In This Life Read online

  “That was a mouthful,” Nash said when I finally stopped talking.

  “Will you think about it?”

  His eyes landed on a stunning landscape painting depicting the highest peak in the Hawk Mountains. I knew it had been painted by his aunt and I wondered if he recognized her style.

  “I’ll think about it,” he agreed.

  I smiled. “Good.”

  Nash nodded in my direction. “So what’s your deal?”

  “My deal?”

  “You wear a lot of hats. You’re an accountant, a mom, you rescue small town stores and judging from your interaction with Colin you’re also a skilled baby whisperer. And did I hear you mention you’re a student too?”

  “Online classes but yes.”

  Nash studied me. “Is there anything you can’t do, Kathleen Doyle?”

  “Relationships.”

  UGH!!!

  Nash chuckled. “Noted.”

  I was inwardly cringing. “That sounded pathetic.”

  He shrugged. “A little.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I swear I’m not begging for pity. I just meant that I don’t have the time nor the inclination to deal with relationships.”

  “You’re not the only one.”

  “Maybe someday my outlook will change but for now I’m better off alone.”

  Nash looked interested. “Bad experience?”

  A chill rolled through me. “Yes.”

  “You’re honest,” he said, nodding. “I like that.”

  No. I’m the opposite of honest.

  “He must have been Emma’s father?” Nash guessed.

  The subject of Emma’s father was not a good one. Someday there’d be a reckoning for the things I’d done, the lies I’d told. But that wouldn’t be happening today and none of it was Nash Ryan’s goddamn business anyway.

  “I haven’t seen Emma’s father since I was pregnant,” I said. At least that part was technically true. I made a show of checking my watch. “Speaking of Emma, I’ve got to go pick her up.”

  A sudden cry signaled the awakening of Colin. My first instinct was to bolt down the hall and get him but Nash beat me to it. Colin was still crying when Nash returned with the car seat.

  “Hold on, kid,” he said. He set the baby down on the floor and hunched over, fumbling with the belt fasteners. I waited a few seconds, then bent over to help. I had Colin freed and in my arms in three seconds flat.

  “He’s probably wet,” I said, patting Colin’s bottom. “Where’s the diaper bag?”

  Nash blinked. “Ahh…”

  “You didn’t bring any diapers?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. I didn’t think we’d be gone long.”

  “Nash, you always need to bring the diaper bag. I gave it back to you packed with clean diapers, remember?”

  He was annoyed now. “I forgot, okay? I’m not used to carting around so many accessories.”

  “Well, you need to get used to it. Babies have a lot of needs.”

  “Kathleen,” he said wearily and I thought he was going to say something nasty but he just exhaled noisily and took a step in the opposite direction while looking away. Colin was still squirming. I bounced him my arms a little to distract him.

  “You drove here in the minivan, right?” I asked.

  He shot me a look. “Is there a point to that question?”

  “Yes. Heather usually kept a few spare diapers in the glove compartment.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  Exasperation was getting the best of me. “Can you please go get one?”

  Nash was looking more irritated by the second but he went outside without another word. He returned a moment later with a fresh diaper. He dangled it front of my face and I grabbed it.

  “You want me to change him?” I asked.

  “Is there any way to stop you?” he grumbled.

  I ignored the question and carried the fussing baby to the office where I set him down tenderly on the surface of his father’s antique desk on top of a blanket and swiftly changed the diaper. It wasn’t until I was done that I discovered it hadn’t been wet after all.

  Nash was leaning against the counter with his arms crossed when I returned. He watched silently as I removed my hair from Colin’s chubby fists and carefully re-installed him in his car seat.

  “He’s probably hungry,” I said.

  “Probably,” Nash agreed and took the car seat from me.

  “I can meet again the same time tomorrow. We’ve got a lot more to talk about if there’s a chance you’re going to keep the store running. I want to show you the financials. And since your father covered the register so often you will need to hire another employee unless you plan to be here just as much.”

  “Stop.” Nash shook his head and for a second he just looked extraordinarily tired. “Enough for now, okay?”

  I was doing it again. Being pushy, overbearing, demanding.

  Bitchy.

  I swallowed. “Okay, Nash. I’ll stop.”

  He paused by the door and stared at me for a few silent seconds. I didn’t know what he saw when he looked at me. The resident smarty-pants who thought she’d take the world by storm and now struggled to make ends meet as a single mom in the small town she’d once sworn she’d escape.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Nash said and then he was gone.

  I took a small object from the counter and held it in the palm of my hand. It was a duplicate copy of the key to the store. I’d forgotten to give it to him.

  My eyes were starting to blur with fatigue and it was only ten p.m. The night before had been rough, with Colin unwilling to sleep for more than an hour at a time. He was eating just fine and kept filling his diapers so according to my internet research on the habits of babies, there was no cause for alarm. I checked his gums because I read somewhere that sometimes babies can start teething early but his gums looked pink and not remotely swollen.

  Kathleen probably would have snapped her fingers and known instantly what the problem was but calling Kathleen would mean I’d have to talk to Kathleen. Talking to Kathleen meant getting an earful about forgotten diaper bags and improper bottle etiquette. After our testy meeting down at the store the other day I figured we needed some space.

  Jane and Kevin visited in the late afternoon and I was glad to hand Colin off to them for a few minutes so I could have the luxury of a ten minute shower.

  But once my aunt and her boyfriend were gone I was on my own again, wearing out the hardwood floors as I walked Colin back and forth and back again because he started crying every time I put him down. I didn’t know how much crying a typical baby did but it seemed this kid was shooting for a world record. He finally fell asleep about an hour after the sun went down and I would have been happy to follow his example if I didn’t have a pile of work to deal with.

  So instead of catching up on some much needed sleep I was at the kitchen table, rubbing my eyes in between tweaking the web page of a Portland-based steakhouse chain I’d done projects for in the past.

  Roxie snored underneath the table but she jumped up when I got to my feet. I’d barely made a dent in my task list but the rest would have to wait. I stretched my fingertips toward the ceiling and heard my joints pop.

  There were many evenings when I’d sat in this kitchen for hours because my dad had a rule about cleaning your plate before leaving the table. I didn’t like visiting my father. My mother always indulged my picky eating habits, preparing special meals that fit my tastes. It was a different story when I came to Hawk Valley. Chris Ryan was baffled by an eight year old who wouldn’t eat red meat and had no interest in catching fish at the lake up at the mountain cabin. On one of those trips I threw down my pole and told him we should leave the fish alone because they were better off where they were. He turned a cold eye in my direction and warned me to pick up the pole and start catching fish like a normal kid or else I could walk back down the damn mountain.

  “Your pro
blem is that your mother spoils you. That girl never did have any sense.”

  I always knew my parents didn’t like each other. It must have been rough, trying to raise a child with a person you can’t stand. But my mother never said a bad word about Chris Ryan directly to me. I never told her that he didn’t return the favor.

  That was the last time my father and I went fishing together. In an act of defiance I did pick up that pole and I stayed put until I had caught twice as many fish as he did. Then when his back was turned I dumped the ice chest full of dead fish into the muddy lake water.

  He didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.

  The dog let out a soft whine and I was wrenched out of old memories.

  “Need to go out?” I asked and her tail wagged. She was way ahead of me by the time I got to the back door.

  I watched her bound into the darkness and wondered what my dad would think about a dog living in his house. He’d always been strongly anti-pet, at least pets that weighed more than a pound, only allowing small rodents that could be caged and had limited life expectancies. The only other time I’d had a dog was at my mother’s house in Phoenix. His name was Captain and he was an energetic border collie who shadowed my every move when I was home. He was killed the same night she was.

  Roxie responded to my low whistle and raced back inside. I rewarded her with a pat on the head.

  “Good girl.”

  The dog flapped her tail and accidentally knocked over a blue porcelain vase that had been perched on a low table. I watched it fall to the hard floor and crack into several pieces, wincing at the noise and then waiting for the inevitable cry from upstairs. When it came the sound was shrill and piercing, loud even for him.

  I bolted into action, taking the stairs three at a time to get to Colin’s room. He kept screaming when I picked him up, screamed louder when I held him close, arched his back and shrieked like a banshee when I checked his diaper. Nothing comforted him. His diaper was dry. He didn’t want a bottle. He didn’t want to be held. I even tried putting him in the car seat and driving him around the block but that didn’t quiet him at all so I gave up and brought him back home.

  “What’s the matter with my favorite buddy?” I said, trying to sound all goo goo ridiculous like Kathleen did when she talked to him but he only screamed some more.

  I tried rocking him in a living room chair but he didn’t want that either. His cries were relentless, strident. The sounded full of pain and they gutted me like no other sound ever had before. I held my brother’s struggling little body close and pressed my lips to his forehead.

  Hot. Too hot.

  Panic rose instantly. He was sick. That’s why he’d been crying so much, why he couldn’t be consoled. I should have known. I should have thought of it. A parent would have realized sooner.

  “It’ll be okay, Colin. You’ll be okay.” My voice was artificial, high and cheerful.

  I cradled him in one arm and retrieved my laptop with the other. I searched the words ‘baby fever’. I searched the words ‘sick baby’. I searched the words ‘sick baby fever crying’. The results were so varied they were of little use. Colin might be getting a cold or he might have meningitis. I didn’t know if he’d had any shots. I didn’t know who his doctor was. At some point Kathleen had rattled off that information but it was one of those times when I was tired of listening to her talk and tuned her out.

  She’d also given me her phone number but I hadn’t added it to my contact list. My only option was to head upstairs and dig through my laundry to find the pocket where I’d shoved her business card the other day. Luckily her cell number was listed on the bottom. She answered on the second ring.

  “He’s sick,” I blurted out a split second after she said hello.

  If Kathleen had been sleeping when I called she was awake and alert now. “Nash? Colin’s sick?”

  “Yeah. He’s running a fever.”

  “How high?”

  I paced the floor with the phone in my ear and my crying brother in my arms. “I don’t know. He feels hot and he’s been crying on and off since last night and I thought everything was fine when he fell asleep but he started crying again and when I touched his head I noticed how hot he was.”

  It was a jumbled babble of words but Kathleen understood.

  “Okay, listen. The first thing you need to do is give him a dose of ibuprofen to get the fever down. Look in the diaper bag in his room. There should be a bottle in there with a dropper that will allow you to dispense the proper dosage directly into his mouth. Now let me ask you, has he been eating?”

  I’d made my way to Colin’s room and was already rooting around in the diaper bag. “Yeah, he’s been eating.”

  “Peeing? Pooping?”

  “Both.”

  “Does he seem listless? Lethargic?”

  I set the screaming baby down on the changing table. “Does he sound listless?”

  “Do you see a rash anywhere?”

  I unsnapped his outfit and examined him. “No.” The medicine was in my hand. I scanned the bottle for the dosage and wasted no time filling the dropper before depositing the contents into Colin’s mouth. He scrunched his mouth up and was silent for a second, then resumed screaming.

  “Should I take him to the hospital?” I asked.

  “Hawk General closed two years ago so the nearest hospital is forty five minutes away. There’s a brand new urgent care facility that just opened up on Cottonwood Road, right off I-95. They probably won’t be busy. I’ll meet you over there.”

  I was going to tell Kathleen that she didn’t need to do that. It was late and she had a kid of her own to take care of. But I was relieved she was coming. Kathleen with her take charge, know-it-all attitude was exactly what Colin needed right now.

  “Thank you,” I said and snapped Colin back into his outfit.

  This time I didn’t forget to bring the diaper bag when I left the house. The urgent care was a ten-minute drive away and there were only two other patients in the waiting room. I was halfway finished with filling out my life story on a clipboard full of papers when Kathleen rushed in. I could admit I was damn glad to see her.

  “How is he?” She sat in the yellow plastic chair right beside me and reached for Colin, unbuckling him from his car seat.

  “Much calmer now,” I said. Colin had fallen asleep on the drive and stayed that way even when I brought him into the brightly lit building. His head felt cooler too.

  “My poor baby,” Kathleen murmured, kissing his face and rocking him in her arms. It was tough to get rid of the lump in my throat when I watched her hold my baby brother. She really loved that kid. She loved him every bit as much as I did.

  “I dropped Emma off at my mom’s,” Kathleen said, still staring down at Colin. “She can keep her overnight.”

  Kathleen managed to look excellent even at this time of night under the harsh lights of the urgent care waiting room. She wore a blue v-neck tee and a loose skirt that reached to her ankles. Her wild red curls spilled over her shoulders and she wore no makeup. She didn’t need any. And I couldn’t be sure but from this angle I guessed she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  I’m such a fucking dick.

  This girl comes out in the middle of the night to help me out in a crisis and all I can do is check out her tits.

  I stopped watching Kathleen and returned to the tedium of my paperwork. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

  “You didn’t. I had a paper to write.”

  Next to a line that said ‘Allergies’ I wrote a question mark. “That’s right, you mentioned you were doing online school. What are you studying?”

  “Accounting. I’d like to get my CPA license someday.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Not really. But it’s a good career that will pay the bills.”

  I studied her again. Colin slept on her shoulder now while she tenderly rubbed his back. “What did you want to do instead?”

  A sad smile touched her lips. “It too
k me a little while to find my niche but I was a philosophy major.”

  “Impressive.”

  “I wanted to be a university professor. Get a PhD so I could have some fancy letters after my name, perhaps teach overseas for a while.”

  Those plans sounded more like the Kathleen Doyle who was hyped as the town prodigy, the girl who skipped a couple of grades and braved the halls of Hawk Valley High ahead of schedule, ignoring all the snickering over her flat chested little kid appearance.

  “And yet you became a bookkeeper in Hawk Valley,” I said and immediately wished I hadn’t. I was thinking aloud, wondering about the fork in the road of Kathleen Doyle’s life.

  “Emma,” she said by way of explanation and her smile was no longer sad.

  I should have figured that out. Kathleen was a few years younger than me, probably twenty-three. She’d graduated early, valedictorian of my class, headed off to college with big dreams and then came back home after she got knocked up by some guy she obviously didn’t want to talk about. My own parents had been young and foolish when I joined the world so I knew all about how the arrival of a kid could change a life’s trajectory.

  “Do you have any idea much more I could have done if you hadn’t been born?”

  My father had been a little drunk when he said that and we’d just had another of our infamous fights. I was probably fifteen at the time. Chris Ryan didn’t apologize very often but the next day he did apologize for saying those words. He stood there in the doorway of my bedroom, his hands crossed over his chest, his eyes on the floor as he said he was sorry. He’d been angry. He’d had too many beers. He didn’t mean what he said. I believed him. He wanted me to say something too, some acknowledgement of forgiveness. But I stubbornly stared down at my homework and said nothing.

  “Colin Ryan?”

  The nurse in purple scrubs was standing there waiting. Kathleen carried Colin while I followed with the car seat and diaper bag.