Pointing at Dylan, he said, “You, too?”
The smile on his partner’s face was so telling, impish and serious all at once in a way only Dylan could pull off. “Me, too. She’s ours. Not yours. Not mine.”
Would Laura agree? Mike wasn’t sure. Seeing her there, on her side, radiant and scared, made him want to bar the door and protect her from whatever the world threw her way. Radiant! Hah! Now he knew why she seemed to be glowing when he saw her yesterday at Jeddy’s, through that window.
A happy pregnant woman, full of life.
Full of his child.
His daughter.
Their daughter.
“I hate to break up this lovely Hallmark moment— hey, where do I get a card for this?—but as wonderful as the sentiment is, it’s not practical,” Josie announced. Like poking a pin in a balloon, Mike felt deflated, burdened and weighed down by something he couldn’t name.
“Why not?” Dylan threw back at her. The opposite of deflated, Dylan seemed emboldened. Cocksure.
“What if something happens to Laura? You need to know who the legal father is for custody. For raising her. I’ve seen too many really screwy situations in hospitals after parents die to know that you do not want Child Services to be the one who takes your daughter away to a foster home while the legal system sorts all this crap out. Plus there are issues of inheritance.” She made a face and rubbed her fingers together. Money.
Like a bucket of ice water pitched on them, Josie’s words made him feel stone-cold sober. Crackpot idea, right? Some calm, internally-focused part of him thought it might work—not knowing. Once they knew who the dad was it would shift everything, make him and Dylan competitors, not collaborators.
“I like it.” Laura’s voice was small but strong. “If they both want to be her dad, I’m fine with it.”
Josie looked at them all as if they were aliens. “But you have to know!”
How had they gone from just learned about the existence of this tiny being to having a fight about her already?
“Maybe we can both go on the birth certificate?” Dylan asked.
“What—like you each contributed half a sperm? Biology doesn’t work that way,” Josie wisecracked.
“I know how—”
Buh bum buh bum buh bum. They all turned to look at the monitor. A large wet spot grew around Laura’s eye on the pillow, her chin quivering and chest shaking a bit.
“Out!” Josie ordered. “All of us! We can come back and fight another time when Laura’s stronger.”
Shit. She was right, as much as Mike was loathe to admit it. He looked at the clock; was it really not even 7:30 a.m.? Man. He’d lived five lifetimes in four hours. He walked to the head of the bed and bent down, stretching to give Laura a kiss on the temple.
“You have nothing to be sorry about. I’m the one who is so, so sorry, Laura. We should have told you.”
“I should have told you,” she whispered back, reaching for his hand. The joy of this moment made his own heart grow, and his fingers reached down to stroke the baby.
“We’ll be back later. We’re here for you.” He knew he shouldn’t speak for Dylan—that was a bridge he still needed to cross—but the words were reflexive, born of years of knowing he could speak for two.
Dylan came from the other side of the bed and kissed her cheek. “Me too. I’m sorry, Laura, for letting you down.”
A smile. “It’s all good.” Yawn. The baby’s heart rate settled back down.
Click. The door opened and Mike saw Josie leading the way. By the time he and Dylan had stepped out, Laura was snoozing, as it should be.
Buh bum buh bum buh bum.
A dad. Daddy. Dylan fumbled with the idea that he might be someone’s daddy. Images of his own father, still strong and hearty at seventy, flipped through his mind. Fishing and hiking and swimming and camping. He knew how to parent a boy, all rough and tumble and energy.
A little girl? He wasn’t exactly the princess tea party type. A lump in his throat seemed to push on his tear ducts and make his eyes leak a bit as he and Mike and Josie left Laura’s room.
“You’re covered in soot,” Josie marveled. He looked down at his forearms. Yep. Nothing new. After a year on the force he had found that his cuticles always had a few flecks of black in them. Professional hazard. “You literally carried her out and saved her life.” Hair wild and eyes tired, she smiled at him, a genuine, earnest look that made her quite beautiful, transformed. “Thank you. You saved them both.”
Both. A baby girl. He washed his face with his hands, kneading the skin, willing his brain to focus, as if he could massage it into place. “What are we gonna do?” Open-ended question. One that no one had an answer to, but he had to ask it anyway.