Lucky

“Well, this is hard,” Danny groused. “How the hell are you supposed to know where the back end of another car is if you can’t see it?”

But he could see her. Kasey, climbing out of the passenger seat, holding a small pink blanket. She hit him exactly the same way she had before—as if he were suffering the dizzying, stupefying effect of a stupid pill.

The darn woman wasn’t any prettier than she’d been the first time. No makeup. Her rusty-blond hair was wildly tousled. She was wearing some God-awful green print that overwhelmed her delicate features. But the details just didn’t matter.

The sound of her laughter pealed down the street. She didn’t laugh like a lady; she laughed as if her whole heart and belly were into it, joyful laughter, the kind of hopeless giggling that sucked in strangers passing by.

And the way she held the baby, it was damn obvious the kid was worth more than diamonds to her. As Graham crossed the car to her side, she climbed out, then surged up on tiptoe and kissed him. She looked up at him with a love so radiant and full that you’d think Graham was everything a woman ever dreamed of in a guy.

And there it was, Jake mused wryly. He got it, the reason he had such a hard time looking away from her. It was plain old jealousy.

He knew damn well no one had ever looked at him like that.

No one’s fault for that but him. He’d grown up a spoiled rich kid, raised to be selfish, to feel entitled, to take whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. God knew his parents only meant to love him, but that upbringing had still skewed his perspective. It had taken his losing everything for Jake to figure out what mattered. He’d run out of time. Either he got around to developing some character, or he was going to end up lost for good.

An alcoholic—at least an alcoholic who was serious about recovering—discovered certain things about life. There were things you couldn’t do. Other people could. You couldn’t. Life was as simple and mean as that. No one else had your exact list, but Jake knew what was written on the forbidden side of his sheet. Being attracted to a married woman—a very, very married woman—was as off-limits as it got.

He understood Kasey’s tug on him. Something about her reminded him of what he once thought life could be—when he still believed in dreams, when he still believed in himself, when every moment of sunshine was a treasure. He understood—but he turned off the volume and the vision, promptly.

Danny had given up trying to parallel park. He took the first left turn, aiming back toward his mother’s house. He didn’t speed. His driving problems had never been about carelessness, but about having no natural sense for the stick shift and the car. The more impatient he got with himself, the more he tended to make mistakes. Jake tried to shut up. Time and experience were the answers, not carping. Besides, dads couldn’t die from nerves, could they?

Danny accidentally hit the gas, pulling into Paula’s driveway, tried to recover by slamming on the brakes, and then, of course, stalled. For the first time in almost two hours, the kid looked him straight in the eye.

“I suppose you don’t have time to do this again on Thursday,” he said disgustedly.

“I suppose I do.”

It probably hurt the kid like a sore, but hope surged in those broody blue eyes. “Same time? Four o’clock?”

“I may be a little late.”

“Yeah, so what’s new? The question is whether you’ll show at all, just because you say you will.”

Jake said easily, “Damn right. You think I don’t know how much I need to make up for, Sport, you’re mistaken. And in the meantime, if you also want to take on a drive on Saturday or Sunday—there’s less traffic early in the morning, so we could go for a longer trek.”

“You mean get up early?” Danny’s tone suggested that particular idea was as appealing as a snake bite.

“No sweat if you don’t want to. I just know you’re hot to get more driving hours in, and I can’t get here during the work week until after four. Weekend mornings could give us more time.”

Danny heaved out of the car. “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay.” Jake got out, too, and crossed to the other side, conscious that his son hadn’t used the word Dad, much less said anything as pleasant as “goodbye.” This lesson, though, had been significantly more peaceful than the last one. Danny hadn’t sworn at him. Hadn’t hit anything.

“Hey.” Danny stopped at the front door, key in the lock, turning back to offer one last belligerent look.

“Yeah?” Jake assumed the “hey” was meant as some kind of question.

“Thanks for taking me,” Danny said stiffly, and then promptly disappeared in the house and slammed the door.

Well, hell. Jake was stunned speechless. The kid had actually thanked him? Maybe, just maybe, father and son did have a chance to mend their fences. Of course, earning the kid’s respect was still an uphill battle.

CHAPTER 2

K asey pulled into her mother’s driveway, thankful she’d made it across town in record time. She had no time for a visit, not today, but she was too worried to postpone it.

Quickly she freed Tess from the car seat, then stole a few more moments to kiss her daughter’s cheek, then her forehead, then her chin. “How do you like the day, snookums? Feel the breeze? See the leaves just starting to change color?”

Once she scooped up Tess, she grabbed the five tons of baby paraphernalia it took to travel with a six-week-old infant. Mentally she was already scolding herself. How could anything be wrong on a fabulous day like this? The afternoon sun was brilliant. The wind had the tickle of fall. And assuming she did need advice, her mom—much as she loved her—was not usually a source of reassurance. Still, for the kind of worries she’d been plagued with, her mother was the only person she could turn to.

“Finally you’re here.”

Kasey jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice and whirled around. Ellen Markowitz clapped the screen door open and hustled down the porch steps, wiping her hands with a dish towel.

Kasey got the towel.

Grandma got the baby.

“I haven’t seen you in two whole weeks!” Ellen crooned to the baby. “But look at how she’s smothered you. Forty-seven blankets, and here it’s almost sixty degrees. And you’ve grown so much in two weeks! She knows I don’t like to drop by if Graham could be around. He’s so busy and I don’t want to be an interfering in-law, but you’d think my own daughter could find a minute to see me more often.”

“Mom…” It was probably useless trying to get a word in, but Kasey made a first try.

“Oh, yes. You.” Ellen turned around, smacked a fast kiss on her daughter’s cheek. “Come in, we’ll have tea—but we have to be quiet. Your dad’s home. He hurt his ankle yesterday. Right now he’s napping in the den and I’d just as soon not wake him up.”

Kasey skipped a step. She loved her dad. But a sick Stan Markowitz was not a pretty sight. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have called.” She added quickly, “If you think the noise of the baby will bother him, would you rather I came back a different day?”

“Of course not. I want you right here, right now. We’ll just be quiet. And now that I’ve got my hands on my darling, there’s no way you’re taking off with her this fast. Lord, Kasey. I swear that she’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.”

“You think?”

There. Her mom’s praise for the baby immediately soothed Kasey like salve for a burn. She wanted to shake herself. She’d never been the high-strung type; she’d always easily gone with the flow and tended to be a hard-core life-lover. It was just…Tess was her miracle baby. And she was a lot older than the usual first-time mom. Maybe her worries were crazy, but she just couldn’t seem to feel confident in this new-mom job.

Everything about the working-class neighborhood was as familiar as an old slipper. The houses were older, all with front porches and huge shade trees, but the edges showed signs of financial struggling. A dead car sat in one backyard; the sidewalks had weedy cracks; the curtains sagged in Mr. Harwoljj’s front window.

Inside her mom’s house, it was too hot. Whether summer or winter, Ellen liked her house five degrees cozier than anyone else. This year, the living room walls were a dark aqua, the couch and carpet a neutral taupe. Ellen had read all about color coordinating. The curtains had a strip of aqua, the couch pillows were a taupe and aqua print; and the orange throw that everyone used to curl up with was banished to an upstairs closet because it didn’t go with the current décor.

Kasey tiptoed behind her mother—and was hit with déjà vu. She remembered tiptoeing past the den when her dad had been sick before. In the narrow hall, the smell of Charlie perfume wafted from the bathroom, strong enough to bring on a sneeze. The kitchen was the long, skinny room at the back of the house—the only room that really mattered, because it was where the family had always eaten, fought, argued, and through thick and thin, come together.

“You’re making the tea,” Ellen ordered.

Like this needed saying? Kasey watched her mom shed Tess’s blankets, coo and tickle and examine the baby. Ellen never changed. In an era when women didn’t do middle age anymore, Ellen had embraced getting older as if she’d won a prize. She always looked tired, always reported a new ache. As a child, Kasey had no way to understand that martyrdom was a kind of comfort to her mother—even if it wasn’t a healthy one.

“So…how are the hemorrhoids?”

Kasey blinked. “Somehow I thought we might start out with ‘Hi, how are you,’ before we got into the prying questions.”

“You had a baby. You have hemorrhoids. One follows the other like night follows day, but all right, we won’t talk about anything that isn’t nice-nice. You always were a happy-go-lucky dreamer, wanting pies in the sky that could never be. I’d lost hope you’d ever marry. You were so lucky to find Graham.”

“Mom.” Kasey didn’t have to struggle for patience. No matter what she’d done as a daughter, to Ellen, it was never enough. Sometimes her mother’s belittling criticism hurt, but today was the opposite. If she could count on anyone in the universe to point out a problem or a fault, it was her mom. “I have to give a dinner party tonight, so I can’t stay more than an hour, and there are some things I need to talk to you about—”

“So go on, make the tea and talk. But at least give me enough time to rock my baby.”

The white rocker had been set up in the kitchen clearly for this visit. Kasey’s gaze softened as she watched the two. She’d nursed Tess before coming over, so the baby was likely to be good for a couple more hours. Soft eyelashes lay on the baby’s cheek like silken threads. There was a small tuft of blond hair on the top of her head now—not enough to put a bow—but enough to make her look like a miniature punk rocker.

“Kasey…” For one brief moment, her mother forgot to be critical. “She really is beautiful. Like a Gerber baby. Beyond beautiful. She takes my breath.”

“Mine, too.” Kasey knew where everything was. Tea was in the white cupboard over the stove, sugar in her great-grandma’s porcelain bowl, and the half-and-half stored in the second shelf of the old fridge.

“All your friends from the neighborhood come to see her? Your friends from work? Everybody see how nice you’re living in Grosse Pointe, the house and everything?”

“Well…they’ve all called.” Kasey knew what her mom wanted to hear. That all her friends were envious—especially those from the old neighborhood. “Very few have stopped over, but it’s a long drive. And I think they may be a little uncomfortable—”

“Well, of course they are. They’re jealous of how lucky you are,” Ellen said complacently.

Kasey didn’t buy jealousy as the reason, but the truth was, she’d felt confused when her friends started severing contact. She’d never thought marrying someone of a “different class” would matter—not to real friends—yet the old habits of doing lunch and girl-shopping had disappeared. At first Kasey had been so busy preparing for the baby that it didn’t matter, yet it was disconcerting to go from a gaggle of friends to such sudden isolation. That wasn’t, though, what her mother wanted to hear. “Lots of people sent presents for the baby.”

“I’m sure they did. Your Aunt Lorna send something good?”

“Yeah, something wonderful.” Kasey couldn’t remember what, but she wasn’t about to get her Aunt Lorna in trouble. Finally, she had the tea steeped and poured and could sit down. She motioned to Tess. “Mom, do you think she looks fat enough?”

“You still breast-feeding her?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then it’s always hard to be sure she’s getting enough milk. But for now, she couldn’t look healthier. You should be giving her a supplemental bottle now and then, though, so if you get sick, she won’t be so dependent on you. Is she sleeping all night?”

“No. But three nights ago, she went six hours.” Six blissful, uninterrupted hours. Maybe that’s why she’d been so oddly fearful and worried about the baby. Because too little sleep was making her batty.

Ellen adjusted the baby on her shoulder. “Bring me a cookie, Kase. The gingersnaps. Maybe you could try her with a little rice cereal. Like at dinner. See if that’ll hold her, make her sleep longer at night.”

“Mom…”

Ellen heard the start of the next question, and cocked her head impatiently when Kasey didn’t immediately follow through. But it was as if the fear and worries of the last weeks were suddenly bubbling to the surface like trapped air in a giant ocean. She’d loved being a mom every second since the baby was born—even the tired, cranky parts. But she felt so constantly unsure. Nothing she’d done in her life had prepared her for this level of terror. And it was as if, finally being in her mom’s kitchen, under her mom’s critical scrutiny, Kasey could finally let the fear seep out that had been prowling in the closet of her heart for weeks now. “Does she seem…normal…to you?”

Ellen’s jaw dropped. “You’re worried Tess isn’t normal? What are you, blind?”

“But she’s so good.”

“You’re lucky beyond belief, yet you’re complaining?”

“Not complaining. At all. It’s just…” All the rest of her screwy worries came out in a gush. “She barely seems to cry. When she’s awake, she just lays in my arms like an angel, or in the baby carrier, happy. I put her in one of the cribs, she’s happy there. Wherever I put her, she doesn’t seem to move.”

“So where is the bad news in this? She’s just a month old, you thought she would be doing cartwheels by now?”

There. She was finally able to laugh. “I guess I just thought she’d move around a little more. I was afraid I was doing something wrong.”

“Well, of course you’re doing things wrong. You know nothing. I don’t care how old you are, you’re still a new mother, and first-time mothers never know anything—that’s why you’ve got women in the family to ask advice from. Like me. Oh, you darling, I hope you keep those beautiful blue eyes!” Ellen snoozled the baby’s cheek, but then suddenly braced as they both heard a plaintive “ELLEN!” from the den.

“I’ll go see what he wants,” Kasey said immediately. As she hustled down the hall, she could hear Stan revving up the language, the kind of swearing that made her squirm when she was a kid—not because his temper was directed at her but because it was directed at her mother.

The instant she showed her face in the den, though, her dad’s bark turned into an instant smile. “I didn’t know you were here, sunshine! Come on, gimme a hug, I’ve missed you so much….” And then, “Damn it, your mother knows I can hardly walk with this ankle, and here I was calling and calling—”

Swiftly Kasey rushed to play peacemaker. “What can I do to help? Do you want a drink? A snack?”

“I need ice for my ankle. And a little nip. And the TV— I can’t find the remote—”

“I’ll fix it all, Dad, and in the meantime tell me all about what happened to your ankle.”

Kasey charged around, well aware that the time was clicking away, that Tess would be hungry soon and she had a dinner party for sixteen to prepare for. Still, it wasn’t that easy to escape the old daughter roles—placating her dad, and then hearing out her mother’s stream of advice and criticism.

“You’re pale, what is this, no makeup? You know how washed-out you look without foundation. It’s a mistake too many new mothers make, Kasey, letting themselves go. Marriages don’t survive by accident. They take work. And so do men.”

Kasey washed the tea dishes, brought a fresh ice bag for her dad, changed Tess. Graham had gotten her parents a new television, the new couch in the living room, bought them a satellite dish. To Ellen and Stan both, he was a god.

“I still don’t know what he saw in you,” Ellen said frankly.

“Hey! Thanks a ton!”

“I wasn’t trying to be cruel, Kasey. But you surely realize there’s something odd in your relationship? I know you’re wonderful because you’re my daughter, but Graham was rich and smart and should easily have been able to pick a woman from his own circles. He had to see something in you that he couldn’t get elsewhere. And that doesn’t have to be bad—but it could be. No one is this lucky without having to pay a price. Don’t blow it.”

“Mom, I love him. We’re happy. There’s nothing to blow.”

“So go home. Put on makeup. Make yourself pretty. Sexy. And do something with that hair.” Both of them heard Stan yell for Ellen from the den, and Ellen got that worn-out look in her eyes again.

Kasey left with that “Don’t blow it” still ringing in her ears. It took a full hour to drive home, primarily because I-94 turned into a gladiator den, and as if sensing her nerves, Tess started fussing.

Kasey murmured the instinctive mom there-there mantra, but Ellen’s rantings were still smarting in her mind. She’d known for years why her mother carried such antiquated values about women. Her grandmother had been divorced and struggled, near desperation financially sometimes, to raise three daughters. Ellen had gone into her own marriage with a terror of divorce. She’d always catered to Stan, waiting on him, jumping for his every wish, running to avoid his anger.

Ellen had relentlessly raised Kasey to believe that accommodating and appeasing a man were critical keys to a woman’s survival. Kasey got the shivers when she thought about following in her mother’s footsteps—that was never, ever, how she wanted to live.

Yet she did try to please Graham. That wasn’t being a doormat, was it? Didn’t every woman want to please the man she loved? Give up things, cater, try to show her love in ways that made him happy?

Which reminded her of the dinner coming up tonight. As she turned off the expressway, she gnawed on a thumbnail. Technically the dinner was just a neighborhood gathering, yet she sensed it was important to Graham.

He wanted their life to return to normal, to start entertaining and doing business functions together the way they had before the baby. Life wouldn’t end if this dinner didn’t turn out perfectly, but Kasey still felt uneasy. Their marriage had changed the minute Tess was born. She’d sworn that she wouldn’t let Graham feel neglected…but of course he did.

Tonight was a chance to make it up to him.

Kasey had been looking forward to the evening, yet that flash of uneasiness made her shiver again. She shook her head, laughing at herself loud enough to make Tess suddenly chortle from her infant seat. “Yeah, love bug, Mommy’s just being silly, huh? Our whole world couldn’t be better, and here I’m seeing shadows in the corners. How goofy can you get!”

At six-thirty the lobby of the weekly newspaper office was deserted. One lonely fluorescent light illuminated the hall, but the central office was as quiet as a tomb. During the day, phones and printers and faxes and people yelling made for a noisy bedlam. At this hour, the place looked like the aftermath of a riot, with wastebaskets overflowing with half-dead doughnut parts and reams of coffee cups, and the floor littered with paper and clips and everything else.

Jake sat at the far desk—his coat on, because he’d intended to leave some time ago. But he got studying a medical tome, and ended up concentrating so hard he never heard his boss approach his desk.

Barney couldn’t walk or talk without an unlit cigar chomped between his teeth. Wearing boots, he was conceivably five-four and had to weigh a good 250. The chin was grizzly with whiskers by five o’clock; the breath invariably smelled of old coffee, and the narrow eyes had a born-mean glow. He was so ornery that he couldn’t hire reporters fast enough to keep up with their quitting, and when he parked in front of Jake’s desk, he clearly had his bristles up.

“What the hell is this? Six o’clock, and you already got your coat on? You got here when?”

“Six o’clock this morning,” Jake answered.

“So. Twelve hours, and you think you can just go home. Knowing what I pay you for overtime?”

Barney hadn’t paid overtime in his life. What he did pay for a functional eight hours made slave wages sound good. “I’m leaving in ten. My dad needs me to take him to a neighborhood dinner thing. Until my mother can go with him, I’m the self-elected volunteer.”

“Like I asked you about your private life.” Barney took out his half-bitten cigar, only to stick it in the other side of his mouth. “So when you gonna tell me what the hell you’re working on so late these last weeks?”

“Nothing.”

Barney purposefully blocked the egress to the door—not hard to do when your stomach took up an entire aisle. “It’s something about kids. Babies. You got books and articles in here to the ceiling on medical crap. Somebody assign you a story I don’t know about?”

“No.” Jake marked the spot in the book he’d been reading, and carefully closed the tome.

“You are writing a story, aren’t you?” It was difficult to evaluate Barney’s expressions, but the sudden twist in his mouth was kin to a smile.

“I’m looking into an idea, but there’s nothing to tell you until I’m sure I’ve got something.”

That was all it took to make Barney start crowing. “Did I tell you you’d get into this job or what? Two years ago you walked in here with your hands shaking. Eyes looked like your best friend was a ghost.”

“Come on, now. You know I’ve heard these compliments before.”

“You told me you were a drunk. Couldn’t promise me you’d last a week. I know you secretly thought you were gonna bite the bullet, now, didn’t you, dimwit?”

Jake sighed. He refused to get embroiled in this conversation. Not again.

“But I told you you’d get your life back. And that you wouldn’t be happy just pushing out legal articles from the back desk, either. I wasn’t sure—hell, you were a lawyer, and who the hell can trust those dregs of the earth? But I still saw something in you. You picked up the writing bug, admit it.”

“I wouldn’t choose to write if it were the last profession on earth.” And Jake wouldn’t give Barney the satisfaction of hearing otherwise.

Barney ignored this, just squinched up his face so his eyes got smaller than beads. “So the story’s about kids, babies. Abuse?”

“No.”

“Not gang crap. I’m tired of that bullshit.”

“No. It’s about legal stuff. The stuff you hired me to look at.”

“Ah. Some kind of lawsuit?”

Jake buttoned his jacket, stood up. Barney didn’t budge. Jake sighed. “It’s about an epidemic of malpractice lawsuits involving newborns in the last three years. All involving good hospitals, and not just good doctors, but the best doctors in the city. Which is why I got interested. It’s a puzzle.”

Barney got a feral gleam in his eye. He’d never made it to the top, never would, barely had the talent to keep a weekly newspaper together. But that didn’t mean he didn’t hunger for more. “What’s wrong with the babies?”

Jake shook his head. “There’s no point going into it until I’m sure I’ve got a story.”

“God, you’re annoying.” Barney straightened up to his full five foot four. “All right, keep your story secret for now. But just so you know—if you quit me and go back to lawyering, I’ll cut you in the street like a dead dog.”