The Black Sheep’s Baby

hymnal, even though she couldn’t sing a note.

“It’s the ‘Looking Over,’” she explained in response to his amused question, watching the baby’s murky blue eyes flick across her own face. “You know, like in The Jungle Book? We humans do it, too, you know. Sort of our way of saying welcome to the world…” She caught her breath in wonder as the baby’s tiny mouth suddenly popped open in a smile-a real one, she was sure of it. “I’ve been looking for Eric,” she said when her awed and tremulous breathing had gotten back to normal. She paused, and then… “Do you think she’s really our grandchild?”

Mike coughed and shifted around the way he did when he was trying to avoid answering her. Which was generally when he knew she wasn’t going to like the answer he had to give her.

She caught a quick breath and went on before he had to. “Doesn’t matter, really. If Eric says she is, that’s good enough for me.”

She turned the baby this way and that, studying the way her eyes changed in the light. “I think her eyes are going to stay blue.”

Mike cleared his throat in a relieved sort of way. “Could be green, like her mother’s.”

Lucy gave him a look. “How do you know her mother’s eyes were green?”

“Devon’s are.”

“Oh, you noticed that, did you?” She slyly teased him just so she could enjoy the fluster in his mutter of response. After a moment, though, because it had been on her mind, she said slowly, “Mike, tell me really. What do you think of her?”

“Devon?” His eyes flicked toward Lucy, then away. “She’s pretty,” he said cautiously, making her smile. “Seems smart.”

“But, what?” Lucy knew the nuances in her husband’s voice.

He came to sit beside her, tickling the baby’s cheek with one long forefinger to stall for time while he thought.

“Just…something about her,” he said, “reminds me of Chris.”

“Chris! Our Chris?”

“The first time Wood brought her here for a visit-remember? We were all sitting around the table having lunch, and Gwen remembered she’d known Chris as a child. Turned out she’d grown up around here, gone to school with Wood. She hadn’t told him.”

“Hmm…and she had good reasons not to, as it turned out.” Lucy frowned at the baby, whose eyelids were growing heavy.

“Yeah, well, the point is, you know how she always seemed so cool and calm, her face was like a beautiful porcelain mask. And all the time there was so much going on inside her…so many secrets she was hiding behind that mask.”

“And you think Devon…”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Like I said, there’s just something about her that makes me think of Chris, that’s all.”

“Well,” Lucy said darkly, “she’s sure not hiding the fact that she means to take Emily away from us-from Eric, I mean.”

“Yeah, and right at Christmastime, too.” Mike’s tone was somber, but when he looked at her Lucy could see the teasing twinkle in his eyes. “Sure doesn’t seem right, after you wished, and then it looked like you had your wish granted.”

“Sometimes Providence works in mysterious ways,” she reminded him. “You, of all people, should know that, Cage.” Lucy nudged against him and shared with him their secret smile. “Just think-all those years ago-if those hoodlums hadn’t tried to kill you, firebombing your town house-”

“And if my girlfriend hadn’t picked that night to break up with me, and I hadn’t been out walking off my grief, they’d have succeeded.”

“Right. And if you hadn’t run from them and gotten off the interstate in that thunderstorm and wound up lost and run your car into a ditch and holed up in my barn on the very same day my hired hand quit-oh, Mike…”

“I’d never have met you,” he huskily finished for her when her voice choked and he saw that her eyes were filling up.

She was glad when he slipped an arm around her, and the storm-ripples of awe and fear that always came with that terrible thought died peacefully in the sunshine of long-established love. “Anyway,” she said on a quick, restorative breath, smiling down at the now-sleeping baby, “it’s not over yet. I have a plan…”

“Shush!” And Mike silenced her with a squeeze a half second before Eric and Devon walked into the room.

They look guilty as hell, Eric thought. Like a couple of kids caught necking in the hayloft. And he almost smiled.

“How’s she doing?” Eric gave the baby a nod as he eased into the room, keeping all the awkwardness he felt inside. “I thought I heard her fussing.”

“Nope,” said his mother serenely, “not a peep. I think she wore herself out making faces at me-she dropped off a minute ago. We were just going to put her down.” She stood up with Emily in her arms, putting action to the words.

“Here-I’ll take her.” He plucked the baby from his mother’s arms more abruptly than he meant to, a fact of which he was acutely aware and instantly regretted. He was aware, too, of his father’s eyes…calm, quiet, more appraising than accusing.

Uncomfortable, he picked up the formula bottle from the nightstand and frowned at it. “She didn’t take all her bottle? She’ll probably just catnap, then wake up in a few minutes and want the rest. I can take it from here, if you, uh, if you want to…” Get lost? He stopped, frustrated. How did one tactfully dismiss one’s parents?

Which was one thing his plans for drawing Devon out of her shell hadn’t taken into account. Those plans were going to require a considerable amount of privacy, and that was a commodity it had just occurred to him might be in short supply to him, living under his parents’ roof.

“Well, all right, if you’re sure…” His mother’s eyes wavered, then slid past him to pounce on Devon, who was trying hard to look at ease and succeeding about as well as he was. “Have you had breakfast? There’s French toast and bacon in the oven-did you find everything okay?”

Devon had been concentrating with all her might on becoming invisible. Now, brought so abruptly into the conversation, she did something she almost never did. She floundered. “I’m not-that is, I don’t normally-uh, I had some toast earlier. I’m sorry-you shouldn’t have gone to so much…” And appealing for salvation to the only person available, she threw Eric a look of desperate entreaty.

He gave his mother a pained look. “We’ll grab a bite later, Ma, okay? Quit worrying about feeding us-we’re not kids.”

It was impatient, though not at all rude, which Devon thought might be about normal for grown-up offspring when speaking to their parents. And it struck her how different it was from the way she customarily spoke to her own parents-always with polite reserve, more as she might a client or a stranger.

“Well,” said Lucy briskly, unperturbed by her son’s bluntness, “I guess you know where to find the food when you get hungry. I know I’ve got plenty of things I should be doing.” She paused to give Devon a smile. “Just let me know if you need anything, okay? Mike?”

Devon caught the look she exchanged with her husband as she bustled him out of the room. They left the door wide-open as they went, she noted with amusement. She glanced at Eric to see if he’d noticed, and saw that his expression had gone from pained to sardonic. He tilted his head toward the open door and muttered under his breath, “Jeez, you’d think I was twelve.”

Discovering that she was smiling, Devon ducked her head in an unsuccessful attempt to hide it.

“What,” Eric demanded, “you think it’s funny that they still treat me like a kid?”

“No,” she said, “but I think it’s probably normal.”

He paused in his slow, rocking pacing to look at her. “Oh, yeah? Did your parents do that when you were a teenager? Make you leave your door open when you had a boy in your room?” And there was something about the way he watched her, all of a sudden, something almost…crafty. Something that set off her lawyer’s radar.

“Oh, I’m sure they must have,” she said lightly, walking away from him to avoid his eyes.