“Yeah, Christine’s great for a couple hours’ babysitting in the afternoon, but that’s all I can bear to ask of her.”
True. Miah’s mom put in sixteen-hour days around the ranch, same as the men. “She frigging loves Mercy, though,” Casey said.
Abilene smirked. “Miah better get busy and make her some grandbabies before she steals one . . . Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. That was mean.”
“No, that’s true. She’s broody as fuck. Oh, shit—shoot. Sorry.”
Abilene shook her head. “You and that mouth . . . Would you fix me a bottle? That might calm her down.”
“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.”