Barbara Boswell - The Brennan Baby

He frowned, remembering the night she’d called it quits. After dropping her bombshell, Gillian had gone home, leaving him alone to absorb the shock. And what a shock it was... For the first time in his charmed, blessed, golden life he’d been dumped!

Compounding his woe was his lack of anyone to share it He didn’t consider confiding anything about the breakup to any member of his social circle. Why bother when he could easily predict their responses?

The attitude of the jaundiced nonromantics in the group would be a cavalier “so what?” The others would proclaim that it was about time he felt the sting of rejection, that everybody else in the world had been dumped at one time or another and now, finally, it was Devlin Brennan’s turn.

He could have told his sister. Kylie definitely would’ve provided sympathy, but she might have expected him to cry on her shoulder while she offered words of solace and advice. That was too ghastly to contemplate. He was the big brother, ever cool, ever confident, and he wasn’t about to relinquish his own image of himself.

So he’d opted for silence, answering the occasional question about Gillian Bailey with a nonchalant, “Haven’t seen her for a while.” Everybody who knew Devlin Brennan knew what that meant—he had moved on to another woman. Details weren’t requested or supplied.

“For every man who breaks hearts, there is a woman who is his match,” declared Holly Casale, his friend since their early med school days, who was currently completing her residency in psychiatry here at the hospital. Devlin did not appreciate her diagnosis or prophecy or whatever that cryptic observation of hers was supposed to be.

He didn’t consider himself a heartbreaker; he simply wasn’t ready to settle down, a point he made to any woman who tried to assume otherwise. He was honest and up-front about his commitment to staying uncommitted, which was hardly characteristic of those deceptive smoothies who deserved the title of heartbreaker.

As for Gillian breaking his heart, that premise was laughable. His heart hadn’t even been bruised by her rejection, Dev assured himself. He’d set out to prove that being dumped wasn’t the trauma all those sad songs and movies and books proclaimed it to be.

He forgot all about Gillian Bailey. He continued with his life, which was full and busy with his fourth-year residency in orthopedics, a specialty that continually fascinated him, with his many friends and with various women who provided him with sex whenever he wanted it

Funny how he hadn’t wanted it lately.

That was because he was taking a hiatus from sex, Devlin reminded himself. He’d seen some therapist-guru on a talk show who extolled periods of chastity as time to recharge energy and creativity. Dev didn’t run that particular theory by Holly, but decided that his body had chosen to be chaste for a while.

Didn’t he feel more energetic and creative?

Seated in front of his television set, Devlin proceeded to channel-surf through eighty-six channels, pointing his remote like a divining rod. Nothing caught his interest, and his thoughts drifted back to Gillian.

He allowed himself to admit that in spite of his busy, full life he hadn’t completely forgotten about her. He’d given her an occasional thought during the past twenty months When he had learned about Gillian’s marriage, only a couple weeks after their breakup, he had been stunned. It stood to reason that she must have been dating her future husband all the while she’d been with him. Or maybe her three-month fling with him had been a rebound romance for her, something to pass the time until the groom-elect came through with a wedding ring.

Either notion rankled.

Dev vaguely recalled getting drunk with some of his buddies around that time and referring to Gillian as a “two-timing slut.” The memory, dim as it was, now made him cringe because it implied that her quickie marriage bothered him, and of course, it had not. He’d had a good laugh when Holly Casale told him that he was “in denial” and ought to acknowledge his repressed feelings.

Repressed? Him? Devlin had found the “shrink jargon” hilarious and told Holly so. As a would-be Freudian, she’d shaken her head silently and tried to look inscrutable.

His thoughts circled back to Gillian. Who was now divorced. Obviously she’d shed her husband with the same hasty ease she had acquired him. And now she was a single mother with a baby girl.

The baby, little Ashley. He wasn’t the type to go ga-ga over babies, but she was very cute. Cade, his brother-in-law, had certainly been captivated by that baby. He’d mentioned her several times over their weekend visit and yesterday, too, when Kylie had called to get an old friend’s address.

Dev had kidded Kylie that Cade’s interest in the baby across the hall was indicative of his desire to become a daddy, that she was going to find herself pregnant sooner rather than later. Kylie countered that Cade’s interest in the neighbor child stemmed from his concern for his younger sister, currently in the middle of a bitter divorce and solely responsible for her baby. According to Kylie, Cade possessed a kind of global sense of elder brother responsibility for the children of struggling single mothers.

Devlin guessed it made sense, Cade being Cade and all.

Truth to tell, it was something of a relief to know that his brother-in-law was hyperresponsible. That was exactly the kind of husband every brother wanted for his kid sister. If Kylie were pregnant, there was no question that Cade would take care of her, would stick with her and their child. Unlike Gillian’s husband, who’d been quick to split after the baby was born.

Undoubtedly that creep hadn’t been much help during her pregnancy, either, Devlin concluded, and remembered the one and only time he had seen Gillian pregnant.

He’d spotted her during a rare chance encounter in the hospital cafeteria. It had been late in her pregnancy and her tiny frame seemed ready to topple forward from the bulk of her swollen abdomen. Dev had cracked to the gang at his lunch table that she looked like an overinflated balloon and probably would’ve made another witticism or two except he caught Holly Casale observing him with her most annoying psychoanalytic stare. So he’d lapsed into silence and purposefully directed his gaze away from the very pregnant Gillian.

Had it been Holly or someone else who’d informed him when Gillian had given birth? He had merely shrugged his indifference. What was he supposed to do, go visit her on the maternity floor with a bunch of mylar balloons? He hadn’t, of course. She was married and a mother and lived her life in another universe from his.

And now it seemed their separate worlds had intersected, thanks to the random assignments made by the housing department. It was weird but entirely coincidental, a bit of computer-generated idiocy. He and Gillian could‘ve—should’ve—shared a laugh about it except she had been inexplicably hostile upon learning they were neighbors.

And they hadn’t seen each other since that day. Out of sight, out of mind, Dev reminded himself. It was more than a cliché, it was downright good advice.

He turned his attention back to the TV set, bypassing all the current reality based dramas and sitcoms for a black and white rerun from the early sixties. “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Relaxing, he settled back to enjoy a half hour of vicarious living in a far more simple era.

In the apartment across the hall from him, Ashley Joy Morrow wouldn’t stop crying. Gillian knew the baby was teething, and she had done everything recommended in the infant and child care manual to soothe her. But nothing had worked and finally, m desperation, she called her foster mother, Dolly Sinsel, in Detroit.