quoted Greek playwrights like pop songs. He knew CPR and first aid, the doctor’s number, and most of the Merck Manual by heart. He could have been a surgeon, a stockbroker, a CEO—anything he wanted.

But by some miracle he wanted to be her guardian angel. And Eddie’s.

She surrendered, and, after planting a grateful kiss on his cheek, she headed down the small hall. At her doorway, she yawned and glanced once toward the living room. Jimbo stood near the window, where the streetlight shone just bright enough to let him read his new cookbook.

And Eddie the Demon was asleep.

“OHMIGOD.” Allison’s best waitress friend, Sue, paused with a set of silverware half-rolled in a napkin and inhaled sharply. “Look! There he is.”

Allison, who was really too busy to care, glanced toward the door, which had jingled its incoming-customer melody of joy. But it was lunchtime on a sunny spring Saturday, and at least a dozen people crowded around Moira’s hostess station. Allison couldn’t make them all out clearly.

“Who?”

“I don’t know his name. Look. Can’t you see him? Tall, dark and handsome from yesterday. The one with the mangled Mercedes.”

Oh. Allison felt her own breath swoop in, and she nearly dropped the order of coconut prawns she needed to deliver to table eleven, which would have been a shame, since they were regulars and big tippers.