Chapter 22
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Pamela reached for Lisa One, chastising herself for using that name, and pulled her out of the huge playpen.
The baby made all kinds of gurgling sounds that settled into her heart in a way she hadn’t expected.
She held the baby close and cuddled her.
This was a special time of day when there was just sweetness and light.
Of course, the rest of the day they had needs to be met, but it all boiled down to these moments right here.
As she stood here cuddling, she heard a voice behind her. “Only one is awake?” She turned and smiled up at Anderson and saw his face change into something she hadn’t really expected. It was an odd look, and she asked, “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” He smiled at her. “Looks as if you are too,” he noted in a teasing tone.
She nodded. “I have to admit, they’re really growing on me.”
“I know,” he murmured, as he walked closer. “They just get into your very soul, don’t they?”
“Which is why I don’t understand how Tim could leave them.”
“I think he never connected to them in the first place, or maybe he didn’t want Talia to be pregnant at all. I don’t know,” he admitted. “I couldn’t get any answers out of him. And what he did say wasn’t something I will repeat.”
“Are you able to talk to him at the jail?”
“I would love that opportunity, but I don’t know that it’ll do any good. If he doesn’t want to talk, he won’t talk. And he is still all about self-preservation.”
She winced at that. “Even at the cost of his own kids and his wife?” she asked, shaking her head. “How is that even a thing?”
“It’s a thing because he made it a thing,” Anderson declared, as he drew back some hair from the baby’s eyes. “How do you cut this hair? It’s not as if they can sit still long enough for a proper trim.”
She chuckled. “It’s all about training them, and the hair is not really long enough to be an issue,” she replied.
“It’s in their face sometimes.”
She used her fingers to scrape the hair back into a more controllable position.
He chuckled. “I think their hair just goes wherever it wants to,” he noted.
“And you could be right,” she said. “They definitely have an awful lot of it.”
“So does their mother,” he muttered absentmindedly.
She smiled. “I’m happy for her that you guys are so close.”
“Not close enough though,” he stated, looking at her. “Seems I should have been a whole lot closer.”
“But you thought she was being taken care of,” she reminded him. “You can’t really blame yourself when her husband was right in the middle of this.”
“Yeah, and that’s something I’ll really have trouble forgiving him for.”
“Of course.” She shook her head. “That’s why you’re here, to find out what’s going on and how he could have let it happen. What’s weird is he apparently didn’t even care.”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it?” he asked. “He didn’t ever care. I mean, he had another woman and left my sister here looking after his three babies. And I may not have understood just what that meant before, but I sure do now.”
She smiled. “And it will make you a much better father yourself someday.”
“I’m not sure anybody out there is willing to take that on,” he teased, with a smile. “At least not if they’re smart.”
“They’re smart,” she argued. “And I think … I probably would have taken it on way back when.” He looked at her in surprise. She smiled. “I really did have a thing for you. Only after you left did I realize how my talk to you messed things up.”
“No, forewarning me didn’t mess anything up that wasn’t already pretty well screwed up,” he clarified, with a gentle smile.
“The truth is, I wouldn’t have been very good husband material back then,” he admitted, shaking his head.
“I was much too concerned about the physical and not caring about anything else.”
“Seems as if you too have grown up.”
“Yep, I didn’t have much choice. I went to war,” he stated, “where you see things that you never could have imagined. The suffering, the pain, the hardship that other people go through. It changes you and makes you a whole lot better person.”
“At least it’s supposed to,” she countered. “Not everybody who comes out of that has a positive outlook.”
“You’re right. It’s tough on everybody, really tough. One of our team members, someone we thought was doing okay, ended up taking his life after he got back to the States. We all thought he was doing fine, until we heard the news.”
“I’m so sorry. Yeah, it happens.”
“It was one of those things we just couldn’t quite comprehend.
I didn’t know how to react or how we could have helped.
We didn’t stay in closer touch because it seemed he was doing just fine.
He was off leading his new life, but apparently leading that new life was a whole lot more difficult than any of us had imagined.
He clearly wasn’t doing as great as we thought he was. ”
“And again you’re not to blame.”
He smiled at her. “You’re pretty quick to let me off the hook.”
“No, I’m not,” she said, “but look at what I see at work. You saw all kinds of suffering and torment at an international level, just as I see here at home. And it’s hard.
Every day it’s hard. You want answers. You want programs that will solve the drug and alcohol and abuse problems. You want programs that will show women there is another life than getting beaten day after day,” she explained.
“However, once that victim mentality sets in, it’s hard to step out of those bounds. ”
Just then movement came in the playpen. “Oh, here’s a second baby now awake.” She nodded, as she saw a head lift. Huge beautiful blue eyes blinked in her direction, followed quickly by a half smile as she reached up with her arms. “Somebody would like a cuddle,” Pamela noted.
“Oh, it would be my pleasure,” Anderson murmured, as he picked up Lisa Two. “We have to come up with better names. Not better names,” he corrected. “We just don’t know who is who. I do want to see my sister today, if possible.” He turned to Pamela and asked, “Are you okay to stay here today?”
“Sure,” she replied agreeably. “I’ve got the week off.”
“But that week is going by very quickly,” he pointed out.
She thought about it, then nodded. “You’re right.
It sure is. So, we will see what happens then, but right now?
This setup is fine,” she stated. “Let’s just see what the next couple of days bring.
You’ll also have to get something in place when Talia is discharged from hospital.
It depends on whether you’re sticking around,” she pointed out.
“I’ll stick around for a few weeks afterward,” he told her, “though I’ll have to get back to work at some point.”
“Of course. That you’ve done all you have is quite remarkable really, and that is good of you.”
“Most people wouldn’t say that was good of me,” he argued, with a hard laugh, staring at her. “Most people would say I should give up my job and stay and help.”
“And, to a certain extent, I understand that, but … you also have a life. And, right now, you’re doing what you can for your sister. Then you’ll have to see how financially set she is, what resources she’ll have going forward.”
“Right,” he agreed, “another reason I need my job.”
“If you have any interest in helping her out financially, if she needs it,” she pointed out, “then somebody’s got to work.”
“I know one thing,” he muttered, as he looked down at the babies in their arms, and the one still sleeping in the playpen. “She can’t work and look after these guys.”
“She could work part-time potentially, with a nanny or two down the road,” Pamela suggested, “but it’s definitely challenging. You know yourself how full-time triplets are.”
“It depends whether her wages would cover even one nanny.”
“You two don’t have any other family to help out?” she asked.
“No, we lost both our parents in a car accident when we were in our early teens,” he shared too casually. “So, we ended up in foster care, which was pretty rough. So I can’t count on any extended family members to help us.”
She stared at him. “I went to school with you for three years, and yet I didn’t know that.”
He nodded. “It’s one of the reasons why I was a little more, how shall I say, detached with everyone back then. I wasn’t at all sure that life was worth living for a while.”
“And now?”
“I grew out of it.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“It was tough.” He gave a chuckle. “The two of us spent as much time together as possible, and, if we couldn’t be together, we were always communicating.
I was so happy for her when she found Timothy, and they got married.
She was absolutely over the moon when she got pregnant.
I asked her if the babies were planned. In fact, it was something we talked about when we were younger, when we saw so many babies and very small kids in foster care with parents who clearly couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of them. ”
“What did Talia say?” she asked, with a smile.
“Nobody plans for three but getting pregnant was definitely part of the plan.”
“So then why was Tim so upset about it, I wonder?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged.
“Maybe once the babies arrived, he was overwhelmed and didn’t know where he fit in,” she suggested.
She looked at him and nodded. “A lot of men don’t understand what life is like after even one baby arrives.
And, in Tim’s case, three babies are a lot to handle.
Again it will probably make a lot more sense once you can talk to Talia. ”
“It sure will.” He walked over to the changing table and lay down his gurgling Lisa, while he whispered sweet nothings to her.
Pamela’s heart ached to see it. “You’re really good with them. You know that, right?”
He turned to her and shrugged. “I’m just winging it.”
She nodded. “That’s all any parent does,” she stated. “You wing it until you get somewhere. And, in your case, you’re doing great.”