CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Calvin~
“They are awful small,” he blurted.
Patrick’s babies were laid out in incubators. Monitors and tubes snaked over their skinny red limbs. Their squashed red faces had almost no noses, and no eyelashes. The blistered skin on their tiny puckered lips was white. Their bulging bellies rose and fell, but otherwise they might have been dolls.
“They’ll grow,” Patrick said calmly. His white shirt was creased and had a coffee stain on the breast pocket. His face was covered in black stubble and his hair was sticking up in clumps. If this was what marriage and fatherhood did to a man, Cal wasn’t sure he wanted any part of it.
“Of course they will.” Calvin attempted heartiness.
Patrick laughed. “They do look a tad unfinished. But everyone assures me that they will be fine. They will plump up some and that redness will fade. Hard to believe Heather had all three inside her at once.”
Cal nodded, even though Patrick’s three infants didn’t look large enough to make one good-sized baby. But he was no expert. He avoided the awkward subject of size. “Are they identical?”
“The doctor and midwife said no,” Patrick said. “But you wouldn’t know it to look at them. I can’t tell them apart. And they won’t let me hold them yet. Fortunately, they’re wearing bracelets.”
Until he held them, Pat would not be able to identify his daughters by scent.
“They got names yet?” Cal asked.
“Stella, Hope and Bethany.”
Hope was Patrick’s mother’s name, and Bethany was Calvin’s late sister’s name. “Why Stella?” asked Calvin.
“For Heather’s mom.”
“Nice. Laura plans to name her daughter after our mom,” Calvin told his cousin.
“I know. And the boy after Luther.” Brenda and Bethany Bascom had been killed in a car accident and Cal’s twin Luther had been killed in action. They were all sorely missed.
The babies slept on. Only their bellies moved. Their ashen lips were tightly pursed. “What’s wrong with their mouths?” Cal asked.
“Nothing — so I’m told. Just too much sucking in the womb. We’re putting some grease or something on them twice a day.”
“Hmm. So how is Heather doing?”
“She’s worn out. It was a short, fast labor but she’s still tuckered out. They’re talking about discharging her tomorrow.”
“Babies too?”
Patrick shook his head. “Nope. I figure we’ll spend a few days camped out here until they let us take the girls home.” He looked at his watch. “Amber and Heather will have had their reunion by now. Let’s go join them.”
“I think Amber intended to stay with you guys,” Calvin warned.
“That was the original plan. She was going to come back to Washington State to give us a hand with the babies. Heather really misses her twin. But since the babies are in the NICU,” Pat shrugged. “Might be better if she came back next month.”
“She balked at staying at the Bridgefield. I had to inform her that she was family. I thought you were making her an allowance in lieu of giving her that money Clive left?”
Their Great-Grandfather Clive Bascom had left six million dollars for his illegitimate daughter Shirley who had passed away before she could receive his bequest. Amber and Heather were Shirley’s step-granddaughters and her heirs. Amber ought to have been well provided for.
“She wouldn’t let me give her a red cent,” Patrick groused. “I finally gave Heather the money and told her to make Amber take it. I don’t think she’s had much success. About all Amber would let me do was fix her up a job on the Double B. Laura says she’s working out well in the stables.”
“She’s dating Lance Prescott,” Calvin informed his cousin.
“A good man.”
Calvin snorted. “Probably thinks she’s loaded.” The Bascom billions attracted fortune hunters the way carrion attracted vultures.
Patrick laughed. “Prescott probably thinks she’s a lovely young woman. And since she looks exactly like my wife, I have to confess that the attraction seems obvious to me. My sister-in-law can be mighty sweet — when she’s not talking to me! I got off on the wrong foot with Amber, and she mistrusts me. Probably she hasn’t given Prescott the rough edge of her tongue.”
“She could do better than a stable hand with a ruined face,” Cal pointed out. Dollars to doughnuts, she was too naive to realize that Prescott was after something other than her luscious young body.
“The Dupré twins are more interested in a man’s character than in his appearance – or his wallet. As I have reason to know.” Patrick’s voice was tart.
Cal kept his thoughts to himself. It seemed pretty obvious that Heather had turned up pregnant to snare herself a rich husband.
Pat laughed. He clapped Cal on the shoulder. “I am a lucky son of a bear, you poor suspicious fool,” he said lowering his voice. “If I hadn’t knocked Heather up, she would never have given me a second chance, let alone married me. Even if my daughters had trapped me into marrying Heather, instead of the other way around, I’d be the luckiest man alive.”
Instead of arguing with this sentimental nonsense, Cal made a noncommittal noise.
“Jeremy has been a new man since my accident,” Pat continued.
“What are you talking about?”
“Dad’s trying to mend things with Diana.”
“They’re already divorced,” Cal pointed out. “Have been for months.”
“I know. But Jeremy seems to have realized that their problems were more of his making than hers. Laura says he’s no longer seeing that investment banker.”
“Tiffany?”
“That’s the one.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah. And he’s been out to Chicago any number of times to see Diana.”
Cal shook his head. “He doesn’t stand a chance. She has her alimony and she’s done.”
“Dad didn’t treat her right,” Patrick corrected. “I wouldn’t blame her a bit if she didn’t feel forgiving. Infidelity is a dealbreaker for most women.”
Money was a great soother of indignant female sensibilities and Jeremy had plenty. If he wanted Diana back, he could have her, Cal supposed. But why would he bother? Plenty more where she came from.
Pat shot him a direct look. “Dad needs to make it right with her before he can move on.” He stopped to rap on the open door of a room. “Here we are.”
Calvin preceded him into Heather’s room. Amber was sitting beside her sister’s bed, and looking happy and worried at the same time. They were conversing in low voices. But Cal caught Prescott’s name.
“Prescott had no business taking you to that dive.” Calvin said disapprovingly from the doorway. “It’s no place for a girl like you.”