One Bright Star (2 page)

Well. That was a bit awkward. Everyone had tried to celebrate Anna’s romantic adventure in the same spirit with which she’d accepted her son’s, but… Dan looked around the room. No one really seemed all that upset that Martin hadn’t made it, including Anna. Dan lowered the baby so they were face to face. “What’s that, RJ? You like
our
Christmas traditions? You think we have just the right amount of Christ in them?”

“We have hardly any,” Jeff said.

“I guess that’s how RJ likes it.” He made a face at the baby and was rewarded with an enthusiastic grin. A grin that seemed just a little different than it had the day before. “Holy shit. I think RJ’s getting a tooth.”

The mad scramble would have been frightening for a less secure baby, and even RJ seemed a little unsure as every adult in the room swooped toward him, peering and poking at his mouth and cooing over the tiny white ridge on his gums.

“He can have a full dinner,” Tat declared. “No more pulverized turkey for Robbie!”

“Might be a bit early for that,” Jeff said cautiously.

“I think he wants to be a vegetarian anyway,” Robyn said. “He
loves
tofu.”

“He loves pig,” Evan said. “Bacon, ham, pork chops, pork roast… this is a kid who appreciates the whole hog. Just because he snacks on a little tofu between feasts doesn’t mean he wants to give up the finer things in life.”

“Maybe you guys should
raise
a pig, so he could understand where the meat is coming from,” Robyn responded. “We could see how much he likes eating pig once he’s gotten to know one.” She glanced at Dan and wickedly added, “That is, if you have room at your new home. It’d be fine to raise a pig
here
, but maybe not somewhere else.” She raised an eyebrow. “I mean, you
are
still planning to move, aren’t you?”

Damn. Apparently Robyn had come to Christmas Eve dinner with an agenda of some sort. Not that Dan had any idea what her goal was.

Evan looked cautiously at Jeff, then even more carefully at Dan. “I think we’re in a holding pattern on that. We haven’t found anywhere perfect, really.”

Tia bustled in then, her arms full of clothing fresh from the laundry room.

“RJ’s got a tooth,” Dan announced. It was a personal triumph. He’d gotten the kid to this milestone, at least. Maybe he could manage to get him a little further.

“Does he?” Tia sounded pleased, but not surprised. She set the clothes on the counter and pulled open the fridge door. She dragged out a white plastic bin. “Is it just a front tooth? He’ll probably barely notice that. But if he gets fussy, especially when the molars come, I’ve got a few remedies stashed away in here.” She lifted the lid off and started pulling items out for display. “Frozen grapes, inside a feeding bag. Don’t give them to him without the bag—he could choke.” Always a bit of doom to go with every bright spot in a baby’s life, Dan had discovered. Tia continued unabashed. “Frozen washcloth, soaked in chamomile tea. Frozen soother. Baby toothbrush… there’s a room temperature one in his top dresser drawer, in case he doesn’t like the cold. Frozen banana. Orange-juice-and-yogurt popsicles—those were your favorites, Tat.” She looked at her audience. “You’ll just have to try him on different things and see what seems to work.”

“What was
my
favorite thing?” Evan asked, his tone slightly aggrieved at the lack of personalization.

Tia smiled at him and waved her fingers in his direction. “You just liked to chew on human flesh. We could always tell you were teething because you’d latch on to anything
but
the breast. You were too angry to nurse, generally.”

“RJ won’t be like that,” Dan said confidently. “He’s much less temperamental than Evan. Much more even-keeled. Sensible. Sane.”

Evan lifted the baby from Dan’s unresisting arms. “You
are
, aren’t you, Bobby-J? You’re a calm little man. You won’t fuss much at all.”

“If he does, it’ll be because he hurts,” Jeff said supportively. “Can’t blame him if he cries a little. He doesn’t know about pain yet.”

And that shouldn’t have made Dan want to cry. But it was hard to accept that part of his job as a parent was to teach this little person that sometimes the world was going to hurt him. Sometimes his own body would hurt him, and as much as he might want to, Dan wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. He’d offer comfort and cold chewables, but he wouldn’t be able to make the pain go away. Dan wanted to grab the baby back from Evan and curl around him and keep him safe forever. It was the same way he felt before being buzzed through the heavy doors at the women’s prison, taking RJ in to see the mother that might someday tear his family apart. But Dan couldn’t protect RJ from everything, no matter how much he tried. So he plastered a grin onto his face and said, “He’ll be fine.”

“Of course he will,” Tia said with a strange look at Dan and then an adoring smile at the baby. “It’s teething. Everybody does it, and everybody’s fine. We just want to make it as painless as possible.”

“Keep the crying down below a scream,” Anna said. She smiled at Jeff. “We gave you brandy. Rubbed it on your gums. Probably not acceptable these days, but, damn, it shut you up.”

“We’re not giving the child liquor,” Jeff said, his hand wrapping protectively around RJ’s head. Then he squinted at his mother, judging her honesty. “You got me drunk to shut me up?”

“Not drunk,” she scoffed. “It was just a tiny bit.
Maybe
a teaspoon’s worth.”

“He’s a bit of a lightweight,” Evan interjected. “A teaspoon might have been enough, when he was so tiny.”

“And look how big and strong he’s grown,” Anna said placidly. “I guess I didn’t do anything
too
wrong.”

God, Dan wanted that. The calm tranquility of knowing that his kid had turned out okay. How many years of gut-churning anxiety was he going to have to suffer through before he could sit back and relax? Of course, that was the
best
case scenario, the one where he eventually knew he’d done his job. How much more likely was it that he’d end up finding out that he’d screwed up? Done too much or too little of something important, missed some vital clue, misunderstood or glossed over something he needed to see…

He rolled to his feet. “Are we drinking yet?” His voice sounded a little ragged, but everybody else was too busy with the baby to notice, he was pretty sure.

“Red on the counter, white in the fridge, eggnog on the table,” Jeff said. And maybe he hadn’t been quite as preoccupied as Dan had hoped, because he was watching pretty closely as Dan made his way to the cupboard for a glass. He seemed satisfied with Dan’s relatively smooth trip to the eggnog, though, and returned his attention to the baby. “It’s white for you, Bobber. White and creamy. You thirsty?”

Dan sipped his eggnog and watched. There were so many people in RJ’s life, and they were all smart and kind and they cared so much. They’d help, surely. Dan just had to listen to them, and hope they spoke up in time. They had to. They were the only hope.

CHAPTER TWO

“We can’t eat until he sees a star.” Evan tried to make it sound as if he were stating something completely obvious rather than insanely random.

“Evan, he’s nine months old. He’s not going to be much of an astronomer at this age.” Dan was obviously trying to be patient, but Evan wasn’t sure he could count on the effort lasting much longer.

“We can
help
, I guess.” Surely that was enough of a concession. “But it’s supposed to be the youngest child in the house. That’s his job.”

“Well, it’s about time he had one; he’s been freeloading long enough. But why do we want him to find a star?”

“It’s a reference to the star of Bethlehem. And the youngest child—well, obviously he’s the closest to the Baby Jesus.”

“Did you hear him screaming earlier when I took the knife away from him? I don’t think Baby Jesus wants to be anywhere near this little demon.”

“Well, that’s too bad for Baby Jesus.”

“Nice Christmas spirit.” Dan pulled the mittens onto RJ’s chubby little hands and stood up, the baby squirming inside his snowsuit. “Let’s get him outside before he melts.”

“Where’s everybody else?”

“They’re probably back in the kitchen, wishing you weren’t insane.”

“No, here they come,” Evan said triumphantly. “They’re ready.”

“In theory,” Jeff agreed as he came to stand beside his partners. He was wearing his wool overcoat, the one that made him look distinguished and sexy in an almost British way, and Evan only let himself take one quick, appreciative look before turning away. Any further admiration would lead to urges that were not in keeping with a family-friendly event.

“Okay, let’s go!” He tried to look confident as he led the band out through the front doors and all the way to the lawn in the middle of the big circular driveway. Tia had gone home to her own family but the rest of the group were still there. The air was cool, but not bitterly cold, and it wasn’t completely unpleasant to be out enjoying the evening. The dogs trotted along as if they knew exactly what was happening, and they sat back and looked up at the blue-grey sky with as much interest as their human companions.

Well, with significantly
more
interest than most of the humans. “Here, I’ll take him,” Evan said when he realized Dan wasn’t even looking at the sky. He lifted the baby up to his shoulders. “Do you see it, Roberto? Is there a star? Where’s that star? Where’s the star?”

The dogs heard his tone and assumed it was meant for them. Two of them immediately started hunting around on the ground, obviously searching for a lost toy, but Lou stared expectantly at Dan, waiting for him to spoil her with whatever it was Evan was talking about. He crouched down and scratched her head. “Stars don’t taste good, sweetie. And they’re all pointy; they’d hurt your mouth.”

“When Bobby gets old enough to understand words, we’re going to have a talk about your butchery of reality,” Evan said sternly. “He can’t be sent off to kindergarten believing the nonsense you come up with.”

“You’re saying stars
do
taste good?” Dan straightened up, then raised his arm. “There it is. A star. Now get RJ to see it and we can go eat.”

But getting a nine-month-old to look at a distant speck of light was quite a challenge when there were so many faces to peer into, dogs to be amused by, and strands of Evan’s hair to yank and try to chew. Finally, Dan jogged across the lawn toward the star and yelled the baby’s name while jumping up in the air; the baby looked over in the right general direction, and the team declared victory.

Then they all trooped inside for dinner. Evan’s quest for his roots hadn’t extended all the way to the food, so they ate their regular turkey dinner, even though the centerpiece rested on a bed of straw in what Evan insisted was the traditional Polish manner.

“We never did any of this, growing up,” Tat pointed out. “The only thing Polish about us is our last name. You know that, right?”

Evan shook his head in disapproval. “I
do
know that, and I’ve got to be honest—I felt the lack. A definite hole in my development. Robbie should have family traditions. From
all
of our families. Dan and Jeff are hopelessly American—nothing interesting about them at all. So, from me… he gets Polish.”

“Even if you have to invent it,” Jeff said with dry affection.

“I didn’t invent any of this! It’s from the internet! We’re going to tell fortunes later, and at some point Tat and Robyn will each pull a straw from the centerpiece and find out how long it will be until they get married…”

“Is there a straw for ’when Hell freezes over?’“ Robyn asked.

“Don’t be silly. Everyone knows marriage is all you gals can think about.” Evan ducked down behind the baby before anything worse than a frown was thrown in his direction. His nose was there anyway, so he took the opportunity for a careful sniff followed by a hearty inhalation. Clean baby smell was intoxicating. It was like Bobby’s cells were purer than a regular person, still uncontaminated by the incidental filth of a busy life, and Evan wanted to savor the scent for as long as it was available. He also, of course, wanted to avoid any more mistakes in which he enthusiastically inhaled the odor of a less-than-clean baby. That had been nasty.

He caught Dan watching him and they shared a conspiratorial grin. It had been nice to learn that Evan wasn’t the only baby-smell junkie in the family. Even Jeff had occasionally been caught taking a whiff, although he always claimed he was just checking to see if a change was needed.

“Are you giving him his bath tonight?” Dan asked quietly.

Evan grinned. “Is that a hint?”

“I can do it. Any of us can do it. But…” Dan raised an eyebrow. “The rest of us can sit around a little longer before we take him upstairs. If
you’re
doing it, though…” He glanced at his watch. “It’s already pretty late.”

“He likes bath time,” Evan protested. “And I’m helping him to get comfortable in the water! There’s nothing wrong with giving him long baths.”

“Nope, nothing wrong with it. Nothing at all weird with having to put more hot water in the tub
three times
in order to keep him from getting chilled.”

“That was an exceptional day. We were learning about naval battle strategies. We were re-enacting the Battle of Trafalgar.” Evan was kind of impressed that he was able to come up with the name of a naval battle off the top of his head. “It was educational.”

But Dan didn’t seem convinced. “There were dinosaurs at the Battle of Trafalgar? And giraffes?”

There had been a time when Evan wouldn’t have dared. Dan used to be more sensitive about some things, but he seemed to have let go of a lot of that. So Evan shrugged and said, “You, my friend, did not even finish high school. I, on the other hand, am an almost-graduate of one of the most prestigious universities in the country. If I say there were dinosaurs and giraffes at the Battle of Trafalgar, I don’t think you’re in a position to contradict me.”

“And you’re worried about the crazy shit
I’m
teaching RJ?”