Whose Baby?. Janice Kay Johnson

of the place suck you in, are you?”

      She’d only laughed at him, her joy undimmed. “Don’t be silly. It’s a wonderful preschool! The director’s written a book about early childhood development. They have animals—chickens and goats and this big lazy dog that lets kids climb all over him and only grunts. And puzzles and books and blocks and puppets! It’s wonderland.”

      Pain stabbed now and Adam rubbed his chest. He’d never considered any place else for Rose. He was trying to raise their daughter as Jennifer would have wanted to, which meant he scraped his memory for nuggets his wife might have dropped, perhaps in bed when he scanned the financial news a last time while she chattered on in her light voice as if oblivious to his lack of attention.

      Adam took another savage look at the clock and swore. Was he screwing up one more thing Jennifer had wanted for Rose?

      But maybe it wasn’t the best choice now. Maybe he should go for a nanny.

      He tensed when the light turned green and willed the driver of the Buick to make a dash before cross-traffic began. But, hell, no. The car didn’t even inch forward. The heel of Adam’s hand was on the horn when he clenched his teeth and made himself wrap his fingers around the wheel again. Shit. If he hadn’t stayed for that last goddamn phone call, he wouldn’t be in such a hurry he wanted other drivers to take their lives in their hands just to get out of his way. Why hadn’t he walked out, ignored the ringing?

      He couldn’t do everything.

      He had to try. He owed it to Rose. And to Jennifer.

      An interminable five more minutes had passed before he barreled into the parking lot, yanked on the emergency brake and killed the engine, slamming his door before he strode in.

      The director of the preschool, a woman of his own age named Melissa Gearhart, waited in the entry, eyes cool.

      “Mr. Landry. Rose has been worried.”

      His intense anxiety made itself felt in a long huff of breath. “God, I’m sorry. I’ve done it again.”

      “I’m afraid I’m going to have to start charging you when staff has to stay late, like today.”

      “I understand.” He swallowed. “Where’s Rose?”

      The dark-haired woman with tired smudges beneath her eyes turned. “Under the climber.”

      He stepped past her into the main activity room, where the floor was covered with bright mats to pad falls from the slide and wooden peg climber. He had to circle a playhouse before he saw his daughter, lying on the mat with her thumb in her mouth.

      Wearing clothes he’d never seen before. Ill fitting and mismatched.

      “She had an accident again,” Melissa said softly behind him. “No big deal. I’ve got her clothes in a plastic bag for you. Just bring those back when you’ve washed them.”

      He closed his eyes for a moment, acknowledging more failure. Or maybe not—he hadn’t had the guts to ask the mothers who picked up their three-year-olds whether they had potty accidents still, too. Or the occasional father, none exclusive parents the way he was. Adam didn’t even like to ask Melissa, because he didn’t want to know something was wrong, that he’d already warped his beloved child.

      If only he knew what the hell he was doing.

      If only Jennifer were alive to help him do it.

      “Hey, Rose Red,” he said softly, crouching. “Ready to bloom?”

      “Daddy!” She erupted to her feet and into his arms, her sky-blue eyes flooding with tears. “You’re late, and I’m hungry, and I had a accident, an’…”

      He stemmed the flow. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Here you were, all by yourself.”

      “Except for Lissa,” Rose mumbled against his shoulder. She snuffled. “Lissa didn’t leave me.”

      He felt the crushing addition, Like you do. Every day.

      She’d taken lately to holding on to him and screaming when he tried to drop her off in the morning. He felt like the worst parent in the whole damned world when the day-care workers had to pry his daughter’s fingers off him and haul her away, when the last thing he saw was Rose’s round tear-streaked face. Those desperate, pleading eyes haunted his days, gave him a feeling of self-loathing.

      But, goddamn it, he had to work!

      Rationally he knew that other kids cried in the morning, too, that it was probably just a stage. Reason didn’t quell the guilt that ate at his gut like too many cups of coffee.

      She needed her daddy, and he wasn’t there.

      He hustled her out to the car, belatedly grabbing the white plastic garbage sack that held Rose’s own clothes. That meant laundry tonight. He didn’t want to leave these for Ann, their twenty-something housekeeper-cook. When Rose wet the bed, he always changed it, too. Three and a half wasn’t so old, he tried to tell himself, but he hadn’t seen those discreet plastic bags go home with Rose’s friends Rainy and Sylvie, either. Not in months.

      His daughter fell asleep during the drive home, worn out by a ten-hour day, and more guilt stabbed him. Poor Rosebud. How did a little girl grow into a woman without a mother to lead the way? What did he know about girlish secrets or adolescent crushes or makeup or menstrual cramps?

      Well, he’d damn well learn. He was mommy and daddy both, determined not to foist his daughter’s upbringing on a series of nannies. Jennifer wouldn’t have wanted that.

      I didn’t mean it, he said silently, speaking to her as if she were listening. No nanny.

      A nanny would be a replacement. A substitute mother. No one could be Jennifer, petite, quick moving, eternally optimistic, alive.

      Dead, in every meaningful way, long before her daughter was cut from her belly.

      He hadn’t even looked at Rose when doctors performed the C-section. He’d been holding Jennifer’s hand, although Jennifer didn’t know it, would never know it, because she was brain-dead. He’d been saying goodbye, because the shell of her body had no purpose anymore, now that it wasn’t needed to sustain her child. He had agreed that she would be unhooked from machines as soon as the baby could survive on her own.

      “I’ll do my best,” he had whispered to the love of his life. One last promise, he thought, praying she didn’t know how he had dreaded the birth because it meant severing any last wisp of hope that the doctors were wrong, that she would yet wake up.

      How could she be gone? He had gripped her hand so hard it should have hurt, but she only lay there, eyes closed, breast rising and falling with the hissing push of the respirator, unaware of her daughter’s birth, of his tears and whispered, wrenching, “Goodbye, Jenny.” Unaware when he blundered from the room.

      Unaware when her heart stopped, when the last breath caught in her throat.

      His bright-faced, pretty, otherworldly wife was already dead when her daughter began life.

      He named her Jenny Rose, and called her Rose, this little girl who showed no signs of looking like her mama, to his relief and disappointment both. Her hair had developed red tints and curls, and the deep blue of her eyes never changed, as everyone said it would.

      Some days, Adam was intensely grateful that he didn’t have to think about his lost Jenny every time he looked at his daughter. And yet, he’d wanted to hold on to a part of her, remember her, never lose sight of her pixie face, but sometimes now he had to pick up the photo that sat on his bedside table in a silver frame to remember her. Sometimes she faded to the point that he thought perhaps her face was round, like Rose’s, or her nose solemnly straight; perhaps her hair had a forgotten wave, or she had moved or talked with a deliberateness that spoke of long thought.

      But the sight of her face, even in the photograph, reminded him of her high cheekbones and pointy chin, turned-up nose and full yet delicate lips, always parted as she