7. Thea
SEVEN
THEA
My phone sat face up on the nightstand. No missed calls. No messages.
That was it for Declan Hale and me. What did I even expect? Nothing could have ever come from it. He was…way up there, out of reach. And here I was with a struggling nonprofit and a divorced stamp on my forehead.
That was why I let myself go. For one night, I wasn’t Thea Calloway. I was someone else — the type of woman he’d want to be with, and it was over just as quickly as it started.
But he kept his promise.
The funding came through. The paperwork arrived the week after the dinner. That was all I needed from him. The funding was the business, and the business was done. We were done.
But every night, I would lie on my side of the bed, and the smell of him would drift across the dark room. I thought about his hand on my jaw in the rain and his voice saying, “Maybe I just like looking at you.”
The guilt came fast. My marriage ended two months ago. Two months. I should be grieving. I should be processing. I should be doing anything other than lying in the dark, replaying the sound a man made against my neck in a hallway I'd never see again.
I picked up the phone, put it down, and picked it up again. I found myself scrolling to his name in my contacts — Declan Hale, entered that day in the conference room. I hated myself for keeping it.
I put the phone face down on the nightstand.
I needed to go to work.
I swung my legs out of bed, pulled my hair back with one hand, reached for the phone with the other, and dialed Margot’s number.
She picked up on the second ring. "Please tell me you're not about to say what I think you're about to say."
"I'm running late. I'll be there in forty."
"Girl, sit your ass down. It's almost closing time, and it is raining like the end of the world out there."
I turned toward the window. The glass was sheeted with water, the street below blurred into gray shapes and headlights. Rain hammered the pane in gusts.
"I can make it."
"Definitely not. The roads are flooded on Eighth. Dawson called and said the underpass near the office is backed up to the bridge. I'm leaving in twenty minutes myself. Stay home, Thea. Read a book. Watch your trash TV. Do something that isn't work for one single day."
"Margot — "
"I don't want to see you here." She hung up.
I stood in my bedroom, holding the dead phone and looking at the rain. I walked to my bookshelf in the corner and pulled out a random romance novel.
It didn’t work. I couldn’t focus for more than five minutes to get immersed in it. I abandoned it and moved to the living room.
The remote sat on the coffee table. I reached over and clicked on the TV.
Of course, that trashy dating show was already on.
I tugged a blanket over my legs and settled in, just in time to watch a woman in a gold dress tear into a man about his emotional availability, her voice rising above the studio lights.
My brain started to quiet down. “You tell him,” I said to the screen.
Then the screen cut to a couple standing on a balcony. She was holding a baby. He had his arm around her shoulders, and the baby was reaching for his face. He was laughing. The baby's hand finally found his cheek and held on.
I reached for the remote and clicked the TV off. The screen went black, swallowing the last flash of the happy family. Then the apartment fell silent again — heavier than the noise before.
I sat there in the dark of my living room, listening to the rain pour. So this was what it felt like to be alone. Caleb and I had been together for eight years, married for six. I didn’t know how to be alone. The word wasn’t in my vocabulary.
Yet, here I was. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Maybe I…
Hnn…hnn…pff…
I stopped and turned toward the door. What was that?
Pff…pff…mmmh…nhh… mmm…
I jumped to my feet. I rushed to the window, tilted my head, and listened.
Ngh—aaah! Waaah! Waaah!
I gasped and jumped backward. My heart was threatening to beat out of my chest.
A baby. It was a baby.
I walked to the front door. My hand found the knob, and I stood there for a second, because this didn't make sense. There was no reason a baby would be crying on my porch.
I turned the knob, and there it was.
A baby, wrapped in a blanket, was tucked against the side of the doorframe where the overhang kept the worst of the rain off. Her face was red and scrunched, her mouth open, her fists clenched.
There was no one else. No car pulling away. No figure disappearing into the rain.
My hands moved before my brain did. I scooped her against my chest, one arm under her body, the other cradling her head. I brought her inside and kicked the door shut with my foot. I locked the deadbolt with my free hand.
Rain dripped from the blanket onto the hallway floor. My shirt was wet where she pressed against me. She was warm despite the rain. A few months old at most.
And then the crying stopped.
She curled into me. Her tiny fist found the collar of my shirt and grabbed on. Her cheek pressed against my collarbone. She let out a shuddering breath, and then she was still.
This was actually real. I wasn’t having a psychotic break or anything. There was an actual baby in my arms.
I need to call the police. Ummm…I need to call 911.
I should put her down, pick up the phone, and do the responsible, official, correct thing.
What would I even say to them? Maybe if I checked her blanket for any note, I’d be able to give the police more information.
I shifted her weight, adjusted her in my arms. I pulled the wet blanket away from her skin, and her wrist turned up. Right there, on the inside of her left wrist, was a small, dark mark in the shape of a heart.
My hand stopped. I knew this mark. I'd traced this mark with my fingertip a hundred times.
Baby girl. Heart-shaped birthmark on the inside of her left wrist.
My knees gave. I sank onto the couch, the baby still pressed against my chest, and my hand was shaking so badly I had to press it flat against her back to make it stop. My heart was pounding. The room was tilting. I pulled the blanket away from her wrist and looked again.
The birthmark was still there.
This was her. This was the baby. The baby for whom I built the nursery.
But how? How was this possible? The birth mother changed her mind. That was three months ago. What in God’s name was going on?
I looked at the baby. She was asleep now. Her lashes were dark against her cheeks. Her mouth was a small, soft bow. She looked nothing like anyone I knew and exactly like someone I'd been waiting for.
I didn't call the police. Not yet. I told myself I'd call in the morning. I told myself I just needed a minute. I told myself I was being responsible — get the baby warm, dry, calm before involving anyone.
The truth was simpler. I was holding the child I was supposed to have, and I couldn't let go.
I noticed something in her blanket. I pulled it free with one hand, and a piece of paper fell out. A note, just as I thought. I read it quickly, “She's yours now. I'm sorry.” That was it. Nothing helpful. Nothing to tell me what was going on.
I got up carefully. The baby stirred but didn't wake. I walked to my bedroom, opened the nightstand, and found the key underneath the book I wasn't reading. I carried the baby down the hall and stood in front of the nursery door.
The first thing I did when Caleb and I returned from Janet’s office was to lock this door. But now…now I had to do the one thing I swore I’d never do.
I slipped the key into the lock and turned. It clicked. I pushed the door open. I braced myself, but nothing came. Maybe because the child the room was meant for was right here in my arms.
I took off her blanket and tossed it to the side, then dressed her in warm clothes from the baby drawer in the corner, before I laid the baby in the crib. Her body settled onto the mattress, and I pulled the blue blanket Caleb and I bought over her, and for three seconds, she was still.
Then her face scrunched. Her mouth opened, and a sharp wail escaped. I picked her up before the second cry was finished. She pressed against my chest, and the crying stopped again.
I glanced from the crib to the daybed pushed against the far wall. I’d set it up months ago, back when I imagined I’d be the one sleeping here night after night.
I pulled the blanket from the crib and lay down on the daybed with the baby on my chest. I draped the blanket over both of us. Her breathing slowed, and her fist relaxed.
We slept.
I woke up with the baby still on my chest. It was no longer raining. Her fist was still loosely curled around my collar, holding on even in sleep.
Then reality came in.
I needed to act. I needed to call someone. But first, I had to give her a bath and deal with the wet clothes from last night.
I got up carefully, easing her onto the daybed and surrounding her with pillows. She stirred, whimpered, then settled.
The supplies were still in the closet. Caleb and I bought them months ago — the diapers, the onesies, the tiny bottles, the baby wash that smelled like chamomile. Everything remained in its bags, tags still attached, waiting for a baby who never arrived.
I filled the bathroom sink with warm water and tested it with my elbow. I carried her to the sink, and she looked up at me — wide awake now, blinking, her small face open and curious.
"Okay," I whispered. "Okay, sweetheart. I've got you."
I lowered her into the water. She flinched at first, then went still, her hands opening and closing in the warmth. I washed her gently — her arms, her legs, the soft folds of her neck, the bottoms of her tiny feet.
She watched me the whole time with those wide, unfocused eyes. I watched her back, and my vision blurred. I blinked, and the blur ran down my face and fell into the water.
I dried her with the softest towel I owned and dressed her in one of the onesies from the bag — white with small yellow stars.
The onesie was slightly big on her. She swam in it.
I rolled the sleeves up twice, and she grabbed my finger while I worked.
The strength of her grip was astonishing for someone so small.
I fed her. Formula from the kit, warmed, tested on my wrist. When she finished, I held her up against my shoulder and patted her back the way the books said until she burped. The sound was so unexpectedly loud that I laughed.
I tucked her back in the crib. She was full, clean, and warm, and her eyes were getting heavy. I stood over her and watched her blink, slower and slower, until her lashes settled against her cheeks, and she was out.
I picked up the blanket from the floor and studied it. It was clearly expensive. It needed hand washing. I carried it to the kitchen sink and ran warm water over the fabric, gently working the rain out of it, turning it in my hands.
That's when I noticed the embroidery.
In the corner of the blanket, stitched in small, precise lettering, were three initials.
I turned off the water and held the blanket up to the light — DJH. I didn't recognize them. Was that the baby's name? An abbreviation? A brand?
I dried my hands on the dish towel, picked up my phone from the counter, and typed DJH into the search bar.
Nothing useful. A hardware store in Delaware. A dental practice in Houston.
I tried again. DJH initials. Nothing relevant still. I tried once more. DJH initials person.
The top result loaded. A headshot. A man's face, filling my screen. Angular jaw. Dark hair pushed back from a high forehead. Light-blue eyes staring directly into the camera.
My hand tightened around the phone.
Declan James Hale.
I stared at his face. The face from the conference room. The face across the candlelit table. The face above mine in the dark, his hand on my jaw, his mouth on mine, the rain on both of us.
No. That's…that's not possible.
I carried the phone down the hallway and into the nursery. She was sleeping on her back, her small fists resting on either side of her head.
I stood over the crib. "Open your eyes," I whispered. "Please. Just for a second."
She stirred. Her mouth moved. And then her eyes opened, an unfocused blink before they drifted shut again.
They were light blue. The same pale blue that stared at me from the phone screen.
The baby had his eyes.
I looked at his face on the screen, and then I looked at hers, and I knew.