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.