Baby Steps. Karen Templeton

before finally getting it to her ear.

      “Hel—”

      “Dana?”

      A few more brain cells jerked awake. “Trish?” She glanced at the caller ID. Blocked call. Shoot. “Where are you—?”

      “I just wanted to make sure you were going to be at the shop at nine. That’s what you said, right? Nine? I mean, are you going to be there any earlier?”

      As usual, she sounded borderline crazed, but in a controlled sort of way.

      “I usually get there around ten ’til. Trish what’s going on—?”

      Click.

      The girl really needed to get herself some phone manners. Sheesh.

      An hour or so and a half bottle of Visine later, Dana pulled into the far side of the empty parking lot in front of the shop. It was her day to open up, a good thing since she wasn’t yet ready to face humanity. Or Mercy’s inevitable squinty assessment of Dana’s putty-knife makeup application. She was, however, supposed to be facing Trish, who was nowhere in sight. But then, reliability had never been her cousin’s strong suit.

      Bracing herself, Dana took a deep breath and swung open the car door. Instant oven. Already. Yech. And it always took an hour for the store to cool off after being closed up all night. Double yech.

      Her purse gathered, she slammed shut her door and crossed the parking lot, noticing the drooping petunias in the oversized planters by the front door. If they didn’t get water soon, she thought as she shoved her key into the lock, they’d turn into twigs. Lord, her slip was already fused to her skin. Knowing she had thirty seconds to deactivate the alarm before it went off, she shoved open the door—

      Behind her, something sneezed.

      The key still in the lock, the door swung open as whatever it was sneezed a second time. She turned, letting out a half-shrieked, “Ohmigod!”

      The baby peered at her from underneath the nylon hood of the car seat, its face tinted blue from the reflection. It stared at Dana for a long moment, then offered a big, basically toothless, drooly grin.

      Dana was far too stunned to grin back. But not too stunned to immediately scour the neighboring parking lots, her hand shielding her eyes from the morning sun glinting off the top of a beige sedan as it disappeared down the street. She stepped off the sidewalk—

      Brrrrannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggg!

      Dana yelped and the baby started to yowl like a banshee as the alarm blared loud enough to wake the dead. On Mars. She grabbed the car seat and roared into the store, thunking the seat onto the counter so she could dump out her purse to find the key to deactivate the alarm. Ten seconds later, she’d killed it, but not before nearly wetting her pants.

      In the ensuing silence the baby’s howls seemed even louder. Dana unlatched the ridiculously complicated harness and hauled the little thing into her arms, then paced the jammed sales floor, almost more to calm herself than the infant. After a bit, the wails had softened to exhausted sobs, and Dana no longer felt as though her heart was going to pound out of her chest. She dropped into a rocking chair, the infant clutching the front of her dress, now adorned with baby tears and drool.

      “No…” she breathed. “No, God, no…this can’t be happening….”

      Trish surfaces out of the blue, asks when Dana’s going to be at the shop; lo and behold, a blond baby appears, smelling of cheap perfume and cigarettes. As she assumed the baby didn’t wear cheap perfume or smoke, it didn’t take a real big leap of faith to figure out who did.

      She got up, deposited the baby—dressed in a miniature football outfit, so she was guessing boy—into a nearby playpen and stormed back outside, startling a couple of pigeons.

      “Well, Patricia Elizabeth Lovett,” she muttered to the air, “you’ve outdone yourself this time.”

      Since said Patricia Elizabeth obviously wasn’t going to jump out from behind a Dumpster and yell, “Surprise! Had you there for a minute, huh?” Dana’s only option was to go back inside and figure out what to do next. As she turned, however, she noticed the shopping bag. A quick glance inside revealed a small stack of clothes, six or seven disposable diapers and three filled bottles.

      How thoughtful.

      Dana snatched up the bag so hard one of the handles broke, nearly dumping everything into the gasping petunias. That’s when she noticed the note. Of course. There was always a note, wasn’t there?

      She dumped the bag on the counter, saw that the baby seemed happy enough gurgling to his own hands as he lay on his back, then tore open the envelope.

      Her eyes flew over the one-page letter, picking up the essentials. “…tried it on my own…knew how much you loved and wanted kids…it’ll be better this way…full custody…hopeyou’ll forgive me…Ethan’s really a little doll, you’ll love him…birth certificate enclosed…”

      It was so Trish. On a sigh, Dana unfolded the birth certificate, if only to find out how old this kid was.

      “WHAT?”

      The baby lurched at the sudden noise, then started to cry again. Nearly in tears herself, Dana threw the letter and birth certificate on the counter and went to pick him up. None of this was the baby’s fault, she reminded herself as she hauled the infant out of the playpen and cuddled him in her lap. None of it. Least of all who his daddy was.