The Black Sheep’s Baby

“Well, can you?” Eric’s eyes glinted teasingly. So close to her, she found their effect more than ever like swallowing straight whiskey.

She lifted her chin and glared back at him. “I do well enough.”

“Oh, yeah?” He tossed a kernel of popcorn into the air and caught it adroitly in his mouth. “So, let’s hear you. Sing something.”

“Eric!”

Devon gave an incredulous laugh. “Oh, sure, like I’m going to sing a solo right here!”

“A duet, then. I’ll sing with you.” He leaned back on one elbow, completely relaxed. His eyes caught hers and crinkled with smile lines. “I’ll bet we’d be good together,” he murmured under his breath, as though for her only.

Her breath made a surprised sibilance as she stared at him. What’s in that cocoa? she wanted to exclaim. Unless she was badly mistaken, she was almost certain he was flirting with her. In front of both his parents, for God’s sake.

In the next moment she was sure she was mistaken, that she was being overly sensitive, that she’d misjudged him. Again. Because Lucy was beaming at them both, hands clasped under her chin, and once again her eyes had a wistful shine.

“Oh, you know, I’ll bet you would be. It would be so nice to hear you two young people sing Christmas songs together. That’s always been one of my favorite things about Christmas-hearing the old carols. It makes me think of Mama and Papa, Christmases when the boys were both home-and when you and Ellie were kids, Eric-remember?”

The look she gave her son was suddenly fierce and accusing, and her voice had grown husky. “We’ve missed you so much, Eric. These last ten years-”

“I’m here now, Mom.” He spoke softly, but even from where she sat, Devon could feel the tension radiating from his body.

“It’s getting late,” Mike interjected quietly from across the room. He was peering out the windows. “Time for chores.”

But Lucy wasn’t going to be forestalled. “For how long?” she said in a choked voice, transferring her fierce and accusing glare from Eric to Devon. “Until the roads are cleared?”

“Lucy-”

“Mom-”

“I’m sorry,” Devon began. She put down her cup and was appalled to hear it clatter on the tabletop. “It’s not my-”

“Please let them stay.” With the spriteliness of a little brown bird, Lucy hopped off the recliner and came to take Devon’s hands in both of hers. “Devon, why not? At least until Christmas. It’s only a few days…”

She’s so small, and yet there’s so much energy, so much power in her, Devon thought. Eric’s mother was a tiny human dynamo incongruously wrapped in a comic-strip cat. She shook her head, feeling dazed. “I can’t-”

“You stay, too.” She threw her husband a brief, silent plea. “We’d love to have you-wouldn’t we, Mike? So, why don’t you stay for Christmas-all of you?”

Chapter 9

T he silence in the room seemed absolute. When, Devon wondered, as three pairs of eyes focused on her with varying degrees of intensity, had that cozy parlor begun to seem to her more like a hostile courtroom?

She freed her hands from Lucy’s grasp and hitched herself uneasily on the couch’s cushions. Beside her, she could feel Eric’s body tense and come upright on the arm. In preparation for his mother’s defense? she wondered.

Wait a minute, she wanted to shout, I’m not the villain, here, dammit! I’m not the one who took a baby girl and fled the jurisdiction in defiance of a judge’s order.

“What day is it?” she demanded, her eyes darting around the room as if the answer must be somewhere in plain sight.

“December twenty-first,” Mike supplied.

“There, you see?” Lucy straightened and tucked one wing of her chin-length hair behind her ear with an unmistakable air of triumph. “Nothing’s going to happen until after Christmas anyway.” She said that as if it were a done deal, as if the decision had been hers and hers alone to make. “You might as well stay here-spend Christmas with us. Your parents will understand, won’t they, if you miss one Christmas with them?”

“I don’t know, I’m not…” She let her voice trail off. She wasn’t used to being steamrolled and didn’t know how to respond.

At some point, Eric had quietly gotten up from the arm of the couch and was now bending over the baby carrier on the floor beside the recliner. Devon watched him hunker down, balanced on the balls of his feet, the fabric of his jeans stretching taut over the flexed muscles of his thighs.

He seems so much younger like this, she thought. With that gaunt face and those aged eyes of his turned away from her, nut-brown hair curling long on the back of his neck, broad shoulders angular and rawboned even beneath the drape of his sweatshirt.

Something twisted inside her chest, and she uttered a faint, unconscious sound of protest.

“Hey, you know what? It’s Winter Solstice,” she heard Mike announce.

Lucy gave a gasp. “That’s right, December twenty-first!” She turned to her husband, eyes alight, and she was smiling again as if that moment of emotional intensity with Eric and Devon had never happened. “Oh, that calls for a celebration.”

“Break out the champagne,” Mike said, grinning back at her.

“Sorry,” said Lucy, “no champagne. Guess cocoa will have to do.” She found their mugs, poured a dollop of cocoa into each from the carafe and handed one to her husband. Grinning at each other, with the air of observing an old ritual, they clinked the mugs together, and then Lucy turned to Devon and Eric with a sweeping gesture that included them both. “Come on, you two-join us in a toast to the shortest day of the year!”

Devon threw Eric a mystified look. His eyes met hers above the pinkish gold head bobbing on his shoulder, but without their warm, brandy glow they seemed remote and faintly mocking. Awkwardly, she lifted her mug toward her hosts, and as they did, drank down her last swallow of lukewarm cocoa.

“Well-chore time,” said Lucy briskly when that was done. She was already halfway to the door. “Coming, Mike?”

“Right behind you.” He paused in the doorway to lift his mug in a farewell wave. “Carry on, kids,” he said with a wink, and then they were gone. Devon could already hear the clank of buckets coming from the utility room down the hall.

In the now-silent parlor, Eric watched Devon turn to him with a look of bemusement, and braced himself for her soft, disparaging laugh. Funny, he thought, a moment ago he’d been embarrassed by his parents’ behavior; why now did he find himself preparing to defend it?

“What was that all about?” she asked in a hushed undertone.

“What was what about?” Without thinking, he had pressed his lips to the top of the little one’s-no, Emily’s-velvety-soft head and was breathing in the sweet, baby smell of her. He felt himself already growing calmer, quieter inside.

“I don’t think I’ve ever toasted the shortest day of the year before,” Devon said, regarding the mug in her hands with an expression on her face that barely avoided mockery. “I don’t know, I guess it never seemed like cause for celebration to me. Is there some significance there that I’ve missed?”

“The cause for celebration,” Eric gently explained, joggling the baby in his arms and slowly pacing, “is that, from now on, the days get longer. If you’re a farmer, in a place where you actually have winter, that means something, yeah.”

“Oh,” said Devon. She set the mug on the coffee table, not looking at him. He heard her take a breath, and it