settled for a smile, then bent to pick up her bag. When she straightened, Dr. MacDowell hadn’t left, but looked like he was waiting on her. For a second, for one insane second, Kendry thought that the handsome man with that adorable child was waiting to spend more time with her.
“Can I walk you to your car?” he asked.
Kendry wanted to melt on the spot. He was such a gentleman. Too bad she didn’t have a car for him to walk her to.
No, she was Kendry Ann Harrison, minimum-wage-earning hourly employee, the girl who rode the city bus because she’d once been too stupid to go to college when she’d had the chance. She didn’t belong with the guy who’d devoted a decade of his life to learning all the medical know-how that allowed him to save people’s lives.
“Thanks, but I have to go clock out. Have a good night.”
She slung her tote bag over her shoulder and headed out of the room with what she hoped was a cheerful, unembarrassed, jaunty attitude.
“Me,” Sammy said, drawing out the syllable in a high-pitched voice of distress.
Kendry almost stopped. She knew that when Sammy wanted something, he said “me” instead of “mine.” But since she was Kendry, and his father was Dr. MacDowell...well, she wasn’t his mother, and he wasn’t her baby.
Still, she turned to blow her favorite baby a kiss over her shoulder.
* * *
The juggling routine never varied.
Jamie thought he ought to be getting better at it by now, but he still felt like a caricature of a single parent, the kind on TV commercials who dropped briefcases and seemed incapable of balancing babies and bottles. If only there were a solution at the end of thirty seconds of failure, like on TV. If only Jamie could press a door-opening button on the key to a certain car, or spot some golden arches that would magically make his day easier.
The juggling only got worse in real life. This evening, it was raining, but Jamie couldn’t pull his car into the garage, which was still full of boxes from his deployment. He dashed with Sam from the driveway to the side door, but the door refused to open. The days of uncharacteristic rain had made the wood swell, so Jamie ended up kicking open the door while Sam cried and the rain pelted them both.
“I know, Sam, I know. We’ll get you out of these wet clothes ASAP. They get cold real quick when they’re wet, don’t they?” Jamie kept his monologue running as he tried to keep the arm that was holding Sam inside the house while reaching out into the rain with his other arm to retrieve both his briefcase and the fallen diaper bag. “I can fix the clothes thing, son. Give me a second to shove this door closed, and I can fix that one problem. Thank God.”
Sam didn’t seem convinced, judging by the misery on his face and the volume of his cries.
Jamie applied some force to get the door to shut. In the still of the house, he could hear the rain dripping from the bottom of the diaper bag. The denim was soaked. One more thing he’d need to fix before his next shift at the hospital. Unpack the diaper bag, throw it in the dryer, repack it before work.
Damn. He let his head drop back to rest on the wall, let the denim drop onto the wood floor, which was wet, anyway.
His daily life wasn’t difficult, really, just a constant to-do list of tasks. So why did he feel so overwhelmed by it all sometimes?
Maybe his brother was right. Maybe having a nanny waiting for him now would be the solution. A grandmotherly woman, ready to put the diaper bag in the dryer for him. A gray-haired lady who would have had the lights on in the house while she waited for him to come home. One of the nanny services he’d consulted had specified light cooking as an option in their contract. There could be supper waiting for him now, made by a sweet old lady.
Even when he was dripping wet and tired, Jamie didn’t like the image. He didn’t want a grandmotherly person in his house, someone to accommodate, someone to adjust to.
He wanted a partner, a peer, someone who would love Sam like her own, day after day, year after year, with no salary and no vacations. A mother for Sam, not for himself. Was it too much to ask?
Sam wailed.
“Right. It’s just you and me, kid. Dry clothes, coming right up.”
Chapter Three
Jamie struggled with his guilt while his son struggled with his bottle.
When all the little things went wrong, one after another, when Jamie’s workday had been long and his baby refused to be comforted, memories of Amina brought him no comfort. On days like those—on days like today—instead of missing Amina, instead of wishing she were here to share the safe life of suburban America, Jamie would feel angry.
Amina could have shared this life. Amina could have seen their son growing day by day, but she’d chosen a different route, a path in life that had led to her death. She’d left Jamie alone to pick up the pieces, to protect her baby, to keep her memory alive for their son. And sometimes, damn it all to hell, Jamie was pissed off at the choices she’d made.
Being pissed off at a dead woman was unacceptable. The guilt was heavy on him now. It felt familiar.
He and Sam were dry, at least, both wearing white T-shirts and sitting together in the leather recliner. Jamie hadn’t been able to find a rocking chair that fit his size comfortably, and the recliner did the trick when it came to relaxing with the baby until Sam—or both of them—fell asleep.
Tonight, though, as Sam worked his way through swallowing and spitting up the contents of his bedtime bottle, relaxation seemed a long way off. Sometimes Jamie thought he’d never relax again—not for the next eighteen years, anyway. Not while he was the sole adult responsible for making sure Sam had all he needed for a good life.
Usually, these quiet moments with his son made everything fall into place. The troubles of his workday receded, unable to keep his attention when he held this baby and felt all the wonderment of a new life.
Usually, but not tonight.
As Sam grunted and sucked his way through the bottle, Jamie studied his son’s face. Sam looked like Amina. His arrestingly dark eyes were undoubtedly his mother’s. Jamie smoothed a hand over the soft, black hair on Sam’s head—also Amina’s. He let Sam curl his hand around Jamie’s index finger. Those fingers didn’t look like Jamie’s. Nor his toes. Did they look like Amina’s?
Jamie no longer remembered details like that, the shape of her thumb or pinky finger. He was forgetting. If he forgot Amina, there would be nobody to tell Sam about his mother. Amina had been the last of her family, the sole survivor when the rest had been wiped out by the war. For resisting the Taliban, her family name had been erased to the last distant cousin. Amina had only been spared by a matter of days, she’d told him, sent to school in London before the slaughter in her village had taken place.
Jamie wondered how the MacDowells would have reacted if the local sheriff suddenly had the power to walk onto their ranch and start shooting. His family probably would have been as defiant as Amina’s family had been. Perhaps that was one reason he and Amina had hit it off so quickly. They were kindred spirits. She could have been a MacDowell.
She should have been a MacDowell.
Instead,
