The Swallow's Nest

Lilia felt her smile disappear. She had no idea what she was expected to do. “I’d love to hold him, but I’m still taking food out of the oven—”

“You’ll get used to that. Wanting to do other things and not being able to.”

Now she was completely at sea. This time she said nothing. The conversation obviously belonged to Marina.

“Take him.” Marina lifted the bundled baby higher. He whimpered, beginning to wake, but Lilia shifted her weight back and away.

“Take him!”

Lilia knew better than to let this continue. “Let me get Graham, or maybe I can call somebody else for you?”

“You know, I’m glad it worked out this way. I’m glad you were the one to answer the door.”

Lilia stepped back, preparing to slip inside, but Marina tucked the baby against her own chest and grabbed Lilia’s arm with her other hand to stop her. “Take him.”

The baby’s name finally registered. “Toby?”

“Toby. Right. Toby Randolph. After his father. Don’t you think a boy should carry on the family name? Tobias is Graham’s middle name, right?”

Lilia managed another step back, trying to shake off the other woman’s hand, but with no success. “You need to leave right now.”

“Oh, I’m leaving. But I’m leaving Toby here when I go. With you. With his father. I’ve finished my part of this bargain. Now it’s up to Graham to take care of the rest.”

She thrust the blanketed bundle forward so forcefully that Lilia grabbed at it. She had no choice, panicked that Marina would let go and blame the resulting disaster on her.

Satisfied, Marina stepped back and dropped Lilia’s arm. “You’ll have lots of time to think about this moment and what a horrible person I am. But while you’re at it, don’t forget, I gave this baby life. Think about that, Lilia, when you’re feeling superior. I did something you couldn’t be bothered to do. And think about what it was like for me to manage everything on my own up to this point, when I was promised so much more.”

She didn’t glance down at her son for a final goodbye. She turned and walked along the flowered brick pathway to the street. She was out of sight almost before Lilia could form another thought.

In her arms the baby stirred. Stunned, Lilia looked down, and the tiny infant opened eyes the china blue of her husband’s. With shaking fingers she pulled back the blanket. What hair the baby had was blond, like Graham’s. But Marina was blond, and surely her eyes were blue, as well.

This was a scam, a horrible, ill-advised prank.

She lifted him slowly for a better view, and then, without a legal document, without confirmation from anyone except a crazy woman, with no proof whatsoever except a vague resemblance that might not even exist, she was 100 percent certain this was no scam.

This child belonged to her husband.

She wanted to drop the bundle and run. She wanted to race after the near-stranger who had just handed off her beautiful baby like a football in play.

But most of all? She wanted to scream right along with Graham’s son, who was now wailing inconsolably in her arms.

2

Marina Tate pulled into her private space in the parking lot of the three-story apartment building that had once symbolized how fast she was rising in the world. Her one-bedroom was on the top floor, not exactly a penthouse, but still superior to anything she’d grown up with. The view from her narrow balcony was a freeway, but sometimes at night she sat in a folding chair and watched headlights blooming through banks of fog. She’d sat there many times after Toby was born. She hadn’t been able to get away from his screaming, but closing the door and listening to the roar of traffic had been an improvement.

As she had during the trip home, she wondered again if the baby was okay.

Clearly Graham hadn’t gotten around to telling Lilia about his son. Maybe announcing a love child between one dose of chemo and the next just hadn’t seemed sensible. Maybe in his shoes she would have kept silent, too. After all, if he’d made the announcement, who would take care of him? No man could drop a bombshell like that one and expect even the most supportive wife to spoon-feed him chicken soup, much less clean up his vomit and wash his sheets.

But no excuse was really good enough, was it?

She was still behind the steering wheel, and she drooped forward to rest her forehead against it. She was so tired she wasn’t sure she was going to make it up the stairs to her apartment. She was so tired she considered taking a nap before she tried. In the end, after two cars screeched into the lot with radios throbbing, she pushed away, opened the door and swung her feet to the asphalt.

In the midst of flipping her seat forward she remembered she had no baby to retrieve from the back. For a moment she stood staring at the infant seat. She had considered carrying the baby to Graham’s door nestled inside, but the seat was used and worn, and at the last minute—not blind to the irony—she’d rejected the idea. She had been embarrassed to give Graham and Lilia the car seat, but not the infant.

Tomorrow she would chuck it into the Dumpster.

So many months had passed since she’d had an entire night’s sleep. She couldn’t remember when she hadn’t been sleep-deprived. Even in the weeks before the birth she’d slept fitfully because she was so huge, getting comfortable was a joke. And no man had been around to rub her aching back or get her a glass of water.

One of those nights Graham had called. She couldn’t remember which, but why was stamped on her heart. He wanted her to know he had made the arrangements for a paternity test. She listened to him recite the clinical details, as if he were reading them from a list. At the birth someone would collect blood from the umbilical cord, and a lab would process the results. He confirmed he would not sign the Declaration of Paternity document agreeing he was the father until the test results were official. Without that, she would not be allowed to list him on the birth certificate. When paternity was finally confirmed, she would then have to fill out another form to have the birth certificate amended.

Finally, as if this were a small thing, he said that at that point everything would be official, and she would get the rest of the lump sum he had promised when she agreed to have the baby.

At the time she’d wondered, and still did, if delaying the test and refusing to sign the document were stalling mechanisms. A more expensive but equally reliable test could have been conducted during the pregnancy. Had he hoped these small rebellions would deter her from announcing the identity of the man who had carelessly planted the baby inside her?

Had he thought about it at all? Or had he been so immersed in the present, ensnared in a mass of twisted and unshared emotion, that he hadn’t given the future any real thought?

At the beginning Graham had been so anxious for her to carry the pregnancy to term, but all those months later, had he come to regret it? As his health improved, and the possibility of survival improved with it, had he wished that the baby and the baby’s mother would disappear and leave him to the good life he’d had before his diagnosis?

Whatever his reasons, she’d been given no choice in the matter. After Toby’s birth the hospital had filled out the health department form without Graham’s name. Weeks went by before he was officially the father of record. Then once he was, the money he had promised to give her, the second half of a trust fund he had cashed in to help her through the pregnancy and early months of Toby’s life, had never materialized. Nor had a satisfactory explanation. He’d said she and the baby would be taken care of, and he had promised to find a way to be part of Toby’s life. By now she knew what his promises were worth.

Today there was no more room for lies. Everybody would know Graham was officially Toby’s father. A copy of the baby’s amended birth certificate was among the items she had left in one of the bags at Lilia’s feet.

She started toward her apartment and trudged up the three flights of an open stairwell. For a moment after she unlocked the door she stood on the threshold and drank in the silence. She’d grown up in a noisy home, but the months since she’d brought Toby here from the hospital had been filled with screaming that only tapered off when the baby grew too exhausted for more. At one point the noise had been so overwhelming her neighbors had threatened to report her to the landlord. She had been forced to move his bed to the center of the living room, away from common walls.

By that point she had lowered herself to begging for help. Toby’s pediatrician had insisted the problem was colic. Along the way the woman, fresh out of medical school, suggested different formulas, modeled a baby carrier to keep Toby snug against Marina’s chest, prescribed white noise, swaddling, massage, letting him cry. Finally, at this morning’s visit, after pointed questions about her state of mind and how vigilantly Marina had followed her useless suggestions, the clueless young doctor had decreed that Marina was a first-time mom, and Toby probably sensed her insecurities.

That had been the final straw. Marina had no insecurities when it came to babies. She had raised her younger brothers while her mother worked two jobs or “socialized.” She had a niece named Brittany whom she’d been unable to avoid in infancy, and a short-lived romance with an otherwise perfect man who had just divorced the mother of his newborn. She’d chucked him quickly, but not before managing weeks of diapers and bottles.

Toby was born a nightmare. Or maybe Toby was punishment for trying to steal another woman’s husband, although a year of misery seemed like a pretty stiff sentence.

She flicked on her lights and stepped inside. Her apartment was furnished in leather with chrome accents and neon table lamps. She was a fan of sleek surfaces with no hint of clutter. The walls were mostly blank, and she liked them that way, clean white paint and no memorabilia from a past she wanted to forget. The tile floors were unmarred by rugs. Toddler Toby probably would have cracked his head a hundred times.

No longer her problem.

She wasn’t hungry, but she crossed the living room to the tiny kitchen and searched the refrigerator for beer. She found a tall bottle hiding behind half a gallon of milk, but only one, because that’s how she bought them, one at a time, just enough to split or enjoy alone without temptation to drink another. Her mother, Deedee, was a bartender who had lost at least one job for over-sampling the wares. Her youngest brother, Pete, had lost his driver’s license for two years after his second underage DUI and, judging by his continued drinking, showed no signs the lesson had any impact. She had no intention of following the family tradition.

She tossed the milk carton in the garbage because she couldn’t remember when she’d bought it. Then, using the hem of her tank top, she unscrewed the beer cap and drank half the bottle slouched against the granite counter.

Many people were not going to understand what she had done this afternoon. But Toby Randolph was alive today because she had, against her better judgment, given birth to him. Even after she learned that Graham was likely to die before their baby was born, and if he did, his mega-wealthy parents probably wouldn’t want anything to do with her or the baby. Even after she realized that, whether he lived or not, Graham was never going to make the three of them a real family.

She was too tired to think about Graham.

She left the half-empty bottle on the counter. In the bedroom she kicked off her shoes and jeans and fell facedown on the unmade bed.

Hours might have passed or just minutes when the doorbell buzzed, then buzzed again. She was so foggy-headed she was clueless about time or place. As the buzzing continued she rolled over and sat up, and the world came into focus again.

If Graham or Lilia or, worse, their lawyer friend, Carrick, was standing on the other side, she didn’t want to answer the door. But whoever was waiting was insistent, and she could hardly pretend she wasn’t home. Anyone who knew her would spot her yellow Mustang Fastback in the lot. She pulled on her jeans, walked barefoot to the door and squinted through the peephole.

Silently cursing she unlocked it and stood back to let her mother inside.

“I hated to ring the doorbell, in case I woke up little Toby...” As she spoke Deedee Tate’s voice gathered enough volume to wake every corpse at the Odd Fellows Cemetery miles away.

Marina had dreaded this moment, but now that it was here, she mostly felt annoyed. “If Toby had slept through the doorbell, your shouting would finish the job.”

“Where is he?”

“Safe and happy. Why are you here?”

Deedee looked puzzled, but she never meditated on a problem when she could talk instead. She held out a wrinkled paper bag. “I found some cute baby clothes at a neighbor’s garage sale. You don’t owe me much. They were cheap.”

Marina squinted through sleep-fogged eyes. From photos, she knew she resembled Deedee when she, too, had been thirty. It was a sobering thought. Now her mother was fifty-one. By the time Marina was that age would she resemble the woman standing before her? Deedee made no effort to eat well or exercise. She was overweight, with sagging breasts and a roll of fat that bulged over the elastic waistband of a broomstick skirt. Her shaggy hair was haphazardly dyed an improbable shade of gold, and her graying roots were inches long.

“I didn’t ask you to buy a thing,” Marina said. “I wish you would stop buying things I don’t need and then asking me to pay for them.”

“I’m trying to help. I can’t afford to do much on my own. I’m barely getting the hours at Frankie’s that I need to make ends meet. And your brothers—”

Marina made a chopping motion with her hand. “I don’t want to hear about my brothers.” Both Jerry and Pete, twenty-five and nineteen respectively, still lived at home and never helped Deedee with rent or food.

Her mother lifted her chin proudly. “Well, aren’t you snippy today.”

“Yeah, well, try not getting any sleep for months.”

“I had babies, too, you know.”

“Yeah, you did, and I raised two of them for you.” Marina didn’t sigh as much as force air from her lungs. “Look, I have half a beer I just opened. It’s yours.”

“One of those bombers you like so much?”

“There’s plenty left.”

Deedee followed Marina into the kitchen and watched as she took a go-cup from a cupboard. “So who’s got Toby?”

“His father.” Marina poured the beer and handed it to her mother. Most likely by now it was almost flat, but Deedee wouldn’t balk.

“What? His father’s in the picture all of a sudden? Like that?” Deedee flicked a glittery fake nail against the plastic cup for emphasis.

Marina watched her mother take two long swallows. “Isn’t it about time?”

“What about that wife of his?”

“We can definitely say she’s in the picture, too.” Marina had a sudden flash of Lilia’s expression as she handed the baby to her. She had expected to feel victory followed by the sweet aftermath of revenge. But she had felt neither. Lilia Swallow had never done anything to her except marry the man Marina had wanted for her own, and married him long before Marina even met him. At the one party Marina had been invited to at Graham’s house, Lilia had been a thoughtful hostess. She’d even made a point of introducing Marina to Graham’s best friend, Carrick Donnelly, then backing away, as if she hoped sparks might ignite.

“They’ll give him back, won’t they?” Deedee didn’t wait for an answer before she finished what was left in the cup.

“Deedee, I don’t want him back.” Marina pushed away from the counter. “I never wanted to be a mother. Don’t you think I had enough mothering with Jerry and Pete? You remember who took care of them when you were working and in the wee morning hours when you were off having fun? I gave Petey more bottles than you ever did, and I rode herd on Jerry until he got bigger than me. You think any of that made me want to be a mother again?”

“You were their big sister. I was their mother. You were helping out. Helping is good for kids.”

“It was not good for me. I didn’t have a childhood. I had children. Your children.”

Deedee was angry now. She banged the go-cup on the counter. “Family is important!”

“Yeah, right. You mean like the father you told me was mine, only it turned out he wasn’t? Is that your idea of family?”

“He wasn’t much of a father. You hardly noticed when he disappeared.”

“Right. Maybe I hardly ever saw him, but at least I had a name and a face when I needed them. Until the state went after him for child support and he demanded a paternity test.”

“I told you then, I’ll tell you now. I thought he was your father. I never lied. I thought he was the one.”

“Uh-huh. And by the time you found out you were wrong, you couldn’t remember who else might have been in the running.”

Deedee ignored that. “I was mother and father to you. To all of you.”

“You were gone most of the time. I had no mother, and the boys had me, which was probably worse.”

“You can’t really mean you don’t want your own baby.”

“I do mean it. I left Toby—” she couldn’t admit she’d left the baby with Graham’s bewildered wife “—with Graham, and I walked away. I couldn’t do this another minute. This morning I—” She stopped.

“You what, Rina Ray?”

Marina hated to remember that moment. “I came so close to shaking him. I just wanted him to stop screaming. I was this close.” Her thumb and forefinger were nearly touching. “I took him to the doctor instead. Again. I begged her to help me figure out what was wrong, and she said I just had to tough it out, that things would get better soon. Only she’s been saying that and saying that. It didn’t get better and it won’t.”

“You just have that post-pardon depression thing, like Brooke Shields. I’ve read about it. It’ll go away, you watch.”

“Don’t you get it? I don’t care what it’s called. Postpartum depression or just good sense. I just know now it’s Graham’s turn to listen to him cry and not know what to do. And if by some miracle he does know, or that wife of his knows, more power to them.”

“I can’t believe it. You gave him away? Just like that?”

Marina pushed her short blond hair off her face, raking her fingers through it until undoubtedly it stood on end. “I did. And before you showed up I was finally getting some sleep.”

“Where’s your heart?”

“Protected. Right here.” Marina put a fist to her chest.

“You’ve always been a cold fish.”

Marina knew if she was a fish at all, she was just a fish afraid of getting hooked. She certainly hadn’t been cold the night Toby was conceived. She had acted on impulse when Graham came to this apartment, supposedly for a drink, and they ended up in bed, instead. For once in her adult life she had allowed her imagination to take control. Graham had confessed that he and his wife were deadlocked over having children. He wanted one right away, and Lilia didn’t.

Of course he hadn’t explained that any woman would be hesitant to conceive a baby with a man who might not be alive for its birth. He hadn’t explained there was a cancer diagnosis and lethal chemotherapy he would have to undergo very soon. He’d presented her with a different picture: Lilia, as a selfish career-driven woman who was the wrong wife for a man who wanted a family and a supportive helpmate.

Blinded by hope and a foolish infatuation that she had nurtured since the day she’d introduced herself to Graham Randolph, Marina had imagined she was the right woman. As if in silent agreement that night he hadn’t used a condom, and God help her, she hadn’t asked him to.

She pulled herself back to the conversation. “I’m not cold. I’m just determined. I don’t want your life, Deedee. And that’s where I was headed.”

“You think you need to insult me to make yourself feel better?”

“Not really. I think you got what you wanted. And I plan to do the same.”

“What am I going to tell your brothers? They love that baby.”

“Oh, please! Neither of them loves anybody. Try telling them the truth, that I’m not going to settle for a small slice of life. I want the whole pie. They won’t understand, but tell them anyway.”

“I’m ashamed of you. My own little girl.”

“Look, keep the clothes, and don’t buy anything else. I’ll give you some money.”

“Keep your money. The way you didn’t keep your own flesh and blood.” Deedee turned and stomped out the door. Marina wasn’t impressed. Her mother never stayed angry for long. Without Toby to care for, Marina would be more available whenever Deedee needed her. Everything else would fade. Before long she would tell her friends her daughter had acted heroically to give her son the best possible life.

And who knew? Maybe it was true.

Just as she was pulling off her jeans again to get more sleep the bedside telephone rang. She studied the caller ID and saw that this caller was welcome.

She licked her lips and cleared her throat before she answered.

“Hey, stranger.” She swung her legs to the mattress and propped pillows against her padded headboard.

“Rina, how’s it going?”

Blake Wendell probably thought using a nickname signaled they were closer than they were, like promising an expensive piece of jewelry without making the cash outlay. She was Marina Ray Tate, but only Deedee called her Rina, and then added the Ray for good measure. Even her brothers knew better. Unfortunately she’d made the mistake of confiding the nickname in a long phone conversation. She’d been six months pregnant, and conversations with Blake had been one of her few distractions. At least he’d forgotten the Ray.

“It’s going fine.” She examined her chipped nails. Professional manicures had been impossible with a screaming baby, so she’d taken to doing her own.

He cleared his throat. “You’re okay? It’s been a while since we talked.”

In reality they had talked earlier that week. She envied him for enjoying the kind of life where one day flowed gently into the next. Or maybe, there was an even more positive spin? Maybe he really had missed her.

“We should get together,” she said.

“Would you like me to come over? I haven’t seen your place.”

She realized then how badly she wanted to get away from the apartment where Toby’s presence still hung in the air. “Why don’t I meet you at your place instead? Just give me an hour.”

She hung up after jotting down his address, glad that Blake wanted to see her, although she wished he had waited until she had gotten some rest.

She got up and stretched, hoping a shower would revive her. She would wash and style her hair, do her nails, and choose something sexy to wear.

Halfway to the bathroom she felt something soft under her toes. Glancing down she saw she was standing on a small fleece blanket, the white one she’d always used to swaddle her son. She had wrapped his tiny flailing arms against his body to calm him, and walked in circles around the apartment, crooning the closest thing to a lullaby that she knew. Toby had seemed to prefer this blanket to others, and sometimes swaddling him had even helped a little. But this morning he had rejected swaddling the way he had rejected her and everything she tried to comfort him.

She should have left the blanket on the porch with Toby’s other things.

Should she send it to Graham now with a note explaining it was special? Would anybody understand or care?

She lifted the blanket off the floor and held it to her nose. The fabric still held the scent of baby shampoo and baby powder, along with the indefinable essence of a brand-new human being. Her hand dropped to her side, but she stood in the same spot, holding the blanket for a very long time.

Finally she changed direction and moved to the far corner of her room. She carefully folded it into a square and laid it under a pile of her shirts in the bottom drawer of her dresser.