Margot Early - Talking About My Baby

Silently, Tara gathered her things. As she lifted the car seat, Laura’s eyes opened. Don’t cry. Carrying the baby and her diaper bag, Tara slipped through the door with her mother. Outside the suite, in the bright lights of the hall, Francesca said, “I didn’t want to waken you.”

While Tara paused to transfer Laura to the sling, Francesca collected the car seat.

The clock at the nurses’ station read five-thirty, and Pilar was talking to the nurse on the next shift. Moving on, Francesca and Tara waved, and she waved back.

“Thank you for the sleep, Mom.” Tara covered her yawn with her hand.

Francesca caught her peering up and down the halls. “What are you looking for?”

Tara hid any reaction in drowsiness. “The way out.”

BY THE FOLLOWING afternoon, her plan was set in stone.

She wanted to adopt Laura legally, and she knew the other midwives at the birth center in Sagrado would help her. But in her case, the authorities would insist on a prerequisite. A husband.

Tara didn’t have time to “fall in love,” as her mother had suggested the other night. It would take a century. But a “suitable” man to marry lived two miles away, and she had the tool to bribe him. Herself. She could care for his children, and she could clean that chalet. Isaac wouldn’t be likely to toss his new mother-in-law out in the street, either.

Are you crazy, Tara? What made her think he’d marry her because he needed childcare—or a housekeeper? As far as she knew, he didn’t even like her. His brother was a better choice.

No.

It had to be Isaac. He’d said they could talk again....

And, in some way she couldn’t define, he seemed safe.

Stretching out with Laura on the downstairs couch, preparing for a half-hour nursing session, she said, “Yes, kiddo, I’ve got it figured out.”

Francesca, who’d been working on an article for a midwifery journal at her computer, asked, “What have you figured out?”

“How to adopt Laura.”

When Francesca turned her chair and waited, Tara realized her mother expected the whole story. “I’ll explain after I know it’s going to work.”

“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”

“Because you’re a pessimist. Millie Rand’s baby could have been born at home, and we both know it.”

“That was a smooth change of subject, Tara. How are you planning to adopt Laura?”

“You’ll feel better about it once it’s accomplished. Hey, do you care if I carve those pumpkins on the counter?”

Francesca hid her alarm. “More pie?”

“Pumpkin bread.”

“Not for Isaac?”

“The way to a man’s heart.”

Francesca was aghast. When she’d imagined Tara finding a husband, it was something that would happen slowly. Friendship blossoming to love. But not with—

This was a disaster. She didn’t know why, but it was. That reserve of Isaac’s was strong, as strong as Tara’s outgoing passion. He had lived in Rwanda, and his wife had somehow died in Rwanda—and Tara was so...heedless. She and Isaac McCrea were loaded freight trains that ought to pass on separate tracks. Instead, they were going to collide.

When she abruptly remembered Tara and Isaac sitting together in the waiting room at the hospital, Francesca realized something had already begun.

And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“ISAAC, ARE YOU really all right?” Dan asked for the second time since Isaac had called, after his return from Silverton.

“Sure. Mom’s giving me a breather this weekend. I’m stronger than I look.”

“Yeah, right. What stunted my growth anyway?” Dan was six-one.

“I’ll die sooner.”

“I think Tara prefers you.”

Well, he hadn’t had to say her name first.

“You know, I can’t stand her,” Dan added. “I hate her clothes. I hate her politics. I hate the way she uses her body. She flirts with me for an hour, and then, I ask her out, and she says no.”

“That makes my ears hurt.” All of it.

“No kidding. She’s a thorn in my side. I thought if we got it on, things might improve. What about you? Do you like her?”

Isaac traced the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “I don’t know her.”

The doorbell rang, and Isaac headed to answer it, the cordless in his hand. “Hey, Dan. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I was getting around to that. I’m on call. Rich had something come up.” Rich Scarborough, the Chief of Obstetrics.

They’d planned a climb, but Isaac wouldn’t mind the solitude.

He opened the door, and the black cat, the one Danielle called Meow, shot in from the cold. She found the tabby kitten he’d adopted outside the market and began hissing.

Tara, with Laura in a sling against her breasts, held two foil-wrapped packages. The night had sprouted stars behind her.

Isaac spoke into the phone. “I’ve got to go.”

The alpine cold was numbing, and he let her in. She handed him the still-warm loaves of bread and continued into the living room with its rustic furniture.

“What’s the hurry?”

“I have a visitor.” He shut the door behind her. The tabby had retreated to a recess beside the broom closet. Meow rubbed Isaac’s legs, but he knew better than to touch her. They all did.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Dan found the chalet beautiful but lonely. His own place was actually farther from town, in an enclave. The locals called it “on the mountain.”

“Bye.” Isaac switched off the phone.

“Sorry,” he apologized and sniffed the foil-wrapped loaves. Pumpkin. “What did I do to deserve this?” My brother likes you. Even if he says he doesn’t.

“Nothing.” Tara’s smile was mischievous. “Yet. Where are the kids?”

“Silverton. Spending the weekend with my mother.”

Tara helped herself to a seat on the ancient couch. The disarray had worsened, if anything. Lunch boxes, probably not empty, sat in various places, and the laundry mound now extended to the floor. She spotted a bread crust under the opposite couch. “He sold both houses furnished, didn’t he?”

The former owner. “Yes.”

Tara sensed his impatience with her visit. It gave her a bad feeling, but it was too late to stop. She couldn’t stop—and couldn’t think of a better approach. Not here, in his presence, under that gaze. “I have a proposition for you.”

Isaac’s eyes darkened. He pulled a footstool toward him and dropped down on it.

It would be easier to speak without that hot feeling in her chest, the feeling that wouldn’t let her stop, the feeling that made her tremble. “I’d like to propose—” she waited a beat, trying to read his face “—a marriage of convenience.”

CHAPTER THREE

The midwives at Maternity House treat us with respect. Tara, she holds my hand; her brow creases when I feel the pain. “Your baby will be here soon,” she says, and she embraces me. She is like my oldest, Elana. I tell her she is like my daughter, and she gives more hugs.

—Inez Martinez, age 44, Maternity House, Sagrado, Texas, after the birth of Juan Diego

ISAAC HAD HEARD perfectly and didn’t ask her to explain.

But she tried. “I need a husband, you need a wife. We treat it as a business decision and a business partnership—”

“Slow down. I need a wife? And that’s a business decision?”

The only way to save face was by never lowering her head. Anyhow, what kind of reception had she expected? She’d known she would have to persuade him. “I’m thinking of a temporary arrangement. You can bail when you find someone you like better. You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”

He only stared.

Tara forced out the words. “I can take care of your children.”

“This seems like an extreme suggestion.” She knew his brother’s desire for her—and she doesn’t know me at all. He smelled sexual abuse or an absent father or both. Heloise’s younger sister Dominique, the midwife, had shown similar traits. A girl loses her father when she is ten, Heloise had explained, she looks for him her whole life. Maybe with her sexuality, she tries to call him, to retrieve what she lost.