The Black Sheep’s Baby

Oh, yeah, there was a happy thought. In fact, the realization that he was developing feelings for the woman who was trying her best to destroy his life had shaken him more than he’d thought possible.

Care about… What the hell did that mean? He’d cared about Susan, for sure, but it hadn’t felt anything like this. His caring for Susan had been that of a friend, a big brother. His feelings for Devon weren’t remotely brotherly, and they were a long way from being friends. He couldn’t even chalk it all up to physical attraction, although he definitely had that. He couldn’t say why or how, but he’d had physical attractions before, and all he knew was that this was different.

So, what are you saying, Eric? Are you trying to say you think you may be falling in love with her?

Oh, hell.

He hoped to God it wasn’t true. Because even if it was, it didn’t change a thing. Except to make it hurt a whole lot worse.

The day before Christmas-Christmas Eve Day, some people called it-dawned clear and cold. It would be a beautiful, sunny day. The snow was melting on exposed southern slopes and the livestock yards were a trampled, muddy mess, but it lay thick and crusty in the shady places, and there was plenty left with which to build a snowman. From her bedroom window, Devon watched Mike and Lucy assemble one in the front yard, working together to roll and lift the heavy parts and between times laughing and pelting each other with handfuls of snow, their chore-buckets abandoned in the driveway. The sight made her smile, even laugh a little. It also made her throat ache.

How happy they are. How is it that they-two middle-aged people-can laugh and play like this? Like children?

The answer came to her, sparkling clear as the day outside: They love each other. Love their lives, their home, this place.

But, she thought, I love my life, too. I love my home, my place. I could never live here-I couldn’t.

The fact that she could even have such a thought shook her to her core.

The day that began on a note of whimsy continued the same way. After breakfast, Mike unearthed a long- handled pruning saw from somewhere in one of the sheds and cut mistletoe out of a tree in the front yard. Lucy tied sprigs together in bunches and hung them from every door casing and ceiling light fixture in the house, and she and Mike took turns “catching” each other standing under them.

Eric, who happened to be passing through the kitchen during the traditional consequence of one of those occasions, paused in the process of shrugging into his coat to roll his eyes at Devon. “Don’t mind them. They get like this at Christmastime.”

“Like what?” Lucy, roused and bristling, was struggling to free herself from Mike’s rather theatrical embrace.

“Nuts,” said Eric, and punctuated it with the growl of his ski jacket’s zipper. Devon caught the grin he tried to hide.

“We’ll have no ‘Bah Humbug’ in this house today,” Mike warned his son’s retreating back as the door banged shut behind him. He looked over at Devon and winked. “Don’t mind him. He has a tendency to take things a tad too seriously.”

“Eric always did have a hard time having fun,” Lucy agreed, and her voice held a note of wistfulness. “I think he just needs for somebody to show him how.” Then she looked at Devon, and for some reason her eyes seemed to warm, and then to sparkle, like embers kindling.

Devon murmured something ambiguous as she lifted her coffee cup to her lips, but as she looked away from Lucy’s glowing eyes she was seeing another pair very much like them. Eric’s eyes, going wide with surprise as her snowball plunked him in the chest, then suddenly igniting.

She remembered the thrill of excitement that had shot through her then, and her wildly pounding heart as she’d tried to escape inevitable reprisal. How they’d laughed, hurling and ducking snowballs, floundering and wallowing in the snow. She hadn’t felt cold, only exhilarated, carefree. Like a child, she thought-and the realization came to her: We were like them, Eric and I…like Mike and Lucy this morning.

And then he’d come so very close to kissing her. She’d so very much wanted him to. And then…yesterday. And last night.

Tears came from nowhere to sting and blur her eyes, and she plunked down the coffee cup and blinked them away in a panic. What would Mike and Lucy think?

But she heard their voices and laughter, now, moving on down the hallway. She was alone in the kitchen. For that one moment she could safely let her shoulders sag, close her aching eyes and lower her face into the cradle of her hand.

Ironic, she thought, that here in this house, surrounded by so much warmth, so much love, for the first Christmas in memory she should feel the desperate misery of loneliness.

It was like every day-before-Christmas he remembered-the whole household bustling with preparations for that evening and, of course, the Big Day, his sensible mom and dad behaving with uncharacteristic giddiness, and over everything a fog of suspense he could almost touch…smell…taste. Smelling and tasting being the operative words to describe the activity in the kitchen, from which cooking odors wafted through the house all day long in a confusing, ever-changing stew made up of everything from pungent onion and sage, to turkey giblets and cornbread, to pumpkin and cinnamon, chocolate, vanilla and rum.

All that cooking had always been Eric’s cue to make himself scarce, and in that respect, too, this Christmas was like the others in his memory. He managed to spend most of the day in his darkroom putting together his gift for Devon, leaving Emily in his mom’s care-although mostly it was his dad he’d spotted, during occasional forays into the house for food or some forgotten item, walking a fussy baby up and down the hallway. Which was definitely one thing about this Christmas that was different, the other being the presence of a redheaded stranger working side-by-side with his mother in the kitchen.

But while almost everything was the same, it felt different to him in all ways. What he couldn’t decide was whether that had to do with, as he’d suggested to Caitlyn last night, some sort of epiphany he’d experienced “out there” in the big cruel world, or whether he’d just grown up.

One thing that was different was that today his reason for clearing out of the house had less to do with avoiding KP duty, and more to do with avoiding Devon. Developing feelings for the woman was a complication he hadn’t counted on. And while there wasn’t much he could do about that now, at least, he’d thought, if he didn’t have to see her, be around her, maybe he could keep a bad situation from getting worse.

What he hadn’t realized was that he didn’t have to see her or be around her for that to happen. It happened anyway. It happened while he was working on her gift, or while he was looking at the snapshots he’d taken of her that day in the snow, and her red hair arresting as a single cardinal in all that white. It happened when he closed his eyes and memories invaded-sensory memories so keen he could feel her cool wet cheek against his skin, smell her hair, taste her mouth. See the confusion and accusation in her eyes.

It happened. Like an avalanche. A natural disaster. It was going to cause him grave damage and immeasurable pain, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Immeasurable pain. That was the second thing that was different this Christmas. Coloring everything, underlying the excitement and childish anticipation and feverish preparations, was the dull ache of knowing this would be the last time he’d ever be a part of it. While it was true he’d been away for a good many years, that he’d missed a decade’s worth of these Christmases, the knowledge had always been in the back of his mind that he could come home any time he wanted to, that everything would still be here waiting for him-the warmth of this house, his parents, their love for him, all unchanged.

But after tomorrow… Once he’d embarked on the course Caitlyn was mapping for him even now, he could never come back. For the next eighteen years, at least, until Emily was legally an adult, they would be fugitives. If he saw his parents or any of his family again it would be brief visits in another place…another land.

That knowledge clutched at his insides like a cold hand. His heart, his throat, every part of him ached. But what could he do? Barring a miracle, it was the only choice he had.

When Devon’s gift was finished and wrapped, Eric went down to the barn where he spent the rest of the day shoveling out stalls. He found no particular comfort in the solitude; it simply hurt too much to be around the people he loved.

Lucy was worried. Not that she’d ever admit it, but she was beginning to be afraid something had gone