Jett let go of the pull-up bar in his doorway. It was out of character for him to be impatient, but he simply couldn’t wait one more minute.
He rubbed a slick palm across his chest as he picked up his phone.
Had a great time tonight.
Jett hit backspace rapidly until the terrible sentence disappeared. Had a great time tonight? Of course he’d had a great time. They’d parroted those exact words back and forth several times before even hitting the parking lot.
Home safe and sound?
Nope. Women prone to old-fashioned chivalry would take that as considerate and protective, but Cassie—the woman who prided herself on walking through dark parking lots behind her not-so-suburban workplace—would be more likely to write him off altogether.
He backpedaled until he stared yet again at a blank screen. He took in a deep breath, waited five seconds far too long for inspiration, then dropped the phone on the bed. Ten more pull-ups on the doorway bar and he reached for the phone again.
If you lose Wednesday, are you going to skip out on dinner afterward? Best to know if I’m going to need to call a backup date.
He read it again. It wasn’t exactly a Robert Frost original, but it was better than nothing.
Pressing Send, he tossed the phone on the bed for another set, aware that with every pull-up his ears strained to hear a muted ding against the black comforter.
A ding came, but it wasn’t from his phone.
Jett heard the TV turn down in the living room. The door opened.
“Jett, you got company!”
Jett arched his head back mid-pull-up but only saw Sunny blocking the doorway. He sped up to finish the set, wiped his hands against his sweats, and started down the small hall. When a set of curly blond heads dodged around Sunny, however, he broke into a jog—running until he slid to a halt on his knees and wrapped the twins in his arms.
Dakota and Drew squealed as they squirmed to be free from his embrace, all the while giggling. Drew broke loose and stole a couple of feet away before Jett snatched him by the back of his coat. Drew wailed in glee, his blue snow boots dragging back into the hug.
“Look at you! What big kids you are! Did you miss me?”
Dakota flung her arms around his neck while Drew made for another getaway. Jett closed his eyes momentarily, Dakota’s soft, platinum-blond curls covering his face. He kept one hand on the back of Drew’s coat, feeling Drew tug and laugh.
“We need to crash here tonight.”
And just like that, a frost far colder than the twenty-four-degree air swept into the living room. Jett opened his eyes. Looked up to his sister.
“Hello, Trina. It’s good to see you.”
She didn’t smile. “Hello.”
Gripping Dakota on his hip, he stood and faced her. “If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve made up a bed for you . . . but absolutely. Come on in.”
Sunny shut the door and stood between them, frying in the middle of the awkward silence as Jett and his sister took each other in.
“My phone wasn’t working,” Trina finally said.
Jett nodded, well aware of how “finicky” her phone could be. “Sure.”
His eyes tracked across Trina’s face. He wasn’t surprised by what he saw, but it hurt just the same. Her dead eyes, her protruding cheekbones fruitlessly veiled by dull skin. The same long, blue coat swamped around her skin and bones just as it had this time last year—perhaps even more. Where had his baby sister gone?
It’d been a year since the incident surrounding her addictions and the twins’ lack of safety finally scared him enough to make him go down to DCS to file a report. A year since she’d met the social worker at her door and fled—from the worker and from him.
From the way she looked at him now, he knew she hadn’t forgiven him, that if she had any other place to go tonight, she would’ve gone there instead. Everything in her stance made her thoughts clear as crystal. You betrayed me. You humiliated me. You aren’t on my side.
But, oh, if he could only get through to her how much he was.
Between them, Sunny began to clap. “Reunion! Yaaay.”
And that’s when Jett looked down, his jaw opening slightly as he saw the car seat at Trina’s feet.
“Trina?” He weighed his voice carefully as he took a step toward them. “Is there a baby in there?”
He bent down slowly, Dakota’s arms still wrapped tightly around his neck.
“TJ,” Drew declared loudly, standing inches from the television, eyes glued on the football spiraling across the field.
A blanket covered the car seat. Jett lifted the corner.
A baby so small it could fit within the length of his forearm lay unhooked in the car seat, fast asleep.
The slap on his arm was loud, startling. “Don’t you dare wake him,” Trina hissed, then hoisted the car seat up with two hands. “Where can he go?”
Jett locked his jaw, forcing the frustration down. She’d had a baby. Another baby.
Holding Dakota tighter, he put a smile on his face and motioned with his stinging arm toward the back hall. “He can stay in my room. I don’t have a crib, of course, but—”
“He’ll sleep in the seat.”
He nodded, though even to his own childless ears that sounded suspicious. “I’ll take you back.”
“I remember where it is.”
Yes, but he bet she also remembered where he kept his checks. “Even so. Let me help you.” He reached and took the car seat from her grip. The whole thing lifted from her slumped shoulders as if it couldn’t have weighed more than fifteen pounds, baby included.
“How old is he?”
“Six weeks.”
He nodded, his throat constricting. How odd it was to feel something for a kid upon nothing more than a glance. Less than a glance. Another new relative changed things. All of a sudden he had one more being to care about. One more kid to worry over.
Stop this madness! Get your life back, Trina. Now.
He wanted to talk some sense into her, plead with her, make her change. Lock her in a bedroom for two weeks, force her back to reality, to life. But she’d heard his pleading a thousand times before, and a thousand times before she had walked right out that door again, saying fanciful things about changing but never following through.
The rule was simple: Always love. Always try. But never, ever raise your expectations.
And yet he couldn’t stop hoping, couldn’t stop persisting in the belief she’d someday be freed.
He set the car seat against the closet door, smoothly slid a couple of checkbooks from the desk drawer into his back pocket, and mentally went through the checklist in his room for any valuables. As he turned, he lifted the blanket for another peek.
“TJ’s his name, you say?” His voice was low, matching the quiet of the room.
Trina peeled off her coat and sat on the bed. She looked as worn out as any woman he’d ever seen, as worn out as their mother had been, battling those same demons long ago.
She nodded and put her face to her hands. “Yeah. TJ.”
Dakota tugged at his arm, then pushed her finger in his face.
“Is he going to need anything? Formula or something?”
“In the bag.” She spoke without opening her eyes, and it was clearer than Dakota’s baby-blue eyes that he could push Trina over with one finger and she’d be asleep before she touched the comforter.
Who knew where she’d come from. How far she traveled just to get here.
Again, Jett looked to the baby. Maybe the tiny being in that car seat would be her miracle baby, bringing her back to life.
He was breaking the rule, but hoping just the same.
“Boo-boo,” Dakota insisted, pushing her finger in his face again.
He kissed her finger and repositioned her on his hip.
“I’ll take it from here. You go on and lay down.”
She moved under the covers without another word. Jett turned to the door, paused, and looked back to the car seat. Several seconds of deliberating went by before he tiptoed over and pulled back the blanket. He watched TJ’s closed lids flutter as he tucked the blanket beneath his small arms, then stepped back and shut the door behind him.
Trumpets blared to the rhythm of a drum line as Jett and his affectionate sloth of a niece moved through the living room. Drew had moved to the couch beside Sunny and was very seriously mimicking whatever gestures Sunny had taken upon himself to demonstrate. Currently, UT was winning.
“Yeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh, baby!” Sunny gave an exaggerated growl as he pounded the air three times and looked expectantly to his toddler comrade.
“Yeeeeeeaaahhhhh, baby!” Drew jumped on the couch and repeated the gesture.
“I’m going to run to the store.” Jett paused, awkwardly uncertain of his new responsibility. “Drew you, uh, wanna come?”
The football on the screen spiraled to the receiver. An eruption of cheers from thousands of orange fans followed.
“We’re good here, man.” Sunny gave a thumbs-up and returned his attention to the game, giving a hardy slap on his thighs as he and Drew started hopping like monkeys.
Jett grabbed his keys and shut the door. He was halfway down the stairs when the realization hit him.
Car seats. Three-year-olds still used car seats, right?
Up the stairs he started again, asking Dakota along the way, “You think you can stay with Sunny and your mom while I run to the store?”
But before he could even get the question out, her nails were digging into his neck. She was scrawny, yes, but she held on as though her fingers were Gorilla Glued to his skin.
He stopped at the door, lingering in the hallway. “Just for a few minutes? I’d be right back. You can watch the football game . . .”
And then she began to wail, the note matching the volume of the siren on his Medic 2–10—yet with the added bonus of being directly against his ear.
“I’ll bring you back a treat, Dakota.” Desperately he grabbed the doorknob. “You still like those sour gummies?”
She raised her pitch an octave higher.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“Jett?”
Jett turned to see Sarah in her doorway, swiftly tightening her robe. Her striped pajama pants and socks peeked out from underneath.
She gave a wry smile. “Need I ask?”
Jett swung his body around for Sarah to see Dakota’s tear-streaked face. He practically yelled over the crying. “Sarah, meet my beautiful niece, Dakota.”
Sarah took a step toward them. “Why, hello there, Dakota.” She touched the girl’s back lightly before covering one of Dakota’s cold, red hands with one of her own. Sarah looked up into Jett’s eyes. “Why are you outside?”
“I’m thinking through my options.”
“Want to skip the hypothermia and think through your options in my place?” She pushed the door open with her free hand. “I make a mean hot cocoa. Straight from the packet and everything.”
It was two hours to midnight, the kid was three years old, and the last thing he had a feeling his niece needed was forty grams of sugar. Nevertheless, he was also fairly certain the ear-deafening wail she’d so blessedly provided for every neighbor in the complex had all been performed with a single intake of breath. These were desperate times. “Absolutely.”
Inside the apartment, tears immediately stopped, wails ceased, and Dakota peeled herself off Jett—more than that, she hopped down and skipped toward a chair at the breakfast table. He could be replaced easily.
“So, what are you going to do?”
After listening to his explanation and preparing everyone’s cocoa, Sarah leaned against the kitchen wall and cradled a mug in her hands.
“I’m not sure how long Trina’s staying, but no matter what, the kid needs a bed. Right?” He looked at Sarah with uncertainty. Of all the topics he could throw out a sentence or two about at a dinner party, babies were not one of them.
“No, you shouldn’t leave the baby in the car seat overnight. That’s like leaving them in cars when you go into the supermarket.”
His brow lifted. “And that . . . is definitely bad.”
“And on that note, let’s just be glad they aren’t yours.”
“Kidding.”
Sarah popped her hip off the wall, setting her mug on the counter with resolution. “You just stay here. I’ll be back in less than an hour.”
And sure enough, forty-three minutes later, Sarah sent him home with some sort of portable bed contraption from a mother of three two buildings over and a trash bag full of formula, three different kinds of bottles (“for if the baby gets particular” Sarah stated), a pack of newborn diapers, two packs of wipes, and a handful of newborn-sized clothes.
An hour after that, the twins lay on a sleeping bag on the living room floor. Jett had managed to set up the foul bed contraption and had gingerly begun to transfer his newest nephew to it.
Which prompted the tiny blue eyes to open. And the newborn shrieks to begin.
Two hours after that, with the kitchen covered in bags of baby items, formula dust spilled on counters, an unusually fat diaper lying open faced on the carpet, and three dirty bottles lying in the sink (turned out TJ was particular), Jett abandoned the portable bed, and all eight pounds of the little guy settled upon Jett’s chest. Jett leaned back against the recliner, wearily rubbing his eyes.
He couldn’t fathom how Trina did it.
Truly. Some people said that as a means of expressing a compliment at someone’s hard work, but in this case, he meant it in the deepest sense.
It was a real miracle these kids were alive.
Then, impossible to his own ears, he heard the faint ding of his cell phone, the text to Cassie and his hope for a reply having been forgotten what seemed a lifetime ago. Carefully, inch by inch, he reached for his back pocket. The clock read 1:43 a.m.
Backup date? You’ve clearly forgotten where you live, son. The closest decent backup date would live two hours away. Better start getting used to me.