mostly. My toenails. My hair really hurts. My...well...like I said, mostly everywhere, but it’s getting better.”
She remembered making an attempt to braid her hair at some time during the procedure, but then the pains had started piling in hard and heavy and she’d let it go.
“Thank you for staying. You really didn’t have to. We’ll be just fine now. But thank you.” That sounded like a bread-and-butter note written by a second-grader. Her brain was functioning, only she couldn’t seem to hook it to her tongue.
“You feel like talking?”
She didn’t, but said she did because he’d been so nice and he seemed to want to tell her something. And she owed him, because if he hadn’t happened along at the right time she might have had her baby right there in the garden between the onions and the butter beans.
No, of course she wouldn’t have. There’d been plenty of time. She would have called a taxi. She would have gotten over her momentary panic and handled everything just fine.
“Have you seen her yet? Isn’t she beautiful? I still haven’t settled on a name.” As tired as she was, she felt all warm and glowy, just thinking about her precious little daughter.
“Yeah, she’s really something. Listen—” He looked so fierce. She’d noticed that about him right off, even when she’d been all wrapped up in her own situation. He had a hard face, not a handsome one. Not like Rafe. “Are you up to answering a few questions?” he asked her, and she nodded, wondering how many times his nose had been broken.
“Sure. My mouth’s about the only part of me that doesn’t hurt. Isn’t it funny how something as simple as having a baby can make you feel like you’ve been in a car wreck? Especially my feet.”
Joe reached down and jerked the crisp white spread loose from the mattress. “Your toes are bent. Hospital corners. Always hated ’em, myself.”
“Oh, that feels better.” She wriggled her toes and smiled at him. “Go ahead, ask away. I’ll tell you anything I can, but if it’s about—”
The clatter that had started down at the far end of the hall grew louder and stopped right outside her door. Someone brought in a tray, plopped it on the stand at the foot of the bed and left without a word.
“Sink or swim, huh?” Joe said as he rolled the stand into position and then cranked the bed up a few turns.
“They don’t have much help. I’ve been considering maybe applying for a job here myself, once the baby’s a little older.”
“You a nurse?”
“No, but I can do office work. I can use a computer. I could even help in the kitchen.”
“You’re out of work?”
“No, not quite. But I’m ready for a change, and they have a nursery here. That’s a big plus.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Joe lifted the cover off the plate. He knew hospital food. Texas or North Carolina, it didn’t make much difference. Meat loaf was meat loaf. Vanilla pudding was vanilla pudding. “You want me to cut anything up for you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my hands. But thanks. I don’t usually act this way, you know. Helpless, I mean. I’ve been looking after myself ever since I left school, and I’ve hardly been sick a day in my life. Maybe that’s why all this threw me.” She took a bite of meat loaf, grimaced and looked for the salt. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”
She threw him off stride. She was supposed to be evasive. Instead she was asking for it, which screwed up his theory.
So he dragged up a chair, sat down and lined up his questions, but before he could begin, she asked one of her own.
“Why did you stay? You don’t know me—you certainly weren’t under any obligation. Are you from the home? Should I know you? It’s been so long... I’ve kept up with a few classmates, but they’re all girls. Well, women, now.”
She sipped her coffee, and Joe made a few mental notes and got set to try again.
And again, she beat him to it. “Want my corn bread? It’s dry, but there’s some...well, I don’t suppose it’s butter, but it’s something, anyway. I could ring for a nurse and see if she could bring you something to drink.”
So they talked about the food and whether or not caffeine was any worse than decaf. Joe still hadn’t managed to get around to asking her if she was the brains behind Rafe Davis’s long string of robberies, or if she’d only acted as his fence when a woman in a lab coat came in and asked him to step outside.
He did, feeling frustrated, but as soon as he went back inside and started to question her again, someone else came along with a clipboard, and he gave up.
Forty minutes later, he had checked into a hotel, ordered room service, set the air-conditioning on max and run himself a tubful of hot water. He’d waited this long. He could wait a few more hours.
The next morning Joe slept through the alarm. Slept until a crack of sunshine sliced through the drawn draperies and drilled through his eyelids.
He ordered pizza for breakfast, did a few of the exercises the physical therapist had promised would put him back in peak working condition and then eased the resulting kinks out of his carcass under a hot needle-spray shower.
He thought about riding out to the house while it was still empty, going over it with a fine-tooth comb and then facing her with the evidence. They could cut through a whole lot of crap that way.
But he didn’t. Instead he called his grandmother and asked how she was feeling, and what she’d been up to. Frowning, he listened to her lethargic responses. “Well, look—I’ll be headed back in a few days. Right now I’m going to go by the hospital and check on Sophie and the baby. Remember, I told you about her last night? You wouldn’t believe how homely she is. The baby—not Sophie. I thought all babies were supposed to look like the kid in the toilet paper ads.”
Sophie didn’t feel like getting out of bed, but then, it wasn’t the first time she’d had to do something she didn’t want to do. At least this time she had a good reason to get up. They were going home. She was taking Iris Rebecca Bayard home, and then they’d see how much of her old training from the Children’s Home she remembered. She used to be pretty good with the babies but that had been a long time ago. Nearly eighteen years.
She could have used another day to rest up and prepare herself for the responsibility of motherhood, but her insurance wouldn’t cover it. And thanks to a handsome, smooth-talking rascal who had stolen her heart, her savings, her self-respect and just about everything else of value she possessed, she couldn’t swing it on her own.
At least he’d left her with something, although that was purely accidental. If she hadn’t taken it to the bank with her that day to show it to her friends and see if it would fit into a deposit box, he would’ve taken that, too.
She was wearing her old maternity tent. The going-home outfit she’d packed wouldn’t fit over her flab and her outrageous bosom. She’d felt like crying, but then they’d brought in her
