When you come to a fork
in the road, take it.
— Yogi Berra
Not quite eight thirty. Damn.
Keely tried to take her time as she drove along the narrow macadam road leading uphill in an area of Whitehall formerly known as Egypt. Actually, it was still known as Egypt to the natives, just as other parts of the township were referred to as Stiles, Cementon, West Catasauqua, Mickleys, and Fullerton. That was a lot of names for one township, and the changeover, mostly done to suit the U.S. Post Office, had ended with six “Main Streets,” all in different areas of Whitehall.
Keely was driving along Egypt’s version of Main Street now, or she had been, until the signposts inexplicably changed to Main Boulevard, then to Old Main Road, and then to no signs at all. A person could get very lost trying to find Sadie Trehan’s almost-a-mansion.
That was why Keely had made a dry run the day before, and it was why she was early now, because she had actually remembered the route. She was partly proud of herself, partly wondering if it was worse to be thirty minutes early or thirty minutes late.
She had two choices: Stop at the doughnut shop at the next corner and show up with either powdered sugar or strawberry jelly on her blouse, or turn right at that same corner and head up the hill to Sadie Trehan’s house, arriving before the appointed hour of nine A.M.
The doughnut lost and Keely turned right, carefully navigating in Aunt Mary’s classy black Mercedes with the teardrop headlights. Since all that Keely had ever navigated was her now departed Mustang and, lately, the New York subway system, she had to keep fighting down the feeling that she was piloting a very large boat.
“But a boat that makes one hell of an impression on the customers,” Keely reminded herself aloud as she took a left into the sweep of driveway that wended uphill, through about an acre of trees, then circled in front of Sadie Trehan’s house. “Of course, not as much of an impression as one’s own interior decorator talking to herself. So shut up, Keely, and watch the road.”
The car definitely did look good, sitting in the driveway of the huge tan brick house after she’d wriggled the key out of the ignition. Keely got out, stood glancing at the house, trying to decide if it had been meant to be modern while trying to look old, or meant to look old while trying to appear modern.
The windows were huge, including one enormous oriel window in front of what had to be a two-story foyer, a crystal teardrop chandelier roughly the size of the Mercedes visible through the glass. There were at least five separate roof lines, jutting here, jutting there, indicating cathedral ceilings, probably a lot of skylights. The front door was dark brown; the gutters were real copper.
According to Sadie Trehan, the house consisted of approximately twelve thousand square feet on two main living levels, and the fifteen rooms were all completely empty, ready to be decorated.
Megabucks here. Megabucks. And 50 percent of 10 percent of megabucks was... megabucks.
Not that the house didn’t appeal to Keely artistically. Not that she wasn’t itching to get inside, talk to Sadie Trehan, get some idea of what the owner might be looking for in the way of colors, of furniture, carpets, drapes. The interior decorator in Keely was excited, hoped to be creatively challenged.
Yeah. Sure. All that good stuff.
Megabucks, megabucks, megabucks. Good-bye MasterCard bill, hasta la vista Visa, bury that old Discover Card balance. Megabucks, megabucks, megabucks.
“Stop it,” Keely scolded herself as she climbed the three shallow steps to a pleasantly wide front entry. “Concentrate on the job, for crying out loud. Topiary in pots. That would look good, flanking either side of the double doors. And maybe some geraniums, for color. And a doormat. God, the woman doesn’t even have a doormat? What’s fifty percent of ten percent of a doormat running these days?”
She pushed the doorbell, then stepped back a pace, straightened her shoulders, ran both hands down the front of her very stylish, if three-year-old navy suit. She looked good, she looked professional, and if she had to agree to hang miniature, glow-in-the-dark plastic pickles from the foyer chandelier to make Sadie Trehan a happy camper, she’d do it, because there was no way in hell she was going to blow this job.
One of the front doors opened a crack and a male head was exposed. The head had dark blond hair with a curious, lighter blond streak a little above the left temple. The hair was thick, and sort of shaggy. The eyes were a quite wonderful cobalt blue. The nose was straight. The cheeks were tan. And the mouth was open.
“Whaddya want?”
It was a question. It was an accusation. And the man, although drop-dead gorgeous, didn’t look exactly sane.
Keely couldn’t help herself; she stepped back yet another pace, pressing her hands to her chest. “Me? What do I want? Um... nothing, I guess. I thought Sadie Trehan lived here. My mistake.” She waved her hands at him. “Just... just go back to whatever it was you were doing. Well, gotta go. Sorry.”
She turned to retrace her steps to the Mercedes, wondering if she’d narrowly escaped a serial killer or just a guy who really, really didn’t like mornings.
“Wait!”
Keely stopped, made a face. She’d always been too damn obedient. Probably a side effect of those three years in the Girl Scouts. Aunt Mary had always said that was a mistake, and had cost her a small fortune paying for cookies into the bargain.
Keely turned around, slowly, to see that the man had stepped out onto the porch. He wasn’t just an angry head anymore. Now he was an angry head with a long, lean body attached to it. And he was wet, or at least his left shoulder and the front of his shirt were wet. There were small white lumps in the wet. And he smelled bad. He really smelled bad.
“I... I really have to go,” Keely said, backing toward the car. “I have an appointment, and I’m going to be late.”
The man was at the bottom of the steps now, walking toward her, one finger pointed at her face. “I know who you are. You’re the interior decorator, right? Sadie hired you.”
“You...” Keely cleared her throat. She’d been so hoping she’d gotten the wrong address. “You know Ms. Trehan?”
Nodding his head, the man said, “Yeah. Sadie’s my aunt, and she hired you to get me some furniture. But I thought you were a man.”
“Really,” Keely said, reminding herself that she was a woman who had walked down Forty-second Street to take the bus to Allentown from the bowels of the New York Port Authority. She didn’t scare easy. If this guy wanted to talk, she’d talk. “Why a man? Do you think only a man can decorate a man’s house? Do you always make assumptions?”
The man’s tanned and handsome face split in a grin that sent slashing creases into his cheeks. “Me? Make assumptions? A minute ago, lady, and I’ll bet I’m not wrong, you were thinking I was about to pull you inside the house and practice my Anatomy One-oh-one course on you.”
This conversation—could anyone call this a conversation?—was getting more bizarre by the minute. “You’re a doctor?”
“Ah, another assumption. No, I’m not a doctor. And, although I like guessing games as much as the next guy, I don’t have time to stand around, watching you try to figure me out, remember where you might have seen my face before today. My ego’s riding low enough as it is.”
Keely tipped her head to one side, trying to digest all he’d said. “Your ego? Why? Am I supposed to recognize you or something?”
“Or something.” He pushed a hand through his hair, pulled it away, and cursed at the clump of something white and squishy he’d come away with. “Never mind. Just to set you straight, Sadie Trehan is my aunt, and she lives over the garages out back. I’m the owner of the house, Jack Trehan. Jack Trehan? Still doesn’t ring any bells for you, does it? Mort’s right—how soon they forget. Man, I’m sure having one hell of a morning. Look, maybe we can do this another time, okay? I’m... I’m sort of busy right now.”
“Plastering the ceiling?” Keely asked. “What is that all over you?”
Jack Trehan wiped his hand on his khaki slacks. “Trust me, you don’t want to know. But like I said, we’ll do this another time. Maybe in a month or two, something like that.”
“A month or—no!” Keely took a quick breath, tried to calm herself. If this guy owned the house, then he was her client. Her only client. Furnishing a place of this size would give her enough money to get out of Dodge and she was bound and determined to get out of Dodge and back to Manhattan. “Surely, Mr. Trehan, you don’t want to live here another month without any furniture? Your aunt told me the house was empty. I mean, are you really living in an empty house?”
Jack Trehan pulled a face. “It isn’t as empty as it was about an hour ago,” he said, then shook his head. Then he looked at Keely, looked at her closely. “You really want this job?”
Keely lifted her eyes heavenward for a moment, then swallowed down hard. “Yes, Mr. Trehan. I really do want this job.”
He looked at her for long moments. “What do you know about babies?”
Babies? Keely nearly swallowed her tongue. She’d been asked a lot of questions by clients. Her background, where she’d gotten her degree, names of other clients who could be used as references... even if she was opposed to decorating around small video cameras hidden in one stockbroker’s bedroom. She’d declined that job, then kicked herself for her ethics, considering she’d been two months behind in her rent at the time.
But never, never, had she been asked what she knew about babies.
“Babies?” she repeated after a moment. “What do I know about them?”
“Yes, Ms. McBride,” Jack said, looking back over his shoulder, toward the open doorway. “Babies. What do you know about them?”
Keely wet her lips. “Well... they come in two sexes, pink and blue...”
“Okay, forget it,” Jack told her, waving her off. “It was a bad idea anyway. Come back in a month, Ms. McBride, maybe two. Maybe never.”
“Wait!”
Obviously Jack Trehan hadn’t had obedience drummed into him by the Boy Scouts or anyone else in authority, because he didn’t wait. He just kept going, heading back inside the house.
Keely caught the door just before it closed and barreled inside with him. “Why do you want to know if I know anything about babies? If I said I did, would it make some difference somehow?”
She stopped talking as Jack turned around and grabbed her by her upper arms, holding her in place. She wanted to look around, had caught a glimpse of a vast emptiness, but she had a feeling now was not the time to start waxing poetic over chintz and valances. “You’re hurting me,” she said instead.
Jack dropped his hands. “Sorry. I just didn’t want you to... well, never mind. We can talk here.”
“Here being the foyer,” Keely said, looking up at the chandelier. “Nice light. Pity you can’t sit on it. Where do you sit, Mr. Trehan?”
“The answer to that ought to be obvious, Ms. McBride,” Jack said, a crooked smile making him look suddenly boyish and not half so scary. “Now answer my question, please. What do you know about babies?”
Keely got the sudden impression that her answer would determine whether she’d be furnishing this house (and making megabucks) or sitting on her own rump, twiddling her thumbs while waiting for some suburban wife with more money than taste to show up asking her to find a footstool in mauve satin for her poodle, Fluffy.
“I know enough,” she answered at last. “I’ve got a Girl Scout badge in child care.” Actually, she’d earned only two badges, one for swimming and another for making some dumb basket out of Popsicle sticks. She really hadn’t been a very good Girl Scout. But there was no reason for Jack Trehan to know that. “Why?”
Before he could answer, both their heads turned at the sound of a loud wail coming from somewhere deep in the house. “Damn it!” Jack exploded, turning to trot toward the sound.
Keely followed, her eyes flashing left and right as she passed along the wide hallway, looking at the white-walled, empty rooms to either side. She actually stopped when she saw the area definitely designed to serve as a formal dining room, marveling at the snow-white pillars, the raised parquet floor, the entire wall of windows looking out over the grounds. What she could do with a space like this!
Another wail brought her back to her senses, and she continued on her way, entering the enormous kitchen in time to see Jack Trehan on his knees in front of a huge wicker wash basket, saying, “Aw, come on. Don’t cry, M and M. Please don’t cry.”
Her mouth closed, her tongue poking at the inside of her left cheek, Keely tiptoed closer, then peered over Jack’s shoulder to see the red-faced, really unhappy infant propped in a seat that was stuck inside the basket. Now she knew why his shirt was wet and lumpy, and why he smelled so bad. The baby was just as soggy, and smelled twice as bad. “Just when you think you’ve seen everything...” she said, shaking her head. “Yours?”
Jack’s head jerked around as he looked up at her, his blue eyes flashing dangerously. “No, not mine. And stop smirking, because this isn’t funny.”
“Yes, it is,” Keely contradicted. “I mean, trust me... this is funny. She’s got great lungs, doesn’t she? I’m assuming it’s a girl. Pink blanket. Where’s her mommy?”
“Out of missile range, unfortunately,” Jack grumbled, trying to insert a pacifier in a rosebud mouth that was open wide enough to play garage to a Mack truck. “Damn it! I held her, fed her. What’s her problem?”
Keely’s experience with children wasn’t extensive. It wasn’t even close to extensive. She’d been orphaned young, an only child, and raised by her Aunt Mary, who hadn’t married until two weeks ago, at the age of fifty-seven. She’d baby-sat a time or two, years ago, but never for an infant.
“Maybe...” she said, dredging her brain for an answer. “Maybe she’s... wet?”
“Yeah, well, I tried to find a bib or something, but I couldn’t, and she kept trying to eat the paper towels.”
“No, not that kind of wet. I can see that her little dress is wet—and why would anybody dress an infant in dark purple? I meant her other end.”
“Her other—? Oh.” Jack, still holding the pacifier, sat back on his haunches, looked like he might be getting ready to make a break for it, head for the hills. “Oh, well, isn’t that great?” He looked up at Keely. “How bad do you want this job, Ms. McBride?”
Keely already had a feeling this question was coming, and she was prepared to lie her head clean off if that was what it took. “Let me see if I have this right, okay? Are you saying, Mr. Trehan, that you’re going to judge me on my child care techniques, rather than on my résumé?”
His closemouthed grin and raised eyebrows answered her question even before he added, “Yup. That’s what I’m saying.” He stood up, stepped away from the basket. “This is my cousin’s baby, Magenta Moon... I’ve been calling her M and M, which is pretty bad, but nothing’s as bad as Magenta Moon. She just arrived about an hour ago. I’m... I’m going to be taking care of her for a while—am taking care of her.”
Keely winced as M and M began howling once more. “Taking care of her, are you? You could have fooled me.”
Jack’s tanned cheeks turned a remarkable brick red, an angry red, as if he was considering joining M and M in a tantrum duet. “You know what, Ms. McBride? You’re a wiseass, and I don’t think I like you. So forget about it. I withdraw the offer. I’m just going to go call some... some service or something.”
“No! Don’t do that,” Keely said, quickly bending down to unstrap M and M from her seat, then pick her up before she could regain her sanity, before she could remember that she was, by and large, deathly afraid of babies. “Look, see... I’m taking care of her,” she said, bouncing up and down with the infant, holding M and M at arm’s length. “Aren’t I, baby?” she asked, exactly one second before M and M smiled, burped, then upchucked all over Keely’s suit and legs. Even her shoes.
Keely gaped at Jack Trehan, horrified. “Look what she did!”
“Yeah, I see it. Great aim, huh?” He grinned. “A guy could get to like this kid. Welcome to my world, Ms. McBride. Clean her up—and yourself—and you’re hired for the duration.”
Keely sat M and M back in her seat and began looking around for some paper towels, finding a roll next to the sink. “Define duration, Mr. Trehan,” she urged, wetting a wad consisting of about six feet of towels under the tap.
“Until the house is furnished, and until I can find someone else to take care of M and M. I’m sure I can find somebody, but for now, Ms. McBride—you’re it.”
“Oh happy day,” Keely muttered under her breath, swiping at the front of her suit with the wet towels. “Oh, yuk! I got some under my fingernails. Yukka, yukka, yuk!”
“Yeah, that pretty much says it. Have fun, Ms. McBride. I’m off to take a shower. I’ll bet you want one, too, but I live here, so I get to go first. Life’s like that, not fair at all,” Jack said, then turned on his heels and left the room.
“Jack Trehan? Jackass is more like it,” Keely muttered under her breath as she watched him go, knowing he wouldn’t be any help if he stayed, and then looked down at M and M, who was crying again. “If you think that’s going to make my heart break for you, you’re way wrong, kiddo,” she warned the child. She spread her arms as she approached the basket. “This is—was—my best suit.”
M and M stopped crying, looked up at Keely. Smiled.
“And don’t be cute,” Keely warned, wagging a finger at the child. “Being cute won’t help you one bit, little girl, not when you smell so bad. Trust me, I’m not a soft touch when it comes to cute.”
M and M grabbed at her bare toes, caught one foot, and aimed it toward her mouth as she watched Keely with her huge blue eyes.
“Okay, so I’ll admit it. That’s cute. I sort of like that. But it’s not adorable, so don’t get a big head, all right, because you have a long way to go before I forget about the suit. This is just a job, and you’re nothing more to me than a means to an end,” Keely said, sighing as she knelt on the floor, looked at M and M, and tried to decide which end to clean up first.
* * *
Jack stood under the pulsating spray from the shower—all six jets, randomly placed on three tiled walls—and swore until he’d run out of cuss words. That took at least three minutes. A man didn’t ride a bus in the minor leagues for a year and spend the next seven seasons traveling the country with professional baseball players and not grow his vocabulary. Jack could swear in English, in Spanish, and, thanks to the new reliever, Samo Akita, a fair bit of Japanese.
The cussing, unfortunately, didn’t help.
How could Cecily have done this to him?
No, scratch that. Of course Cecily could have done this to him. She was Cecily. She was the child who’d never grown up, Bayonne’s answer to Peter Pan, but with an unlimited trust fund left to her by her daddy, king of Bayonne’s dry cleaners.
She’d been married at seventeen, to a polo player from Brazil, divorced at eighteen, in drug rehab at nineteen, and a hopeful noviate at a Carmelite nunnery at twenty. At twenty-two she’d financed her lover’s internet company—selling Jersey tomatoes by mail, a plan that never had a chance of getting off the ground—and, the last Jack had heard from her (after the Creative Pyrotechnics fiasco), she’d been “finding herself” in that commune.
Now she was Moon Flower, on her way to Tibet with Blue Rainbow, leaving behind Magenta Moon, the inner child who had become the child outside—the child being yet another little experiment in life that just hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped. And it probably all made sense to her.
Jack wondered if strychnine didn’t taste too bad, or if he should just go up to the roof and jump off.
He slammed his hand against the knob controlling the shower and banged open the glass door, heading for the rack that held his two towels. Both were still damp. “Damn! First thing on that dame’s list—towels.”
Mention of “that dame” started Jack thinking about what he’d just done. He’d hired an interior decorator—a smart-mouthed interior decorator—to play nanny to Cecily’s kid. This was probably not a smart move, but he’d been desperate, beyond desperate.
Well, it would only be for a day or two. He’d figure out something else, somewhere else to put the kid. Sadie would be no help; she’d never had kids of her own, slept until almost noon every day, and would probably only like M and M if she had a key in her back and could be wound up to play “Edelweiss.” Other than that, Sadie would expect the kid to sit in a corner and shut up until it was time to play again.
Cecily had mentioned her brother, Joey. If Jack knew nothing more about Cecily than that she’d gone to Joey for help, it would have disqualified her for anything that required more thought than breathing.
Because Joey was a flake. Joey was an idiot. Joey thought he should be in the Mafia, thought he was in the Mafia, or at least acted like he was, dressed and spoke as if he was. He even wanted everyone to call him Joey “Two Eyes” Morretti. Probably so the idiot could remember how many he had.
See what happens when you die and leave your kids five-million-dollar trust funds? Better his aunt and uncle had spent it all on tango lessons, and maybe their very own platinum card at QVC.
Jack laughed silently at the thought, remembering that Aunt Flo and Uncle Guido had been pretty powerless to control their two offspring from aboveground. If they’d missed heaven and gone to hell, their punishment must be watching daily videos of Cecily and Joey on the loose with their hard-earned martinizing money.
So Joey was out. Jack couldn’t send M and M to Uncle Two Eyes and still be able to look at himself in the mirror.
Sadie was out. Definitely out—usually hovering about five miles into the ozone.
Tim? Jack hesitated as he pulled on his slacks. What about Tim?
“Yeah, what about Tim,” Jack said, walking over to the mirror to look at his bare chest, at the surgical scars along his left elbow, riding low on his shoulder. “Tim’s still at the big dance, Jack,” he reminded himself bitterly, hating himself for feeling sorry for himself, almost as much as he hated himself for feeling jealous of his twin.
Baseball. It had been both of their lives, for as long as he could remember. Oh, there’d been football and basketball in high school, but it was baseball that consumed them both. From the time they’d been five or six, it had been Jack throwing the ball, Tim catching; Jack throwing the ball, Tim hitting. Hour after hour, day after day, year after year. Their dad had built a pitcher’s mound in the backyard, constructed a batting cage out of iron pipes and chicken wire. He’d even drilled a hole in a baseball, suspended it from a chain in the garage ceiling, then put up an old rug for them to hit into in the off-season.
Baseball, baseball, baseball.
It had been their lives.
It was still Tim’s life, his brother now in his eighth season as catcher for the Phillies, leading the club in both doubles and triples and probably heading for yet another Golden Glove award.
But it wasn’t Jack’s life. Not anymore. Not since the last rotator cuff surgery last winter, and one hellishly lousy spring training camp, culminating in his retirement before the Yankees could cut him loose. He’d cried during his press conference on ESPN, damn near bawled like a baby, then crawled into his condo and hid. Now he was hiding in Whitehall, of all places, still licking his wounds while his twin was second in the over-all voting so far for the All-Star game.
Tell Tim he’d stupidly inherited Cecily’s baby for God knows how long? Oh no. Not hardly.
“Which leaves the smart-mouth downstairs,” Jack told his reflection before turning away, heading for the walk-in closet and a clean shirt. “What’s her name again? Kathy? Karen? No... Keely. That’s it. What the hell kind of name is Keely?”
Jack pulled the tan shirt over his head, his head popping free as he realized that he knew nothing about this woman. He’d left M and M downstairs with a stranger who had been handpicked by Aunt Sadie, queen of the silly fairies.
And he said Cecily was nuts? What did that make him?
Desperate. Definitely desperate.
He looked at the clock sitting on the box beside his stacked mattress and box spring. Nine-thirty. Shouldn’t it be at least noon? Or maybe September? Because this had been the longest two hours in his life.
But it was only nine-thirty, and he couldn’t hide up here all day. He had to go back downstairs, see the woman, see the baby. Figure out what to do with the woman, do with the baby.
He’d rather be facing Mark McGwire in an interleague game, in the bottom of the ninth, with the score tied and the bases loaded.
Jack loped down the back stairs that led directly into the kitchen, stopping dead when he saw the baby in the sink, the woman holding the sink’s power spray over the baby’s head. “What in hell are you doing? Trying to drown the kid?”
Keely, clearly startled by Jack’s bellow, turned quickly, losing her grip on the wet, slippery infant—who then sort of slowly slid down lower into the sink. “Oh God! Oh God, look what you made me do!” she yelled, grabbing at M and M with both hands, pulling her upright again. “She’s so damn slippery.”
M and M was wailing again, her blond hair stuck to her head, her long eyelashes all spiky and clumped as she opened and closed her eyes and water dripped off her nose.
“Is she all right?” Jack asked, reluctantly approaching the sink.
“Yes, she’s all right... I suppose. She’s yelling, isn’t she?” Keely responded, holding M and M’s upper arm with one hand, using her free hand to blot the baby’s face with paper towels. “And she was liking it, too, until you showed up.” She threw the damp paper towels on the counter and lifted Keely out of the sink, a hand under each arm. M and M’s arms and legs were wiggling, her smooth buttocks riding above chubby legs marked with at least four fat creases. “Here,” Keely said, shoving those buttocks at Jack, “hold her until I get more towels.”
“Hold her?” Jack backed up rapidly. “Are you frigging nuts? You just said she was slippery.”
Keely held on as M and M laughed, and wriggled, and reached for Keely’s hair. “Well then, if you won’t hold her, you get the paper towels. And may I add, it’s a poor kitchen that has no proper dish towels. Old Mother Hubbard had a full pantry, compared to you. One mug, one can of coffee grounds, half a loaf of bread, and some Chinese take-out that died in the year of the dog. It’s pitiful, that’s what it is.”
He ignored her complaints, concentrating on his new job as paper towel-getter. He could do that. He’d won two Cy Young awards—he could fetch paper towels. He quickly slipped past Keely—literally, as the floor was wet—and snagged the roll from the countertop. “Now what?”
“Dry her off,” Keely said, rolling her eyes. “And hurry up—this kid should be on a diet.”
Dry her off. Jack hesitated, holding a length of paper toweling he’d stripped from the roll. Dry her off. How could he dry her off? He approached from behind, one end of the paper toweling in his hand, and began wrapping it around M and M’s bare bottom, her wriggling legs.
Once, twice, three times around, until M and M was in a cocoon of paper towels and Keely finally said, “That ought to do it, thanks. Now you can hold her and she won’t slip.”
“She’s still dripping wet,” Jack pointed out, ripping off another section of toweling and draping it over M and M’s wet head. The infant giggled, shook her head, and the towel fell to the floor. “And she’s not cooperating, damn it.”
“Don’t swear in front of the child,” Keely bit out, shoving M and M at him, so that he was forced to take her. She then took a deep breath, stood up straight, smoothed down the front of her once crisp white blouse. “I’ve got to find something for this kid to wear. There has to be something in one of those bags in the wash basket.”
“What was wrong with what she had on?” Jack asked, carefully sitting down on the floor, figuring that M and M would have less distance to fall if he lost his grip on her.
“Are you kidding? She was all wet... and stinky. What didn’t come out the top end when she spit up on me made its way out the bottom end right after you deserted me. I couldn’t do anything else but give her a bath.”
Jack shifted his eyes right, then left. He’d noticed a new smell when he’d entered the kitchen, not a pleasant smell, and now he looked at a small pile of discarded clothing on the floor and saw what looked like a disposable diaper—a full disposable diaper—perched right on top of the mound. Then he looked across the room at the sink.
“Let me get this straight,” he said after a moment. “M and M sh—, er, did something in her pants, and your answer to that was to stick her backside in my kitchen sink? My sink? I might want to put dishes in that sink, woman!”
Keely had pulled two large, tightly packed pink plastic zipper bags out of the wash basket and was rummaging through them, selecting small garments. “Oh, shut up,” she said, otherwise ignoring him as she pulled a disposable diaper out of a box of them and placed it with the clothing. “Diaper, shirt, dress, socks. That ought to do it. Oh God, look how small this stuff is. Just like a doll’s. So cute!”
“Having fun, Ms. McBride?” Jack asked, trying to hold on to M and M as the damp paper towels began to come apart and the baby tried to reach up, destroy what was left of his bottom lip and gums. “That’s good. Because I’m not. Trust me in this. I’m not. I don’t like babies. Not even cute babies.”
“She is cute, isn’t she?” Keely said, spreading the pink blanket on the floor, then gingerly lifting M and M out of Jack’s arms and laying her down on the blanket. “And pretty much like one of the dolls I used to play with, except she moves more, of course. I think I can dress her. I remember how.” Then she picked up the disposable diaper, turned it one way, then another, and frowned. “Okay, maybe not all at once. But I’ll figure it out.”
“Good. You do that,” Jack said, easing himself to his feet. “I’m going to go catch last night’s ball scores on ESPN.”
“Figures,” Keely said, but she was talking to M and M, not Jack. “Make the baby, zip up the pants, and go watch ESPN. Remember this, sweetheart: men. They’re all alike.”
“She... is... not... my... baby.” Jack pronounced each word slowly, distinctly. “She is my cousin’s baby. And what the hell should I be doing?”
Keely redid the tapes on the disposable diaper, then sat back, admiring her work. “There, that ought to hold her.” She pushed a lock of honey blond hair out of her eyes and looked up at Jack. “What should you be doing? Well, if I could make a suggestion, Mr. Trehan, I’d say you should be figuring out how to strap that little seat in the backseat of your car, so we can go shopping.”
He eyed her warily. “Shopping for what?”
Keely rolled her eyes. “For M and M, of course. I mean, you can wait for new furniture, but M and M can’t. Or were you planning to have her sleep in her seat? And have you decided which is to be her bedroom? I should know, take a few measurements, and then we can be on our way. We can stop at my aunt’s shop—I can change clothes, because we live above the shop—then pick up the van, and be able to bring everything home with us. I have decorated a nursery before, you understand. I was thinking about a cherry wood crib with a canopy top—with a white eyelet canopy—and a matching dressing table, and a rocking chair, of course, and—”
Jack bent down, grabbed the car seat, and headed for the door, practicing his Japanese.
* * * * * *
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