An Unexpected Christmas Baby. Tara Taylor Quinn

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СКАЧАТЬ head was already bowed. The brief ceremony was almost over. The closed casket holding his mother’s body would remain on the stand, waiting over the hole in the ground until after Flint was gone and the groundskeeper came to lower her to her final rest.

      Moisture pricked the backs of his eyelids. For a second, he started to panic like he had the first day he’d gone out to catch the bus for school—a puny five-year-old in a trailer park filled with older kids—and been shoved to the back of the line by every one of them. He could have turned and run home. No one would have stopped him. Alana hadn’t been sober enough to know, or care, whether he’d made it to his first day of school. But he hadn’t run. He’d faced that open bus door, climbed those steps that had seemed like mountains to him and walked halfway to the back of the bus before sitting.

      He was Alana Gold’s precious baby boy and he was going to be someone.

      “Amen.” The preacher laid a Bible on top of the coffin.

      Amen to that. He was Alana’s son and he was going to be someone all right.

      “Mr. Collins?”

      The voice, a woman’s voice, was close to him.

      “Mr. Collins? I’ve got her things in the car, as you asked.”

      Her things. Things for the inheritance Alana had left him. More scared than he could ever remember being, Flint raised his head and turned it to see the brunette standing behind him, a concerned look on her face. A pink bundle in her arms.

      Staring at that bundle, he swallowed the lump in his throat. He wasn’t prepared. No way could he pass this test. In her death, Alana had finally set him up for failure. She’d unintentionally done it in the past but had never succeeded. This time, though...

      He reminded himself that he had to be someone.

      Brother? Father? Neither fit. He’d never had either.

      A breeze blew across the San Diego cemetery. The cemetery close to where he’d grown up, where he’d once seen his mother score dope. And now he was putting her here permanently. Nothing about this day was right.

      “Prison records show that your mother had already chosen a name for her. But as I told you, since she died giving birth, no official name has been given. You’re free to name her whatever you’d like...”

      Prison records and legal documents showed that his forty-five-year-old mother had appointed him, her thirty-year-old son, as guardian of her unborn child. A child Alana had conceived while serving year eight of her ten-year sentence for cooking and dealing methamphetamine in the trailer Flint had purchased for her.

      The child’s father was listed as “unknown.”

      He and the inherited baby had that in common. And the fact that their mother had stayed clean the entire time she’d carried them. Birthing them without addiction.

      “What did she call her?” he asked, unable to lift his gaze from the pink bundle or to peer further, to seek out the little human inside it.

      He’d been bequeathed a little human.

      After thirty years of having his mother as his only family, he had a sister.

      “Diamond Rose,” the caseworker said.

      Flint didn’t hear any derogatory tone in the voice.

      Alana had been gold. A softer metal. He was Flint, a hard rock. And this new member of the family was diamond. Strong enough to cut glass. Valuable and cherished. And Rose... Expensive, beautiful, sweet.

      He got Alana’s message, even if the world wouldn’t. “Then Diamond Rose it is,” he said, turning more fully to face the caseworker.

      The woman was on the job, had other duties to tend to. She’d already done a preliminary background check but, as family, he had a right to the child even if the woman didn’t want to give her to him. Unless the caseworker had found some reason that suggested the baby might be unsafe with him.

      Like the fact that he knew nothing whatsoever about infants? Had never changed a diaper in his life? At least not on a real baby. He’d put about thirty of them on a doll he’d purchased the day before—immediately after watching a load of new parenting videos.

      He reached for the bundle. Diamond Rose. She’d weighed six pounds, one ounce at birth, he’d been told. He’d put a pound of butter on a five-pound bag of flour the night before, wrapped it in one of the new blankets he’d purchased and walked around the house with it while going about his routine. Figured he could do pretty much anything he might want or need to do while holding it.

      Or wearing it. The body-pack sling thing had been a real find. Not that different from the backpacks he’d used all through school, although this one was meant to be worn in front. Put the baby in that, he’d be hands free.

      The caseworker, Ms. Bailey, rather than handing him Diamond Rose, took a step back. “Do you have the car seat?”

      “I have two,” he told her. “In case she has a babysitter and there’s an emergency and she needs to be transported when I’m not there.” He also had a crib set up in a room that used to be designated as a spare bedroom. Stella, his ex-fiancée, had eyed the unfurnished room as her temporary office until they purchased a home more in line with her wants and needs.

      In an even more upscale neighborhood, in other words.

      Ms. Bailey held the bundle against her. Flint didn’t take offense. Didn’t really blame the woman at all. If he were her, he wouldn’t want to hand a two-day-old baby over to him, either. But during her two days in the hospital the baby had been fully tested, examined and then released that morning. Released to him. Her family. Via Ms. Bailey. At his request, because he had a funeral to attend. And had wanted Alana’s daughter there, too.

      “As I said earlier, I strongly recommend a Pack ’n Play. They’re less expensive than cribs, double as playpens with a changing table attachment and are easily portable.”

      Already had that, too. Although he hadn’t set it up in his bedroom as the videos he’d watched had recommended. No way was he having a baby sleep with him. Didn’t seem... He didn’t know what.

      He had the monitors. If she woke, he’d have to get up anyway. Walking across the hall only took a few more steps.

      “And the bottles and formula?”

      “Three scoops of the powder per six ounces of water, slightly warm.” He’d done a dozen run-throughs on that. And was opting for boiling all nipples in water just to be safe in his method of cleansing.

      He noticed the preacher hovering in the distance. The man of God probably needed to get on to other matters, as well. Flint nodded his thanks and received the older man’s nod in return. As he watched him walk away, he couldn’t help wondering if Alana Gold would be more than a momentary blip in his memory.

      She would be far more than that to her daughter.

      Ms. Bailey interrupted his thoughts. “What about child care? Have you made arrangements for when you go back to work?”

      Go back to work? As in, an hour from now? Taking Monday СКАЧАТЬ