Karen jumped when she heard the knock on her door, then panicked.
Could it be the baby’s mother returning for her child? The police with more questions?
Whoever it was, she didn’t quite feel ready for it.
She silently padded over to a window and looked down to see a good-looking guy who immediately struck her as familiar by the top of his head and shoulders. Then it hit her that she knew exactly who he was, and for a moment, she allowed herself to stare at him from behind the safety of the window curtains.
She eventually went downstairs, then stood near the door and shouted, “Who is it?”
There was a brief pause before a cheery, masculine voice said, “Hi! I’m your next-door neighbor and I was wondering if I could...borrow some sugar?”
Karen couldn’t help it—she burst into laughter. She’d expected nosy neighbors to peek and prod and poke their heads over fences, but not this.
“I only lend sugar to guys whose name I know.” She pulled open the door and let some of the evening air in.
He stood there with a sheepish grin, his gray eyes not so sheepishly boring into her. She wondered how his skin managed to have a glow to it in this weather—he looked like he’d just flown in from an island beach somewhere.
“I don’t usually open my door to strangers, but strange things have been going on here lately.”
“Tell me about it,” he said. “The name’s Brian, by the way. And yes, what I really want is to know what happened here last night. I don’t exactly know you, but I’m still concerned and wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Well, if all my neighbors looked like you, I wouldn’t mind being disturbed all day to share the details.
“Where’s Tamara?” he asked, his eyes darting around.
Karen made sure he couldn’t miss her critical raised eyebrow. “I’m sorry, do you two have something going on I don’t know about? How is it your business where she is or what she’s doing?” she asked crisply.
He smiled again with a slight shrug. “What can I say? Since I’m such a good neighbor, I’m concerned for her well-being too. As for your query, she and I have nothing but smiles and friendly hellos for each other, and I haven’t seen those from her in a few days so…” He shrugged. “And come on, an ambulance showed up here last night—cut me some slack. Of course I’m interested where she is in all of this.”
“Well, my sister’s taking care of some business of hers and I’m housesitting for her. And the craziness that happened last night was due to me finding a newborn baby on my doorstep. Basket, note, and everything.”
Brian’s mouth fell open a bit and his entire face turned grave. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Oh yeah, I make up jokes about foundlings all the time. In fact, all those authorities were here for my comedy act about orphans and lost mothers. Exclusive nightly show.”
“Well, obviously, I’m taking you seriously. It’s just that it’s…”
He stopped talking, and Karen figured it was because the tears that had jumped to her eyes had pooled enough to fall down her cheeks.
“Hey,” he said softly, reaching out and gently grabbing her by the shoulder.
The warmth and comfort of his touch and the sincerity in his voice made her lose it. She began crying in earnest, her hands coming up to her face to try in vain to hide some of her shame. Why was she breaking down like this?
In no time, she was wrapped in his arms and he was making soothing motions on her back.
He spoke to her with soft words, and she heard just a few of them. “Shhh, it’s okay,” he said at some point, and all she could think was, No, it’s not.
Every time she tried to quickly gather herself, she failed miserably, and she realized she had to just cry herself out. Brian’s strong arms tightened around her and she found herself getting lost in the feeling.
When she felt she was calming down, she wrapped her arms around him in a hug, managed a “thank you,” and then pulled away, wiping her face. “Your shirt’s a mess,” she said with a smile, finally looking up at him again.
His gray eyes were still widened in concern, but a small smile appeared. “I don’t care about my shirt,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”
She shook her head and made a welcoming gesture, so he stepped fully into the house and closed the door behind him. He looked around for a bit, then took her hand and led her over to the nearest sofa. Seeing the absence of the baby carrier she’d sat with as she waited for authorities to arrive, she almost cried again. The baby had seemed to smile at her at one point and had even grabbed on to her finger with the whole of her tiny, pale hand.
Karen figured Brian noticed the way she was looking at the couch; in fact, it made her realize she had been giving it an intense look, so she steered her eyes elsewhere.
Her gaze ended up on the kitchen. “May I have some water?” Brian asked, and she realized he was only giving her something to do as a way of handing her a distraction.
When she brought the glass of water to him, he was looking at her intently, as if waiting for her to say something, but he kept quiet. She was still having trouble speaking, for her memory was stuck on the moment the little one opened up her gray eyes at last.
Karen wondered if the baby could actually see her or if she was just a blur to her underdeveloped sight. She wondered if the child knew her scent yet, like she knew hers.
Eventually, Brian’s soft but deep voice and meandering words registered. “So I work as an information security analyst, and it’s your typical forty hours a week sort of deal except I have to be on-call in off hours for any reason, which I actually like because I’m a workaholic—besides the weekend, I don’t have days off, and I’m usually hoping to get called into work then because what else would I do after sleeping in? Maybe go for a run, hit the gym... I don’t really watch TV, and I don’t know the last time I went to see a movie...”
“I had a miscarriage a few months ago,” Karen blurted out.
Brian went silent, his gentle eyes on her, urging her to continue.
“I was in a relationship, and we... had an accident and I decided to keep it. He didn’t agree, so he left me. I was going to go ahead and have the baby and raise it on my own, but it sort of aborted itself at five months.”
She felt tears gathering again at the memory of the cramps, the pain. The sight of blood, and the dead fetus...
She fought hard against breaking down again. “By that time, I was madly in love with the idea of being a mother, and I’d already begun major preparations, making lists. My sister had even started planning a baby shower. I was showing a bit. It was real; my baby was real.” She managed to keep herself from sobbing but couldn’t stop the flow of tears. “Anyway, I wanted to start a whole new life after everything… ended. My sister offered to have me stay here while I sort stuff out since she’s jet-setting.”
Brian’s eyebrows rose a bit. “Didn’t know Tamara had it like that.”
Karen wondered how much he knew about her sister, in general, and she decided to stay mum about the details just in case—her sister’s business was not hers to tell. It seemed he didn’t know Tamara—always the lucky one—had recently won several million in a lottery.
Karen had wanted to tell her to be more careful with the way she was spending it, but how could she possibly open her mouth to tell someone what to do with their money, and essentially, their life?
She couldn’t blame her sister for living her dream of traveling to various places. Plus, Tamara had been kind enough to share some of her winnings with her. Karen had decided to stuff the hundred thousand in a savings account and figure out later how best to invest.
Karen took a breath. “When I found that baby, all helpless and abandoned like that, it wasn’t just that particular baby I was thinking about when they took her away. Of course, it made it even worse that I had spent some time with her before they took her—long enough to discover that less than an hour is definitely enough time to fall in love...”
Karen felt tears gathering again, and shook her head as if she could shake them away. “I’m such a mess. It’s not how I usually am, I promise,” she said, trying to smile.
Brian’s eyes only held compassion. What color were those anyway? Some kind of slate?
“She had eyes like yours,” she said absently.
And then it hit her.
Why her sister’s doorstep and not the person next door? she had wondered, and now she realized one very plausible reason.
“She had eyes like yours,” she said again firmly, beaming her meaning at him.
His brow furrowed. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at. There are probably, like, five hundred babies being born today with eyes like mine. And like, five hundred thousand with brown eyes like yours...”
“No, I mean—what if they got our houses mixed up?”
His frown deepened. “You think someone meant to leave that baby for me?”
Karen wondered if she was being too forward, but her theory made some sort of sense to her, and she needed something to make sense.
She scrambled to retrieve the note she’d found with the baby to reread it again in this new light.
“Shouldn’t that have been turned in?” he said, but she waved him off.
“I’ll turn it in later—I’d forgotten it in all the rush,” she lied. “It says: Really tried, but sorry—didn’t work out. I can’t give her what she needs, but hopefully, you can. I’ve named her Denise. She’s two days old. Please look after her or find someone who can.”
Brian shrugged. “Sounds pretty generic to me. Wouldn’t the person have mentioned my name, at least?”
It was Karen’s turn to shrug.
She decided not to say what she was thinking since it would surely be too forward, but wasn’t there a chance he’d had a one-night-stand or something? So the woman might not remember his name, and perhaps she only vaguely remembered where he lived—if he’d taken her home, that is.
Karen wondered at the stab of jealousy she felt at the thought.
But her theory made sense for a guy like Brian—one who was obviously not attached, busy, but very handsome. His casual relationships probably numbered in the... she didn’t even want to think about it.
“So you’re saying it’s impossible...”
“Not impossible—just not likely,” he said. “Wait, let me think…” He proceeded to look like a statue of someone thinking. “So we’re talking about nine months or so ago, right? Assuming the mother went full-term. Let’s see...” He started counting with his fingers. “Probably like December/January, right? Hmm… Christmas? No, couldn’t be…” And then with the look on his face, combined with a long, drawn-out “Oh,” Karen knew they were onto something.
He looked directly at her. “I guess it is possible, if I’m being completely honest,” he said. “But why wouldn’t she have told me?”
“How long were you guys together?”
His face flushed a little. “One night,” he said.
Karen tried to suppress a smile, satisfaction at her own sleuthing temporarily trumping the possessive feelings she had for him.
“It was... Well, I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I used protection, even though she’d assured me she was on the pill; I usually don’t take a girl’s word for that stuff since it’s not just unwanted pregnancies to worry about. I didn’t think about her afterward—not beyond the day after, that is, and not again until a few minutes ago. Somehow, protection must’ve failed both of us.” His brows furrowed, and he seemed to be in his head for a few moments.
Karen tried not to think about what details he was remembering.
“Anyway,” he said eventually, “let’s say she was deliberately trying to get pregnant and sabotaged me—why would she leave me out of it? Besides using me as an unwitting sperm donor?”
“That’s just it, I guess—maybe she just wanted a sperm donor without having to go to a bank, and knowing exactly what the donor looked like. And look at you—I don’t blame her.”
Karen’s cheeks grew hot with shame and she averted her eyes. No, you did not just say that out loud, Karen. Great. Now, he’ll think you’ll try to get pregnant by him too.
She couldn’t look at him for a while, her mind racing.
As she seriously thought about it, she realized that if she ever felt the way that woman might have—wanting a child without daddy drama—she probably would have considered something similar, as cruel as it might be to the clueless donor; she probably would’ve assumed he wouldn’t have cared to know.
Her experience thus far, beyond her trifling ex, had taught her that men were likely to abandon their kids anyway, and not give a damn where they ended up—that most guys didn’t think about their kids for one second once they decided being there for them was inconvenient.
Her own dad was still alive out there somewhere, and after all this time, he still hadn’t checked in on her and Tamara once he left their mother.
Karen suddenly realized Brian’s face held a proud smile as she chanced a glance back at him. She’d already forgotten the brief compliment she’d paid him that he was probably cheesing about.
“So I should be on the alert for you too?” he said as his falsely salacious grin widened.
“Oh my god. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I’m pretty sure you just said you want to sleep with me.”
Karen let out a grunt of frustration. “Okay, let’s not joke about this stuff right now when there’s a tiny, parentless baby lying somewhere all by herself. She might be waiting for you—don’t you abandon her, too.”
All signs of mirth wiped clean off his face.