The Black Sheep’s Baby

ducklings.

No sense in trying to avoid it. She walked toward it slowly, tiptoeing, dry-mouthed, her heart still bumping along, gathering speed like a runaway wagon. Her knees touched the edge of the bed. She caught her breath, then leaned over to get a better look, and felt a giddy urge to laugh-not with amusement or anything like it, but simply a release of tension. And a profound sense of wonderment and awe. Tears sprang to her eyes; she found that she was hugging herself, trying to stop herself from shaking.

The cause of all this unheralded emotional turmoil was lying on her back, but propped with pillows so that she was rolled almost on her side. One tiny fist lay like a half-open blossom against a plump pink cheek. Her mouth was open, and from it issued a soft but unmistakable snore.

Susan’s baby. My niece.

Devon drew a shuddering breath. “Hello, Emily,” she whispered.

She put out a finger but pulled it back before she touched the fat, velvety cheek. She stood for a long time- looking, and looking, and looking.

The barn had always been Eric’s special place of refuge, since the day he’d bravely and defiantly climbed the forbidden ladder to the loft, off-limits to a five-year-old, and discovered the newborn kittens his sister Ellie’s cat had hidden there in the hay.

Back then it had seemed to him a safe and friendly place, warmed even on days like this by the body heat of the animals winter-quartered there, the busy and contented sounds they made filling all the spaces inside the barn so that the storms howling outside its walls seemed far, far away. In the summertime, its dim and dusty emptiness made a different kind of refuge, a cool, quiet escape from sun and responsibilities and the hot, sweaty work he’d hated so.

The camera in his mind had loved the play of light and shadow inside the old barn, a montage of patterns and colors, constantly changing: shafts of sunlight slanting through open doors, shimmering with dust motes; moonlight glimpsed through windows fogged with drifts of spiderwebs; shadows leaping across a rough-plank wall, brought to life by a swinging lantern; heat lamps bathing newborn calves in pools of molten gold…

But that was pure enjoyment. Other times he’d come to the barn, like now, with his emotions in turmoil, his heart full of rebellion and his mind full of questions. At those times it wasn’t enjoyment he’d been looking for, but peace. Acceptance. And if not answers, at least the patience to wait for the answers to come.

More often then not, back then, he’d been able to find those things here-and why that was, he wasn’t sure. Though later in his life he’d wondered if it was because inside the barn’s walls, everything-from the spiders in the rafters to the cows with their new calves-seemed so simple, all of life reduced to its basic elements: food and shelter, birth and death. And everything beyond those walls, like the noise of the storm, had seemed, for that moment, at least, far away and therefore inconsequential.

He’d been a kid, then. Naive, to put it mildly. He found that out later in his life, too, about the same time he’d discovered that some of those things outside the barn were closer to him than he’d thought, and there was no escaping their consequences after all.

So, what was he doing now, running off to his childhood refuge when he had damn little hope of finding peace, there or anywhere else? Certainly not acceptance, not of any kind of scenario that would involve giving up Emily to this woman-this lawyer-and her parents. Not answers, either. Or ideas. He’d used up his last one, bringing the baby here, to the place he’d been surprised to realize he still thought of as home. For all the good it had done him, or her.

No-as far as answers and ideas went, he was fresh out. And he hadn’t much hope of finding any new ones waiting for him in his mom’s old barn, either. Stupid idea.

Still…amazingly, there was something calming about working alone in the early morning quiet, cleaning out stalls by the gentle light of a hanging lamp. It had been a long time since he’d wielded a pitchfork or shoveled manure-not activities he’d ever relished in his youth-and he was mildly surprised to discover it felt good to work up a sweat. He’d actually taken off his jacket and, finally, even his shirt.

His mom and dad had been in and out, starting the morning chores. He’d stopped shoveling long enough to ask his mom who was looking after the baby. She’d given him a searching look before answering, “She’s still asleep. I asked Devon to keep an ear out for her.”

He’d had nothing to say to that, and had just nodded and gone back to shoveling, using the physical activity and his own sweat to dampen down the fiery sizzle of anger in his belly.

After that, his parents, no doubt remembering his old habits, had pretty much ignored him. Still, he’d been glad when they’d finished the chores and gone back to the house, and the quiet he remembered, if not the peace, had settled once more around him.

When he again felt a cold blast of arctic air and heard the storm’s howl rise abruptly from a muted roar to a banshee’s scream, he thought it must be his mom or dad come back, probably to tell him the little one was awake. When he saw instead the bundled shape of someone that couldn’t possibly be either of his parents, his heart gave a leap, then settled down to a quick, angry thumping.

He watched in impassive silence while the figure, clumsy in snow-dusted parka and rubber chore boots several sizes too big for her, struggled to push the door closed against the buffeting wind. She gave a wordless cry of victory when she succeeded in dropping the latch into its cradle, then whipped around and leaned against the door, breathing hard.

She looks scared to death, Eric thought, amused. As though she’d just managed to escape a pack of ravenous wolves.

Oh, he wanted to feel contempt for her, this thin-blooded California girl, threatened by a little snowstorm. He tried. But…dammit, there was something fierce, even triumphant about the way she threw back the hood of her parka and shook out that fiery hair of hers, and try as he would, he couldn’t manage to convince himself it was contempt he really felt.

She came toward him, absently brushing snow from her coat and looking around her like someone who’d been magically transported to an alien world. Rather the opposite, he thought, of Dorothy finding herself in Oz.

“What do you want?” he asked before she’d gotten far; he couldn’t explain why he didn’t want her coming close to him. “She awake?”

“What? Oh-no, Emily’s still sleeping, or was when I left. Anyway, your mom…” Apparently fascinated by the barn, she’d finally got around to looking at him, only to do a double take and interrupt herself with a blunt, “Aren’t you cold?”

Eric glanced down at his naked chest. “Only when I stand around,” he said meaningfully, and twirling the scoop, rammed it, with more energy than was necessary, under layers of dirty, wet, trampled-down straw. He heaved the shovelful toward the pile he’d been building in the center aisle without checking to see if his visitor was out of the way or not, and got an infantile satisfaction when he heard her exclamation of dismay.

Didn’t slow her down a bit. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her skirt the manure pile, brushing straw off of her parka sleeve now, instead of snow, and come to lean her elbows on the gate of the stall next to the one he was working in.

He went on shoveling, thinking if he ignored her she’d take the hint and go away. No such luck. Apparently lawyers didn’t understand subtlety. Looked like, if he wanted to get rid of the woman, he was going to have to use more direct measures.

He stopped shoveling, and scoop held at the ready, said, “What do you want?” just as she opened her mouth to say something. A lifelong habit of good manners-for which he could thank his mom and dad’s stubbornness-made him halt and give her a sardonic go-ahead shrug.

“I was going to say I didn’t know you were a photographer.”

It wasn’t what he’d expected. He lowered the shovel blade to the floor and leaned on the handle. “My mom been blabbing?”

“No. I went to check on the baby and saw the photos in your room. I asked about them, and she told me they were yours. And that you’re a professional photographer.”

He gave a soft grunt and corrected it. “Photojournalist.”

She said, “Ah,” and went on looking at him in a searching, appraising kind of way he found intensely annoying.

“Don’t look so surprised,” he said after a moment, smiling without amusement. “What did you think? Yeah, I have a profession, even earn a living at it, pay taxes and everything. You just assumed I was some homeless street