There was a mattress on the floor, with two pillows and I assume that Colorado had been sleeping in with Maddie, at least it appeared that way.
“So the background check. Parents situated in Florida, and you have one sibling, a sister,” Simon summarized. I’d not thought about Mom and Dad in a while—we weren’t close, a combination of Natalie falling pregnant outside of marriage, me being gay, and them being evangelical nuts. Their loss, because they’d never met their only granddaughter, Emma, and she was freaking awesome.
“Natalie.”
“And she’s a single mom.”
The way he said it put my back up. “And evidently your client is a single dad.”
“I meant no offense, sorry, it’s just… you’re an uncle—”
“Emma, who’s five, her dad is deceased, cancer. Any more questions?”
Maddie stirred in my arms, her tiny mouth opening in a yawn, and her free fist batting at my shirt. She didn’t wake fully though, and I stepped around Simon to get to the crib. Carved and polished wood, with bright red blankets, it looked so inviting, and was certainly a step up from the drawer that we’d used for Emma just after Bobby died. Of course, as soon as we could afford it, we’d gotten her a crib, but it wasn’t as fancy as this one. I settled Maddie into her space, and tucked the blanket around her, and she didn’t fuss that she wasn’t in my arms.
“She’s had all her genetic testing,” Simon informed me, and when I looked up I could see he was reading from a clipboard.
“What? So he can decide whether he keeps her or not?”
Simon frowned as he glanced up from the list. “Huh? No. He might be a complete ass, but he loves her, and she won’t be going anywhere. It was done because we have no idea who the mom is.”
“Yeah right.” That might have been disrespectful, but Simon was as much an employee as I was.
“No, for real, we’ve narrowed it down to five possible women. It would have been twelve but he distinctly recalls seven were men. Yeah, August was a busy month. Band was on tour.”
“The hell?” I blurted, and my mouth dropped open.
“Anyway, next, she doesn’t appear to have obvious allergies, but we haven’t ruled out milk, eggs, peanuts, soy, wheat, tree nuts, walnuts, and cashews and so on, fish, and shellfish.”
“I should hope not, she’s on formula. Please tell me you haven’t given her any of those things.”
He looked affronted. “No. Obviously. But it’s an area of concern for my client, and therefore I’m covering it on the list he made. There are emergency numbers in the hall, kitchen, pool house, garden house, front room, front door, dining room, and here.” He pointed at a poster on the back of the door. The list started with doctor, pediatrician, hospital, infectious disease units, and ended with several names, Ryker and Alex being the only two I saw that I recognized as maybe the two who had decorated the room.
“I’m surprised you don’t have a number for the local S.W.A.T. team on there,” I observed, and turned in time to see him making a note. “I was joking.”
He stared at me, then down at the list, and then back at me. “I’ll add it anyway.”
“May as well get NASA on speed dial in case of alien invasion,” I mumbled, and didn’t repeat myself when he prompted me to. “Next?” I asked instead.
He went through a list that took nearly ten minutes, and I tried not to interrupt. When I’d nannied before I’d had lists from parents who were quite happy to leave them in my care. This however was a list made by a man who had no idea at all and was covering all the bases. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it was for someone like Colorado to bring a baby into his hedonistic lifestyle. I knew nothing about hockey, only that it was grown men on skates pushing and shoving and getting into fights, and that there was a certain amount of obsession in Tucson with a hockey team. I’d seen posters, giant ones on the sides of the Santa Catalina Arena, tall, studly jocks who would never have taken a second look at a science nerd. Never in the history of human existence, or at least my existence, had nerds and jocks co-existed in a friendly way, and I was speaking from experience. Come to think of it, on those posters, I don’t remember seeing Colorado up there, but then I didn’t even recall the name of the team so that wasn’t a good start.
“Okay that’s it,” Simon muttered, and shut the clipboard before opening it again and thrusting it, along with the pen, toward me. “Can you sign at the bottom to say you’ve understood the dangers?”
I took it wordlessly, and read the list I’d just been given.
“You want me to sign to say that I’m aware she might be allergic to shellfish, and that I should use different colored towels, in rainbow order, at each bath time? I’m not here long, why the hell would I sign that. And oh my god, you actually added S.W.A.T. to the end.”
“The towel thing was Colorado’s idea about fostering a sense of fluidity of something or other.”
“Wait, so it was you who added shellfish?”
He blinked at me and then wrinkled his nose. “Whatever, just sign the damn list.”
I did as I was told, because yeah, I could readily agree that I wasn’t going to let sheep, goats, and/or other livestock into the nursery or do any one of the thirty or so things on the list—up to and including calling for a S.W.A.T. team. Then I took the paper and turned it over, and scribbled my own proviso, and handed it to him. “Your turn to sign.”
He cleared his throat and began to read. “I, Simon something or other,” he stopped and looked at me. “Brennan. Simon Brennan.”
He sounded
