dirty baby went back up on his shoulder, and one hand went over the dirty bottom. He grimaced. There was an easier way for all of this, he was sure.
Once he got some warm water, Mike rinsed off his hand under the tap, then lowered the baby into the empty sink and sprayed him off, too. He was being gentle, but Benjie scrunched up his face and started to cry.
“Hey, buddy...it’s not so bad. You’ve got to be clean. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry...”
Behind him, Mike heard the front door open.
“I’m back!” Paige’s voice filtered over to the kitchen. There was a pause. “Oh, my God! What happened in here?”
“I’m in the kitchen,” he called, and he turned off the water, then scanned the room for something to wrap the baby in. Benjie’s plaintive wail made him feel bad—no one liked being hosed off, even if the hose was warm and gentle.
Paige appeared in the doorway, her eyes wide as she took him in.
“There is baby poop literally everywhere,” she said.
“Except on the baby,” he said, lifting up Benjie as proof. He was feeling rather proud of that achievement. He snatched a dish towel off the handle of the stove and wrapped it around Benjie, who stopped crying the minute he was wrapped up again. “Would you mind holding him?”
Paige stepped forward and took the baby without complaint, staring at Mike with a look of bewildered shock.
“I’ll just...change,” he said, looking down at his now smeared uniform. “This comes out in the wash, right?”
Paige didn’t answer, and he headed for the bedroom to find something else to wear. The smell of the diaper followed him, and he wrinkled his nose.
“So what did you pick up?” Mike called as he grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from his dresser.
“A bassinet, some burp cloths, a few preemie sleepers, since he’s pretty tiny still,” Paige called back. “Mike, what did you do to that diaper?”
“Nothing.” Mike emerged from the bedroom fully dressed. He went over to the sweatshirt protecting the carpet, picked it all up with one swoop and headed for the garbage. Whatever—he wasn’t attached to that sweatshirt, anyway.
“I think we need some diaper lessons,” she said. “Grab me a diaper, and I’m going to run through the basics.”
Mike passed a diaper over, and she held it up in front of her one-handed, the baby in the other arm. “This is the front. This is the back. These little tabs work like stickers.”
And for the next five minutes, Paige gave him a brief overview of diapering and dressing a baby—Benjie getting buttoned into a sleeper in the process. So, yeah, there had been an easier way, but in his defense, he’d panicked. Looking over at Paige’s sparkling blue eyes as she gave her super-detailed explanation of diaper duty, he realized that he was more than glad she was here to help him out—he was deeply grateful.
“They’re throwing me a baby shower at the precinct,” he said when she stopped talking.
“Good.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You need baby things,” she said, rising to her feet and cuddling Benjie close in her arms.
“What about that box in the kitchen? And you just bought baby things, I thought.”
“I got a few necessities,” she said with a small smile. “Trust me, Mike, you need a whole lot more baby stuff than you already have, and baby showers are a great way to get it.”
“I don’t like this,” he said.
Paige shrugged. “You’ll survive. You also might end up with something really useful, like a stroller, so...”
He found her lack of pity annoying, but he shot her a grin, anyway. “I take it the baby stuff is in the car still?”
She rummaged in her pocket for her keys and tossed them over to him. He caught them and headed for the front door. “I’ll write you a check.”
He was a lot more comfortable carrying boxes out of the car than he was dealing with his infant nephew, but when he glanced back at Benjie snuggled up in the crook of Paige’s arm, already fast asleep, he felt a wave of tenderness. Funny how an explosive diaper could be so bonding.
He and Benjie would be okay. Eventually.
PAIGE AWOKE FIVE minutes before her alarm went off the next morning, and she rolled over to grab her cell phone from the bedside table. When she pushed a button to light up the screen, she saw she had no missed calls. She yawned and put it down, then rubbed her hands over her face. She’d left her number with Mike before she left last night, just in case he found himself in over his head and in need of help. So she had slept lightly, expecting the phone to ring.
But it hadn’t, and she wasn’t sure what that meant. She’d agreed to be at his home by seven in the morning. So she flung back the covers and shivered in the chilly predawn. She grabbed a bathrobe and pulled it on before she flicked on her light and opened her closet.
Paige got dressed in some warm layers, ending in a soft, mauve sweater and a pair of jeans. It felt good to be dressing down for a change—she had to admit that. But waking up this early and plunging out into the morning cold still felt like it was a workday.
She’d had a few appointments with a counselor about her panic attacks and decisions for her future, and one of the things the counselor had pointed out was that Paige had never taken a proper break. What would life look like if Paige didn’t have this job? Stress leave was about more than giving her frayed nerves a rest—it was an experiment in what life would be like without her duties as a social worker.
So far, that had meant ordinary days—grocery shopping, watching Netflix, looking through the want ads at the jobs that came up in Eagle’s Rest. She hadn’t found an encouraging number of jobs she was qualified for, or interested in.
She’d considered getting another appointment with the counselor, but she needed to make her own decision. No one else could do this for her. If she left her career, she’d be the one to reap the rewards or live to regret it. And this assignment with Mike and Benjie was a bit of a relief. It was less time in her own head. Less agonizing about her decisions.
Paige’s house was a two-bedroom bungalow with an unfinished basement and ancient plumbing, but it suited Paige just fine. She stopped in her little kitchen for a cup of hot tea and toast with extra butter. Then she cleaned up, put on a bit of makeup and let herself out into the chilly predawn darkness.
The sky was clear of clouds, and she paused in the driveway in front of her house to look up. It was a habit from childhood—looking for the constellations she knew. But she could see only the brightest of the stars still visible. The mountains loomed like a black wall to the west, and she shivered as a gust of icy wind wormed its way against her neck.
Paige unlocked her car and got in. She turned the key and rubbed her hands
