As a child, Josie had never found a replacement for her mother, a substitute to fill her mother’s shoes. But maybe, just maybe, Lucy had.
Cooper.
Lord knows there was enough of him to love. And he had a natural easy-going way with the children. He was not afraid to be affectionate. He was funny and sweet and so utterly kind . . .
Josie had thought she and Cooper weren’t getting through to Lucy, that the girl needed more than they could give her. Apparently, she’d been wrong.
And if having Cooper around made Lucy feel even the teeniest little bit better, if having him around brought the little girl one step farther from her grief, then how could Josie even
consider
taking him away from her?
Her stomach hurt.
This was a big decision, Josie thought, making herself breathe slowly, trying to take her mind off the pain. Having Ben and Lucy around permanently would change her and Cooper’s life immeasurably. They’d have no privacy, no private time, no time—period.
But that seemed laughably insignificant compared to what Lucy and Ben had lost.
No, there was no decision to be made here. There was really only one choice. Cooper was right. He’d been right all along.
Josie lay the sleeping Lucy gently on the couch, carried Ben carefully up to his crib, then went into the kitchen to start searching for a Manhattan day care center with openings for both a four-year-old and a nine-month-old.
NINE
C
OOPER CAME
in shortly after midnight.
He was wearing a new pair of shiny black boots and a black Stetson fur felt cowboy hat. He smelled like smoke and beer—the smoke from his clothes and the beer from his breath.
“You didn’t drive yourself home, did you?” Josie asked as Cooper wiped his boots on the mat just inside the back door.
He gave her a long look. “I didn’t have that much to drink. Just a few beers.”
Josie closed the lid of her laptop computer and began putting her files and notes hack into her briefcase. “If you’re driving, you shouldn’t have more than one.”
Cooper sighed. The wide brim of his hat hid his face as he looked down at his feet. “Yeah, I know,” he said quietly, tiredly. “But I was careful coming home.”
“Next time get a cab,” Josie said. “I’m not the only one who would miss you around here if you got yourself killed.”
He looked up at her, and Josie studied him in the overhead light. He was wearing his hair down loose around his shoulders and, combined with the faded button-down shirt that he wore with the sleeves rolled up and his slim-fitting jeans, he looked like he’d been born to wear that hat and those boots.
“I hate to admit it,” Josie said, “but that stupid hat actually looks good on you. How many women did you have to fight off tonight?”
He glanced up into her eyes, checking to see if she was serious, then laughed and looked away as he noted her obvious amusement with embarrassed relief. “A few,” he admitted.
“I’ll bet.’
Cooper took off his hat and hung it on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Josie, I’m sorry about before—”
She interrupted him. “In the hospital, you said that you wanted us to keep the kids. You meant adopt them, right?”
He shook his head. “It’s late, babe. This probably isn’t the best time to get into a fight about this.”
“Lucy cried for about two hours after you left today.”
Cooper stared at her. “Cried?” he said.
Josie nodded.
He pulled out the chair and slowly sat down across from her. “For two
hours
?”
“She was afraid that you’d never come back.”
Cooper wished desperately that he hadn’t had so many mugs of beer down at the local honky-tonk. He couldn’t think clearly—hell, he couldn’t think at all. Lucy
cried
for two
hours
. . .
“I don’t know why or how it happened,” Josie said, “but somehow you got under her skin. She cares about you. She’s only pretending to be an emotional zombie. Today she gave herself away.”
Cooper’s eyes were noticeably red. “Thank God,” he said simply. He reached across the table and took Josie’s hand. “I was starting to think she was going to need some heavy-duty therapy.”
“She probably still will,” Josie said. “It’s not going to be easy. The person who’s her . . . what do all those books call it? Her primary caregiver. Right. Her primary caregiver is going to have one heck of a tough job, dealing with both her emotional problems
and
her food allergies. This is a kid that has to be cooked for, Cooper. You can’t just take her out to the fast food joint and buy her some chicken nuggets or whatever. Is that chicken-stuff cooked with milk or butter or—jeez, even whey? Who knows? Certainly not the kids working behind the counter of the restaurant.”
Cooper was silent.
“Do you still want to do it?”
He looked up at her blankly, not understanding.
“Do you want to keep Ben and Lucy?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to respond, but she stopped him. “Wait before you answer that,” Josie said. “What I really need to ask is if you’re willing to be the one who takes care of them—you know, be their primary caregiver, like the books say. Because I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it. But if
you
do . . .”
He sat very still. “What are you saying?” he asked quietly. “Are you suggesting we split up and I take the kids?”
“No!” The volume and force of her reply pushed him back in his seat. “Lord, no!” Josie shook her head vehemently. “I’m saying . . . I don’t know—I guess I’m saying that we do some role reversal here. You can play the part of mommy, I’ll be more like their daddy.”
Cooper didn’t say a word.
“Like you said,” Josie added nervously, “we’ll both have to make some sacrifices—you most of all . . .”
Still Cooper was silent.
“I mean, we kind of fell into those roles naturally anyway,” she said. “It would just be an extension of what we’ve been doing so far . . .”
“What made you change your mind?” Cooper asked quietly. “A few days ago, you didn’t even want to consider the possibility of keeping the kids.”
Josie looked down at her hands. “You should have seen her today.” She was talking about Lucy. “You wouldn’t have recognized her, Coop. Up to this afternoon, she was walking around in such total control, I think I forgot she was just a four-year-old. But she’s a baby, and she’s scared to death you’re going to disappear the way her parents did.”
This had been a hard day for Josie, Cooper realized. It had been a hard day right on the tail of three very brutal days. She looked drained, and he realized the emotional impact that making this decision had had on her.
He reached across the table to brush a stray curl of hair from her face.
“I’m asking an awful lot of you,” she said. A sheen of tears seemed to make her eyes shimmer. “You’ll have to cut back the hours you work. You’ll be the one in charge of getting Ben and Lucy to and from day care. You’ll have to make sure they aren’t given food that they’re allergic to. You’re the one who’ll have to stay home with them when they’re sick—”
“You’ll
have to cut back a little farther on your hours, too,” Cooper interrupted. “And you’ll have to promise me your undivided attention during every single one of your lunch hours from now until the end of time. And . . .” He tipped himself back in his chair and cleared his throat. “After you’ve finished up this deal with Fenderson . . .”
Josie was waiting for him to go on, her dark eyes watching him steadily.
“I want us to think about having a baby of our own, Joze,” he said. “A little person like Ben and Lucy, who’s part me and part you.”
Now it was Josie’s turn to clear her throat. The tears were back in her eyes, and it took several attempts before she could speak. “Are you sure you still like me enough to want to have a baby with me?”
Cooper’s eyes turned an even more neon shade of blue. “Come upstairs with me, and I’ll show you just how much I still like you.”
Josie was silent, just watching him.
“Come on, babe,” he said, his voice husky. “I’m dying to make love to you. For the past few days, ever since David called and interrupted us, I’ve been walking around in total pain. I need you, Joze, and I’m not just talking about the physical thing. I need you to show me that you still love me.”
Josie’s stomach burned and she was utterly exhausted. But she smiled shakily at Cooper as she stood up and held out her hand. How could she say no?
Lucy had been following him around all day.
She hadn’t smiled, hadn’t even seemed particularly glad to see him, but Cooper noticed that whenever he went into another room, it wasn’t long until Lucy joined him there.
“Where’s Josie?” the little girl asked as Cooper finished loading the last of the dinner dishes into the dishwasher.
“She’s upstairs putting Ben to bed,” he said. He turned to look at her. “You should be getting your pj’s on yourself, and brushing your teeth.”
“Is Josie mad at me?”
Cooper turned all the way around this time, stopping to dry his hands on a towel. He crouched down in front of Lucy, so that they were eye to eye. “Why do you think Josie’s mad at you?” he asked.
Lucy bit her lip. “Because I hit her,” she said almost inaudibly. “I made her bleed.”
Cooper shook his head. “Lucy, Josie told me about what happened,” he said. “She didn’t tell me about any blood.”
“It wasn’t right then,” Lucy said. “It was later—after she thought I was in bed.”
“Honey, you must’ve seen something that you don’t understand—”
Lucy shook her head vehemently. “No. I heard a funny noise, and Josie was in the bathroom with the throw-ups. I saw. It was red, like blood, lots of blood, same as when I had a bloody nose.”
Cooper tried to make sense of the child’s words. He’d thought that maybe Lucy had seen some sign of Josie’s menstrual period, but that didn’t make sense. He’d made love to Josie last night—she wasn’t having her period.
A chill finger of fear stabbed along his spine, making the hair at the nape of his neck stand on end. What the hell was going on?
“Mommy always said don’t punch Ben in the stomach or he’d throw up,” Lucy said. “But I punched Josie in the stomach. I made her throw up. I made her bleed.”
Cooper resisted the urge to run out of the room, find Josie and demand to know what was going on. Instead, he put his hands on Lucy’s narrow shoulders and smiled. “Lookit, Luce, if Josie
did
throw up, it wasn’t because you hit her in the stomach. If she was going to throw up from being hit, she would’ve done it right away—not hours later.”
Lucy looked skeptical.
“Trust me,” Cooper said. “You’ve gotta trust me on this one, kid.”
“It wasn’t my fault?”
“No way,” Cooper said. “It most certainly wasn’t.”
Somehow he managed to walk Lucy up to her room. He helped her get her pajamas on, watched as she brushed her teeth and washed her face. He even tucked her into bed and read her a short bedtime story.
Her eyelids were heavy as he kissed her on the forehead and turned out the light.
Out in the hall, Cooper leaned against the wall and took a deep, ragged breath.
He’d figured it out.
Halfway through the story of Goldilocks and the three hears, he’d realized that Lucy probably
had
seen Josie vomiting blood. And he’d also realized why. It came to him in a flash, right when the baby bear had discovered his porridge was all gone.
His wife had finally given herself an ulcer.
She was sick as a dog, goddamnit, probably had been for days,
weeks
maybe, and she hadn’t even bothered to tell him.
Cooper’s hands were shaking as he pushed open the door to his and Josie’s bedroom. He closed it behind him and leaned against it, stuffing his hands deep into the front pockets of his jeans.
Josie came out of the bathroom wearing her robe, and Cooper looked at her,
really
looked at her.
She was thin, much thinner than she had been just a few weeks ago, and her face was pale and almost gaunt, making her big brown eyes seem enormous. She walked slowly, carefully, as if each step she took caused her a significant amount of pain.
She’d barely touched her dinner tonight, and Cooper thought back, trying to remember the last time he’d seen her eat anything substantial. He couldn’t.
She jumped when she saw him quietly standing there, watching her, and quickly stuck a smile onto her face. But Cooper wasn’t fooled. Not any longer.
“Is Lucy in bed?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, somewhat amazed that his voice could sound this normal when he was so angry he could barely see.
“Ben’s also asleep,” she said. “I know it’s early, but I’m tired. I thought I’d turn in, too.”
“Don’t you feel well?” he asked, clenching his teeth as he waited for her reply. He was giving her the perfect opportunity to tell him. “No, Coop,” he wanted her to say, “I don’t feel well. In fact, I think I have an ulcer—”
But she said, “I’m fine,” climbing carefully into bed.
“Fine,” he repeated. He laughed, and he realized from the surprised look she gave him that he was no longer managing to hide his anger from her. But he didn’t care. God, lie wanted to break something, put his fist through the window or the drywall. “Fine,” he said again. “Since when is someone
fine
when they’ve got a fucking ulcer, Joze?”
The look on her face gave her away. Cooper knew he’d hit the truth dead center.
“When were you going to tell me?” he said, crossing to the bed in two large, angry strides. She wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t meet his eyes, and he sat down next to her and pulled her chin so that she was forced to face him. “
Were
you even going to tell me?”
He looked into her eyes, searching, trying to read her mind. He could see the guilt there clearly, and he reeled back, his breath taken away as if he’d been sucker punched in the gut.
“You weren’t,” he said. “Shit, you weren’t going to tell me.”
“It’s not that bad—”
“You’re goddamn throwing up
blood,
” Cooper nearly shouted at her. “If that’s not bad, I don’t know what the hell bad is!”
“Keep it down, Cooper, or you’re going to wake Ben and Lucy,” Josie said tightly.
Cooper made himself breathe. In and out, slow and steady. He tried to calm himself, tried to still his shaking hands. But if he couldn’t be angry, then, goddamn, the only thing left for him to be was hurt. And, Jesus, it hurt so much—
“I thought we were a team,” he whispered. “I thought we didn’t keep secrets from each other.”
“I was afraid to tell you,” she said.
“Afraid?” he said, his voice rising again despite his efforts to keep it down. “Why? Were you afraid I’d make you take some time off?”
Josie swallowed. “Yes.”
“And obviously, you’d rather die than take some time off.”
“I’m not dying—”
“You’re not living either, babe.” Cooper reached for the telephone, picked up the receiver and dialed information. “Yeah, I need the number for the county hospital,” he said.
“What are you doing?” Josie’s voice went up an octave.
“Thanks,” he said into the phone, hung up, then redialed. “I’m calling the hospital to see if they think I should bring you over tonight, instead of waiting ’til the morning.”
Josie crawled across the bed and pressed the little white button in the handset cradle that cut the connection. “I’ve already called my doctor in New York,” she said. “I have a prescription for some medication—they’re making arrangements for me to be able to pick it up at the hospital tomorrow.”