The door was locked.
Tana let herself in with her key. There were no lights on, although the sunset was over, and the last gray light of gloaming was all that came in the window. Her apartment felt like it had before Sterling had been born.
Lonely.
There was an opened cardboard box in the middle of her living room floor and a set of spoked wheels propped against it. She looked around for some sign of life. With a little start, she realized Caden was sitting at the dining table, watching her.
“Hi. I’m home.” She turned on the lamp by the couch as she passed it, walking straight toward him, ready to greet him with a kiss. She could do that, now. They were together.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.
“What’s going on? Is the baby—” Her heart stopped. That was the one thing that could make Caden look so grim. “Oh, my God, the baby—”
“He’s fine.”
Something about Caden’s tone of voice made her sink onto the hard chair next to his. “What happened?”
“Who is Jerry?”
She felt like she’d hit the water from the high-dive platform. Jerry—whack. That name shouldn’t exist here.
“He came by, Tana.”
She jumped up. “Where is the baby?”
Caden caught her wrist. “He’s asleep. Do you think I’d let a stranger take him?”
Her heart was pounding so hard, Caden must have felt her pulse without trying.
Caden dropped her wrist. “Someone who was a stranger to me, but not to you, obviously. He said he was Sterling’s father. It’s true, isn’t it? Your first thought when I said Jerry was that he came for the baby.”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s true.” Caden cut her off. “Artificial insemination. You said you used artificial insemination.”
“I called him a sperm donor. That’s all he was. All he is.” The point she’d thought was so important didn’t seem as significant now, but she said it, anyway. “I was very careful not to say that I went through an artificial insemination procedure. I didn’t lie. Not once.”
Caden shoved his chair away from the table and stood. “It was a huge lie. You told me there was a sperm donor when we danced on Thanksgiving. I didn’t believe you, at first. I thought you were just angry at your boyfriend. I should have trusted my gut. But ever since you went into labor…”
Every muscle in his body strained with the effort to contain the emotions that were tearing him up inside.
“Every day since then, I believed you, damn it. In my truck, just last night, you sat there while I poured my heart out to you. I told you I left you at the pub a year ago because I thought you were going to Houston to tell a man you were pregnant. I said I knew now it must have been your parents. You could have corrected me last night. You could have told me the truth. A hundred times, you could have told me. At the hospital, with the birth certificate. Your parents believe Sterling has no father. Ruby believes it. But it’s all been a massive, massive lie.”
Tana was horrified at the fury and agony in Caden’s face. She was horrified, because it was her fault.
“My sister-in-law warned me. She said the real father would show up one day to raise his own child. He has. He does.”
“Does what?” Tana desperately needed to make herself clear. “Wants to raise Sterling? He does not.”
“He’ll be back to talk things out with you.” Caden grabbed his jacket off a chair, his truck keys off the table.
“You and I have to talk,” she said, panic making her rush her words. “Us. We. Not him.”
“It’s not even the lie that kills me. It’s not. It’s the fact that you knew.” Caden squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. His chest heaved with each breath. “My God, Tana. You knew this would happen. You let me love Sterling, anyway. Month after month, you stood by and watched me fall in love with that baby. How could you do that?”
He dropped his hand and headed toward the door.
She pushed away from the table and ran after him. “Where are you going?”
“Away from here. I have to step aside. The real father wants to be with his son. He has that right.”
“Jerry isn’t a father.” Why would no one, not one person, believe her on this? “Did you know he could get the courts to order a paternity test? He could, but he won’t. He’s the kind who dodges responsibility. He always has.”
Caden rounded on her. “You know damn well he is Sterling’s father, but you’ll force him to go to court to prove it? That’s cruel. You have no idea, none at all, how much a child can mean to a man.” Caden yanked the door open. “I wish I didn’t know, either.”
Her own front door was shut in her face.
She could barely get out the words. “Stay. Please.”
It didn’t matter. Caden was already gone.
* * *
Ten days.
That was all Tana could stand.
Caden hadn’t been home—or he hadn’t answered her knock—each time she’d tried to see him. She’d gone with Sterling, holding him on her shoulder so his little face would be visible through the peep hole. On Ruby’s advice, she’d tried going alone, wearing Caden’s plaid shirt and her shortest denim shorts. There’d been no answer to her knock then, either. Caden blocked her number. She couldn’t even leave him a message.
She missed him every minute of the day.
So did the baby.
Tana might deserve to lose Caden, but Sterling did not. Ten days was enough.
Tana finished assembling the jogging stroller, buckled Sterling in it and ran to the fire station, right into the open bay doors. She parked the stroller next to Engine 37, wiped the sweat from her face with her exercise towel, and tugged on her ponytail to tighten it up.
Javier saw her first. “Hey…Tana.” He looked nervously toward the door that led into their living area. “Stopping here for some water?”
“No. I’m stopping here to see Caden.” She gave herself kudos for sounding confident when her stomach was in knots.
Keith joined them. “I can see if he’s here. I mean, he’s here, but he might be asleep. Let me go ask him. Check on him, I mean.”
From behind her, a masculine voice addressed them all. “I’m here. I’ll meet you guys in the office. This won’t take a minute.” Javier and Keith disappeared almost as fast as Tana turned around to face Caden.
Her thoughtful plan, a mature approach to a necessary conversation, flew right out of her head. It’s you, look at you, look at those eyes, I love you, I miss you.
Caden crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you here, Tana?”
She’d rehearsed this answer. “I came by to answer your questions.”
“I have none.”
She wished Sterling hadn’t zonked out in the stroller. If he were awake, he would have dive-bombed from her arms toward Caden, and Caden would have caught him, rather than standing here like an angry bar bouncer.
“You had several questions,” she said. “You asked how I could have watched you fall in love with this baby, when I knew you weren’t the father.”
“It was a rhetorical question.”
He wasn’t going to make this easy. She took a breath and kept moving forward. “I had no plans for anything when I went into labor. You must know that. But afterward, there we were, parked on the side of the road, the three of us. It felt like…that was it. That was the way it should be, it would be, from now on. The three of us.”
He dropped his arms and turned to go.
She dragged the stroller along as she hurried to plant herself in his path. “So, yes, I hadn’t planned it, but from that point on, I wanted you to love my baby along with me. Yes, I wished you were his father.”
Caden looked disgusted. “No, you wished I was your ex-boyfriend.”
“Well, now you are,” she snapped in frustration. “And you’re doing a lousy job of it.”
He raised one eyebrow in disbelief.
She gestured toward the stroller. “I don’t want to be enemies. This isn’t about just me.”
“This isn’t about just me, either. You lied to everyone. Ruby thought there was a sperm donor. Your parents thought there was a sperm donor. You let the birth certificate go blank, because you didn’t want your parents to know…what? What could possibly justify that? Are they some kind of religious fanatics, and you lied so they wouldn’t think you’d had sex? I’ve been racking my brain, trying to think of any excuse for you, Tana. Any excuse.”
“They weren’t mad at me for having sex and getting pregnant. They were mad because I got pregnant when they wanted me to start training for another Olympics.”
“Another—what?” He literally stepped back. “You were in the Olympics?”
Once more, she was forced to correct someone. “I was supposed to be, but I didn’t go. My parents thought my old coach, the one that picked me up at the ER after I fainted, they thought he wanted me to start seriously training again.”
“For the Olympics.”
“Right.”
“Not once did you mention the Olympics.”
“Why would I? I never went. I set a world record, though. The one-hundred-meter backstroke.”
He was silent. Had she thought he’d be impressed?
“It’s been broken since then. It was broken the next year, just like my husband had told me it would be.”
“Your husband? Husband?” He stepped back.
“Ex,” she added hastily, in case he thought she’d been cheating with him. “Ex-husband. Sorry. Ex. We’re divorced.”
Caden paced away from her. “I don’t know you at all, Tana. I thought I knew you, but you never shared anything with me. Anything.” He punched his fist into his own heart, as if it had died and needed CPR.
She hadn’t planned to talk about this. How had she swum so far out of her lane?
“I was twenty. It lasted less than a year, but during that year, he convinced me to skip the Olympics. My parents had invested everything they had, for years, to enable me to train. They’d gotten me an endorsement deal, a million dollars to hold a can of soup. Instead, I eloped. My parents have never forgiven me.”
Caden kind of fell back against the wall, like standing was just too much.
“The hardest thing was that I’d let down the whole United States of America. We didn’t medal in my event that summer. Not even bronze.” She twisted her hands together. “For ten years, I thought everyone from my old life hadn’t forgiven me, either, until my former coach recommended me to Masterson. This year was my big chance to redeem myself. My parents think I’ve wasted my talent, but I wanted to prove to them I’m using it. I’m valuable, still, in the swimming world. I’m coaching kids with the potential to be future Olympians.”
Caden just looked up into the rafters, shaking his head.
“My coach and I got to be friends this year, after I fainted in January. He said no one had ever been mad at me. They blamed my husband, because he was one of the trainers, and he was older. Thirty-three. He should have known not to fraternize with a swimmer on the job.”
“Thirty-three to your twenty?”
“I know. My parents are furious that I was such a sucker.” She let go of her hands. “Anyway, that’s the history with my parents. It’s relevant, because they thought Jerry was a bad person, too, as selfish as my ex-husband. But when I told them I was pregnant, they demanded that I marry a selfish, bad person.”
My parents were willing to sacrifice me to maintain their propriety. There was no bottom to humiliating conversations with Caden, still.
“Jerry said he didn’t care if I had the baby or not, and he went off to Peru. He cut me out of his life like I’d never been there. So, when my parents started hammering me about how bad my judgment still was, I said Jerry had nothing to do with this pregnancy. It was true. He had refused to be part of it. But you’re right, it was a relief when they jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“I think that answers the question on why I didn’t tell my parents Jerry was the father. And Ruby…” She forced herself to chuckle. “I told her the truth this week. She called Jerry an ass and told me to wear my sexiest shorts and your plaid shirt to get you back. Pretty Ruby of her, huh?”
Caden only scrubbed his jaw with his palm.
“You also had a question about the birth certificate. How could I leave the father’s name blank? That wasn’t up to me. Texas law prevents me from naming anyone as the father, unless he’s legally my husband. Otherwise, I can’t name any other man, unless he signs a form first, acknowledging his paternity. When you told my mom and dad that I could leave the name blank without an explanation, that wasn’t technically correct. I had to leave the name blank. But I appreciated having you on my side. Thank you.”
Caden finally looked at her instead of the rafters, but he was looking at her like he’d never seen a creature before who was as bizarre as she was.
“I have no legal power to name Jerry as the father, but I also can’t deny Jerry his paternity. He could go to court and demand a paternity test and have himself put on the birth certificate. That’s what I meant, when I said he could do that. I didn’t mean I’d make him do that.”
Caden started scowling again.
Tana kept slogging forward. “I said that because I thought it would prove to you that he had no interest in being a father. If he really wanted to be Sterling’s father, I couldn’t stop him, even if I was as cruel as you think I am. But I’m not cruel. He came back, after you left. I told him I wouldn’t dispute it if he signed one of those official declarations of paternity. They’re online. He could just print one off and fill it out. I offered to file it for him to update the birth certificate.”
“What did he say?”
“He left for Nepal. It’s a two-year trip. His last words were ‘I’m not stupid enough to sign that. Good luck collecting child support from the Himalayas.’”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“This is the first time I’ve seen you since that night.”
“I mean all of this. The Olympics and the marriage and your parents. All of it. Any of it, at any time in the past year.” Caden was furious, still. It was all aimed at her, in the way he frowned at her, the way his eyes bored into her. “We were friends, Tana. Friends.”
“I didn’t want to lose you. If I listed all of the bad decisions I’ve made in my life, you wouldn’t want to be my friend.” She used the heel of her hand to wipe her cheek. “I was right. Now you know, and now you aren’t my friend.”
His expression went blank. She wished he would look at her with the expression he’d had ten days ago, when he’d held her head between his hands and told her nobody was leaving anyone.
“Is there anything else?” he asked, but the flat tone of his voice neither encouraged or discouraged any response.
“That was all of your questions.”
He said nothing. He did nothing.
She needed every ounce of fierce determination she could muster in order to keep going. “You said that when you love someone, you want to give them what they need. I love you, even if that’s not worth anything to you. I love you, and I love Sterling. You and Sterling need each other, so I want you to have each other. The answers to your questions might not be good ones, but I’m hoping you’ll stop thinking of me as your enemy. I don’t want you to avoid Sterling just to avoid me.”
Buzzers sounded loudly overhead, followed by the dispatcher’s voice over the loudspeakers in the bay. “Smoke reported. Kitchen fire at restaurant. Engine 37.”
The sudden noise startled Sterling awake.
Caden was the only person who held still as the bay came alive all around them. The loudspeaker repeated Engine 37 and added Rescue 37, too. Men and women in navy blue came out of the offices and the living quarters and headed to the vehicles.
Tana unbuckled the baby and picked him up. He was so pitiful when he was tearful and scared. She kissed his cheek and held him close.
Caden finally moved, but only to pick up the stuffed animal that had been left behind in the stroller. “What’s this?”
She’d made it herself, out of Caden’s shirt. It was just a flat pillow, really. She’d cut the plaid into two silhouettes of a Scotty dog, stitched them together and stuffed them with cotton. It had killed an hour or two on a sleepless night, but she’d really done it because it had killed the temptation to wear Caden’s shirt when she was feeling low. That would only make her feel lower now, a maudlin reminder of what she’d lost.
“I assumed you wouldn’t want me wearing your shirt around town like I’m your girlfriend. I should have returned it, but I’d worn it out, honestly. Sterling is so familiar with it, and he misses you, so—”
Buzzers silenced her.
“I have to leave.” Caden tossed the pillow into the stroller.
“Will you come by sometime? I’ll leave, so you won’t have to see me in order to see the baby, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. None of this is okay.”
The disappointment was crushing, pushing her down, pulling her under. She’d failed, but dear God, she’d tried.
Sterling whimpered and her own eyes watered, but she held her head high. “I know I lied, and I know you’re angry, but you lied, too. You said you’d never leave me. You may have been sitting at my table when I came in that night, but Caden, you were already gone.”
In the middle of the rush around them, as engines rumbled and loudspeakers blared, the silence between them was deafening.
Javier shouted for Caden. “Lieutenant.”
The team kept the doors of the fire engine open at all times and their bunker gear by the doors, so they could be dressed and on the road in seconds. Keith already had his boots and turnout pants on.
Caden turned toward the engine.
Turned back.
“Are you going to be home tonight?” he asked.
The sudden burst of hope hurt. Maybe she hadn’t failed to give the people she loved most what they needed most.
He started jogging backward toward his gear, waiting for her answer.
“Yes, please come see Sterling. He’ll be so happy.”
Caden nodded, but he looked more troubled than ever as he turned away. He stomped into his boots. While he pulled the yellow suspenders of his turnout pants over his shoulders, he shouted to Javier, who was already behind the wheel. “No sirens. Baby ears in the bay.”
He climbed into the cab with his coat still unfastened. The flashing lights came on, and the massive wheels started to roll. Tana pressed her baby’s head against her chest and covered his ear, but no sirens wailed until Engine 37 was down the street, because Caden had been taking care of Sterling.
Tana had gotten her wish. He was going to be the perfect ex-boyfriend.
She ran as fast as she could, but her tears started to fall long before she reached her apartment.