it all. Here she’d been on her own since she was sixteen-and-a-half, and she hadn’t learned anything at all about men. There was probably a psychological term for women who allowed themselves to be hornswoggled, but she didn’t want to hear it, she really didn’t. At the rate she was going, she’d probably be first in line to buy that oceanfront lot in Arizona if the right man offered it for sale.
Instead the wrong man had come along and offered something entirely different, and she’d bought it. And before she’d come to her senses, the skunk had ransacked her jewelry box, turned her closet inside out, stolen her bank card and her three-year-old car, driven to the nearest ATM and cleaned out her account.
And kept on going. Three weeks later he had driven her car into the side of a passenger train down in Georgia.
But he’d left her with something far more valuable than anything he’d taken. Iris. Her baby. Her family.
Not to mention all those tacky little jade whatnots that were worth a fortune.
Joe cleared his throat. From the baby seat between them, Iris smacked her gums without waking up. “Joe, what was it you wanted to ask me?” Let the man state his business and leave, Sophie. You don’t need a crutch to lean on, you only think you do.
“Have you got a crib? Some kind of baby bed?”
“Better than that, I have a complete nursery all painted, furnished and ready to receive. Almost the first thing I did when I leased the house was fix a place for her. I knew my ladder-climbing, paint-smelling days were numbered.”
Sophie laughed. Joe didn’t. So far he’d proved to be kind, helpful and dependable, but a barrel of laughs he was not.
She thought he might be a policeman, from a few things he’d said while he’d been seeing her through her labor. Now, why on earth would a Texas policeman want to ask her anything? She’d never even been west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Unless it had something to do with Rafe. As far as she knew, Rafe had never been to Texas, either. But then, what did she know about the man? He’d told her he was in the commodities business and like a dunce, she hadn’t even asked him what kind of commodities he dealt in. By the time he left and she’d had to report the robbery to the sheriff, she wished she’d been a little more wary. And six weeks after that, when the two men had come out to tell her that her car had been found totaled and that the thief was dead, she’d been too dazed from losing her job and learning that she was pregnant. Most of what they’d said had gone in one ear and out the other.
Joe pulled up beside the house and cut the engine. “Looks like rain.”
“There’s not a cloud in the sky. Listen, I’ll pay you back for the diapers and all the rest,” Sophie said earnestly. “I’d planned to do my last-minute shopping next week. I get paid on Monday.”
“No problem. Call it a baby present.”
“You’re more of a present than a boxcar full of diapers. Honestly, Joe, I’ll never be able to thank you for all you’ve done. If you hadn’t come along—”
“You’d have picked up the phone and called someone else and everything would have turned out just fine.”
“I know that,” she said with a certainty she didn’t feel.
Call who? The few friends who hadn’t moved away were in Winston, at work. She couldn’t have asked any of them to walk out in the middle of a workday, drive all the way out to Davie County, hold her hand while she timed her pains, drive her to the hospital and stay with her until she delivered, and then come back the next day and drive her home again. “All the same, it was a nice thing to do. I guess policemen have to be jacks-of-a-lot-of-different-trades.”
“What makes you think I’m a policeman?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Not anymore.” He’d told her yesterday when she’d questioned him, that he was retired. Before she could ask from what, she’d had another hard pain. “Better let me take the baby, then I’ll come back and get the rest of the stuff in. Have you ever thought about getting some decent locks installed? A kid with a paper clip could break into your house in ten seconds Sat.”
Sophie eased herself gingerly out of the high cab and reached back inside for her purse. “And do what? Rob me blind? In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have anything worth stealing.”
“Everybody’s got a few valuables. Important papers. Jewelry. Antiques.” Carefully he lifted the baby from the car seat and settled her in the crook of his arm.
Sophie labeled the thought that popped into her mind inappropriate and told herself to grow up. “Oh, sure,” she said airily. “When it comes to antiques, there’s the house itself, only it’s not mine yet. Unless the heirs of the woman who owned it stop squabbling, it might never be mine, but I do have a cookbook that belonged to my great-grandmother if that counts as an antique. As for jewelry, my watch came from the drugstore. Everything else went south a long time ago, but I still have a TV that’ll pick up four-and-a-half stations when weather conditions are just right.”
Joe didn’t even crack a smile. Hardly surprising. Sophie’s heart felt like a lump of wet dough. This was it, then. He’d leave in a few minutes. He was certainly under no obligation to stay and help her get settled and cheer her up when she got the blues.
That was probably what ailed her now. Postpartum blues. She’d heard all about it. It was miserable, but hardly terminal.
Forcing herself to smile, she said. “There’s some sliced beef and a Vidalia onion in the refrigerator if you want a sandwich before you go. Here, I’ll take her now.” She held out her arms for the small, pink-wrapped bundle.
Joe handed her over. “Feeling possessive, are we?”
What she was feeling was happy, tearful and hungry all at the same time. At this rate it might take her emotions even longer to recover from childbirth than it did her body.
“Sure she’s not too heavy for you to be carrying? You just got out of the hospital.”
“I carried her for almost nine months.”
“I’d have thought more like twelve.”
“She’s a big baby. Twenty-three inches long. I was twenty-two and weighed over ten pounds when I was born.”
“Your family runs to big babies?”
She shrugged. “I was an only child. When you’re little it’s hard to judge sizes. The whole world’s ten-feet tall.”
They were standing in the front room. Sophie had painted the walls and hung the curtains from her apartment when she’d moved in. Seeing it now through the eyes of a stranger, it struck her that the new furnishings she’d been so proud of when she’d lived in town weren’t quite right for a house in the country. Less glass and wrought iron, more wood and chintz would’ve been better. She’d sold off one of the jade pieces to lease the house, buy the appliances she’d needed and pay a mover. There’d been little left over for redecorating. Insurance had bought a replacement for her car, but she’d had to settle for a secondhand one. It had given her nothing but trouble ever since. By the time she sold off the next piece, she’d have another stack of bills waiting to be paid, but she was determined to save as much
