Babies and Badges

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See? Noah closed his eyes, wishing Brenda would’ve just gone along with Ernie’s latest outrageous tale. Now, he’d have to listen to this bickering all the way through his lunch. And Lord, how he hated bickering. Brenda and Ernie were just one more shining example of why m-marriage doesn’t work. He had no trouble seeing it. So why did all the other men and women of the world still seem confused?

“Can I get you your usual Coke, double cheeseburger and Tater Tots?” Brenda asked during fight intermission—meaning Ernie must’ve taken a time-out to grab a fresh bag of something from the freezer.

“Why don’t you change that Coke to a chocolate malt?”

Brenda frowned. “Tiffany stopped by here awhile ago and said those women of yours already gave your babies’ momma an official group number. She’s Ms. Eighteen. Things that serious already, huh?”

Noah washed his face with his hands.

This whole town was a few donuts short of a dozen!

Wonder if the Fayetteville police force was doing any hiring?

In a back booth, a trio of teenaged girls burst into giggles.

He hadn’t thought the idea of moving to Fayetteville all that funny.

Just as he didn’t cotton to their skipping classes. He was just rising off of his stool to go over and say something when he realized they were out on their lunch break, and sat back down.

“Yo, Sheriff!”

Noah didn’t even have to glance toward the burger joint’s opening door to know his youngest deputy, Jimmy Groves, was heading his way.

“Briggs has been looking for ya.”

“Oh, yeah?” Noah said above the racket Brenda was making with the malt machine. “What’s he want?” Briggs was another deputy—the complete opposite of tall, lean and young Jimmy. Briggs didn’t have any hair, was a single parent to three great girls and one boy, and spent his every waking moment when he wasn’t on patrol or ferrying said kids watching tapes of Martha Stewart. Briggs had loved his wife to a dangerous degree. When she’d died of complications of diabetes, folks round town said Briggs would die right along with her. Still one more reason Noah wanted no part of marriage.

Far from being a blessing, loving a woman to that degree sounded more like a curse. Thank goodness Briggs and his munchkin crew seemed to be doing okay, two years later.

“He thought it might be nice to wash your girlfriend’s car. You know, that hot yellow Thunderbird?”

Noah rolled his eyes while Brenda set his malt on the gold-speckled counter in front of him.

He took a long, slow drink, savoring the icy goodness that eased fiery indigestion no doubt brought on by all this talk about him and Cass having already formed some kind of bond. Couldn’t everyone see they were nothing more than friends?

“First off,” he said, “Cassie’s hardly my girl—just the mother of my babies, which technically aren’t even mine, but—oh hell, you know what I mean. And second, stay away from her car.”

“But it’s awfully dusty.”

“Jimmy…”

“Come on, Sheriff, pleeeease. Briggs got to drive it all the way into town from out on the highway, and all I got to do was sit behind the wheel once she was already parked.” Jimmy was one of those kids who had posters of cars up on his bedroom walls instead of bikini-clad women. “If you’ll let me just drive it real slow to the car wash, I promise I’ll never ask for anything else.”

“No.”

Dragging his lip like a kid who’d got nothing for Christmas, Jimmy slinked out of Brenda’s and back to the sheriff’s office located five doors down across the street.

Why was it that the more Noah thought about Cassie and the hornet’s nest of women supposedly scorned, the more he wished she’d had those babies of hers in someone else’s town?

“THIS IS NICE,” Cassie said after Noah had given her the grand tour of his cozy four-bedroom ranch home. She’d decided not to mention the fact that after having told her back at the hospital that he wasn’t allowed to have civilian passengers in his county-issued Blazer, he’d turned around and picked her up in it!

“Thanks. I can’t really take any of the credit, though. Mom did all of the homey stuff. Dad and I just did our part to help keep everything clean.”

“So what happened?” Cassie asked with a smile twinkling in her eyes. While the house wasn’t trashed, in spite of pretty blue floral curtains, mossy green walls and an antique china cabinet brimming with dusty, rose-patterned china, the place definitely had the look and feel of a bachelor pad.

Dirty dishes filled the sink, and mail, newspapers and grocery store sales circulars cluttered the white tile kitchen counters. A dirty frying pan had been left on the stove. Bread crumbs dusted the counter beside it, along with a butter knife and one of those plastic wraps off of a slice of American cheese.

On the living room floor resided hiking boots, an array of video games scattered in front of the jumbo TV and plenty of dirty towels, T-shirts and socks. The overstuffed brown leather sofa was missing a cushion—never mind. There it was, beside the PlayStation II. An earth-toned plaid recliner held a basket of clothes. Judging by the fabric softener sheets crowning the pile, Cassie figured they were clean.

“Guess I’ve been busy,” her temporary housemate said with a disinterested shrug. “Ever since mom died a few years back, and I moved back in here when Dad took off to live in his fishing cabin, I guess it really doesn’t feel much like home anymore. I do the bare minimum of upkeep, but that’s about it.”

On their way down a dark hall, he flipped on a weak overhead light, then kicked aside another stray blue sock.

“I’m sorry,” Cassie said.

“No need to be. I never really had a Beaver Cleaver life to begin with. I mean, to outsiders, my folks made sure everything looked okay, but from the time I was ten, I knew things weren’t. Here’s your room,” he said, stopping at the last door on the right.

He opened it, and upon her first glance, Cassie gasped.

“Noah, this—well, it’s beyond words.”

The large, pale yellow room wasn’t just pretty—it was exquisite. An ornately carved dark walnut canopy bed dominated the west wall, flanked on both sides by matching side tables and eight-paned windows draped with the same yellow rose-patterned fabric as the bedspread and canopy.

Sunlight streamed in, bathing an intimate seating area on the south wall in a golden glow.

Tucked into a bay window was an upholstered window seat brimming with needlepoint pillows of flowers and quotes she couldn’t wait to read. On the walls hung an interesting blend of antique plate collections and hats and black-and-white photos of long-gone ancestors.

Dotted here and there were colorful tapestry rugs, and blending nicely with the abundance of yellow were regal ferns on stands and delicate English ivies trailing over the rims of teacup planters and matching saucers.

Through an open door, Cassie glimpsed a white-tiled bathroom. Behind a closed door was, she assumed, a closet.

“I’m glad you like it,” Noah said, yanking a dead leaf from the nearest fern. “This room meant a lot to my mother. From what little I’ve pieced together, she’d always wanted a daughter, but after three miscarriages—the last a close call with nearly dying—her doctor said no more. She had to have a hysterectomy, and Dad said she never recovered.”

“Wow.” Cassie swallowed hard. “I don’t know what to say. That’s awful.”

Noah shrugged. “Water under the bridge. Anyway, I always viewed this room as her shrine to the little girl she wanted instead of me.”

“Oh, Noah, you don’t think that just because she wanted a girl means she loved you any less, do you?”

“I’ll get your luggage, and the kids’ toys and stuff, then show you the deck and my new gas grill.”

“Noah, don’t you want to—” Talk?

Too late, he’d already left the room.

Turning in a slow circle, Cassie once again drank in the space. Different from the rest of the house, this room held a faint lemony smell. Not a speck of dust rested on anything. Not on the dresser with its collection of silver-framed pictures of Noah as a boy. Not on any of the hardback classics lining a built-in bookshelf. Not even on the glass paperweights lounging on the seating area’s coffee table, basking in the sun.

The room was a shrine.

But to who or what?

Noah’s mother and the daughter she’d wanted? To Noah’s lonely childhood—assuming he’d had one? To his ex-wife, or one of the women in the support group? Or to something more? Something Cassie sensed hiding deep inside him. Something all seventeen members of that goofy group also might have sensed, but hadn’t identified.

Cassie, on the other hand, wondered if she might have accidentally stumbled across the answer.

Whether he knew it or not, could Noah, the breaker of hearts suffer from a broken one?

Having herself fallen victim to the very same malaise, Cassie figured she ought to be able to recognize the signs in others. Something she also recognized was the fact that no amount of talking or praying—or for that matter, dusting—would ever cure the disease. Maybe time would, but for her at least, not enough had passed yet for her to be able to tell.

Goose bumps dotted her arms.

Crossing them, she ran her hands up and down her shoulders, suppressing a shiver. For all the room’s warmth, why was she suddenly so cold?

Chapter Four

“Thanks,” Cassie said to Noah in the cereal aisle of Riverdale Grocery.

“For what?” he asked, snatching the box of fiber flakes from the top shelf and tossing it in their cart. He’d offered to push, but though she hadn’t said anything to him, the day’s activities were starting to take a toll. She was exhausted from her latest trip to the hospital to feed the babies and holding the cart gave her much-needed support. “Because if I were really and truly a good guy, I’d save you from eating this overpriced cat food in a pretty box.”

She made a face.

“Seriously,” she said, rounding the end cap piled high with Pop-Tarts to turn down the baby aisle. “Thank you. I’m not used to this damsel in distress role I seem to have fallen into. It seems like every time I turn around, caught yet again in another jam—this time unable to reach my favorite cereal—you gallop up on your trusty sheriff-steed to save me…I mean, us. Guess I need to start getting used to that, huh? The fact that I now have a family.”

“Aw, shucks, ma’am,” he said, pretending to whip off a cowboy hat while he deeply bowed. “’Twasn’t nuthin”’

She swatted the top of his head with the store sale circular. “Just for a second, would you stop horsing around? I’m trying to be serious.”

“But I’m tired of being serious,” he complained. “We’ve done that for, like, the past two days, and it’s starting to be a major drag.”