“Sure.”
Casey went to the kitchen and turned on a burner under a pot of water. He mixed the formula with a few good shakes of the bottle, switched off the stove, set the bottle in the pot to heat. Mercy preferred it warm, especially at night. So weird that she could have preferences, and a personality, when at four months old she was still little more than a good-smelling fat loaf—alternately angelic and livid. So weird that he even had this skill set, when four months ago he’d never so much as held an infant. Not that he was much of a natural. He still wound up putting on her diapers backward half the time.
When the bottle’s temp seemed about right, he emptied the pot down the sink and swirled the formula as he headed back into the den.
Abilene accepted it, giving it a feel. “Perfect, as always.”
“I’m like a human thermometer.”
“Between you and the human poop machine,” she said, nodding to the baby, “I’m starting to feel left out of the superpowers club.” The baby took the nipple and Abilene broke into a smile that Casey knew way too well—a quick grin, stifled by a shy bite of her lip. Relief.
“Tell me about the house,” he whispered.
Abilene’s dream house, that was, an ever-evolving vision of the kind of home she’d like to move into with Mercy someday, if she could ever afford it.
“Nothing fancy,” she murmured. That was how it always started. “One story is fine. With a little yard, at least, big enough to run around in. And a white fence.”
“What color’s the house?”
“Also white. With red shutters and a red mailbox. And a red door.”
“How many bedrooms?” he asked, and absently reached out to squeeze Mercy’s tiny foot in its yellow sock.
“Just two. Plus a living room, and a kitchen big enough to eat in. And a washer and dryer—I never want to step inside another Laundromat for the rest of my life.”
Casey laughed, smiled to himself. He’d ask her this question again, the next time they found themselves side by side this way, late at night. Each time, something new—the shutters, the fence, the mailbox, now two rooms and a washer and dryer. Next time, maybe curtains. And someday, he imagined, a Mr. Right to fill out the scene. Something hot squirmed inside him at the thought. Something hot and deeply pointless, as Casey was about as wrong for such a gig as a man could get. Even if some hint of Abilene’s old crush still lived inside her, he couldn’t be what she needed. He had no business promising anything real to anyone, and a kid raised the stakes a hundredfold.
He gave the suckling baby’s wispy hair a faint stroke. “She has my eyes, you know.”
Abilene straightened and rolled her own blue eyes. “Now, that would be a miracle of genetics.”
In more ways than one; Casey didn’t expect he’d ever have kids of his own. He wasn’t cut out for it, for starters, and he also didn’t entirely trust his own DNA. His mother had gone crazy in her early forties, and he had good reason to suspect the same fate might be in store for him. Like her, he suffered from occasional spells, like seizures. What exactly was wrong with him, he wasn’t certain, but he knew for damn sure he had no business making promises he couldn’t keep, not to a woman, and certainly not to a child. It wouldn’t be fair to them, and it wasn’t fair to him, either. Why torture yourself with a taste of that stuff, if it was only going to get ripped away?
Still, there definitely was something to babies. He’d never thought about them much before meeting this one, but they were good. Squishy to hold, infinitely simple in their needs, entertaining, nice to look at.
“You remember when she was born,” Casey asked, “the very first words she ever heard anybody say?”
“‘Bleeping hell, Abilene,’” she quoted, laughing, “‘I’m on a mother-bleeping lease.’”
“In retrospect, ‘Welcome to the world’ might’ve been nicer.”
“At least your insurance covered new seats.”
Casey nodded. “Good to know emergency birth counts as an act of God.”
“It ought to, considering all the blasphemy involved.”
They fell quiet, and Casey studied her once her eyes had shut. He’d known her since the previous summer, worked with her on and off at the bar, both before and after he’d become co-owner of the place. Granted, he’d known her mostly while she was pregnant and stressed-out, but he still couldn’t say he’d ever seen her as calm as she’d been since the baby had been born. Exhausted, sure, but at peace, too, he could tell. Like someone who’d found what it was they were supposed to be doing. He knew that sensation himself—missed the shit out of it. But he was happy for her. It was only a shame this peace was about to get disrupted. It was technically Monday now, and that meant her ex was out on parole tomorrow.
Just looking at her, with those worries nagging . . . Goddamn, his body didn’t even know what to do with it all. How did men even survive having wives and children, Casey had to wonder, when he felt this mixed-up and protective over a woman he could only really call a friend, and a child who wasn’t even his? That shit must feel deep enough to drown in some days.
Though to a better man than me, he thought, it might feel like a nice way to go.
Chapter 3
The old farmhouse was chilly, winter finding Abilene’s feet through the broad floorboards and her socks. She shuffled out of the guest bedroom around seven with Mercy strapped to her chest in the baby sling. She may have failed at breastfeeding, but the scoldy-mother brigade couldn’t fault her efforts on the wearing-your-infant front. What the benefits were meant to be, she couldn’t remember. It felt like there were a dozen differing ways to be a good mom, and a million ways to mess it up.
“A woman’s highest calling is to be a good wife and mother,” her father’s cool voice echoed. She shivered. He’d be horrified to see her now, but no matter—she had no wish to see him ever again.
Am I a good mother? I couldn’t breastfeed. But what was that shortcoming, really, compared to getting involved with Mercy’s father to begin with? I was a different person when we met. She’d grown up a lot since finding out she was pregnant. She might not have everything figured out—not remotely—but she had her priorities in order, at least.
And she was a good mother, besides. Maybe she was unmarried, maybe she had no clue what she was doing half the time, but she loved her daughter, and she showed that love. It was more than her father could claim to have done for her. And I’m protecting her. Abilene’s mama had never protected her—not from her father’s judgment and suffocating beliefs, and not from the perils and temptations of the larger world, after she’d run away from home.
The guest bathroom was cold, the lightbulb seeming grumpy as it flickered to life. She brushed her teeth, eyeing herself in the mirror. Eyeing Mercy, and only half comprehending how it was she was here.
Same as how everything happens to me—I screwed up.
At least this time, there was a gem to be found in the rubble of the fallout. She smoothed her baby’s soft hair and watched her tiny lashes flutter. It seemed unreal that someone as messed up as Abilene could have created something so perfect.
It hadn’t even been Abilene who’d told her ex about Mercy—it had been Casey’s older brother, Vince. Vince had done time with James, a year before Abilene had moved to Nevada.
Well, not moved to. Not exactly. Abilene tended more often to simply find herself in new places, more a matter of mishap than intention.
That was the story of her life, right there, she thought as she headed downstairs. Flight following mistake, following flight, following mistake, again and again and again. She’d screwed up, getting involved with her ex, and been swept here to the Churches’ ranch for her own safety. She entered the empty kitchen, finding coffee warming in the pot and a plate of muffins on the oversized trestle table. She helped herself to both, settling on the long wooden bench.