Maybe This Time (16 page)

“I’m fine, really.” She glanced at the wall clock. “Sorry, Mum, I have to go.”

“I talked to Marge yesterday. She told me about Roy’s hip operation.”

“You talked to Marge? Why?” Giving up on a quick end to their chat, Emma sat at the kitchen table, pushed up her top and attached the pump. She flipped the switch and gently squeezed her breast, hoping for a trickle, something, so she wouldn’t have to give Billy formula again.

“Why wouldn’t we? Darling, we’re friends. And we’re grandmothers together. Of course we talk.”

“What else did she say—about Billy?” Emma pressed her fingers to her throbbing sinuses. Here it came. Would it be a gentle reproach or a stern lecture about allowing Marge access? If her mother were here, they could talk things out but she wasn’t and Emma didn’t have time to explain over the phone. It was all building up, becoming too much, her job, her studies, Billy and now the family.

“She said how adorable he was, how precious for his age. What a wonderful mother you are.”

Marge had covered for her. That was so like her, unselfish, concerned and caring. And Emma had repaid her by not finding time for her to see her grandson. Just then Billy began to cry. Emma felt like crying, too. She was completely, utterly inadequate in every way.

“Mum, I really have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

She had to pull herself together and carry on. Billy needed her to be strong. But it was increasingly hard when she felt as if her life was spiraling out of control.

* * *

W
EDNESDAY NIGHT WAS
slow, too. So slow Darcy got out the architect’s drawings and unfurled them on the bar.

He could do a lot of the work himself, things like painting and ripping out old carpeting. Dan could do the wiring and Tony could do the brickwork. They would cut him a deal and he’d rather give them the business than some stranger.

The aspect that worried him most was the interior decorating. It wasn’t a top priority till the structural work was complete but now that he’d decided to move ahead he should at least start thinking about it.

He’d visited his dad in the hospital that morning before the pub opened. On his way home he’d swung by some paint and upholstery shops to pick up color samples and fabric swatches. He spread them out on the bar next to the architect’s plans, arranging them in different combinations, trying to visualize them incorporated into the pub’s decor. But he couldn’t mentally transform the tiny scraps of color into chair seats and walls. His brain didn’t work that way.

Riley came in dressed in civvies and pulled up a stool. “What’s all this? Are we redecorating our dollhouse? Cooper’s Pale Ale, thanks. Make it a pint.”

Darcy pulled a pint of ale and blotted the foam. “This is what I like to see, Summerside’s finest, keeping the streets safe from crime.”

“Even the senior sergeant is allowed to have a drink when off duty.” Riley glanced at the rectangles of color and fabric. “What’s with the samples?”

“I’m giving the old girl a makeover. What do you reckon?”

Riley shrugged. “I like her the way she is, but then I’m not competing with the new kid on the block.”

“Have you checked out the wine bar’s liquor license?” Darcy was only half joking. “The owner seems to me like a shady character.”

“You want me to shut him down, I’ll shut him down.” Riley grinned as he sipped his beer.

“Not good enough. He would reapply and be back in business.” Darcy leaned over the bar and dropped his voice. “You must know some crims who would torch the place. Put me in touch, then look the other way and five percent of my takings are yours.”

Riley chuckled. “Yeah, that’ll be a big help when Paula nails my ass and puts me in jail. Seriously, have you got a plan?”

“I’m fighting fire with fire.” Darcy nodded to the chalkboard above his head listing a dozen new wines by the glass. “And the makeover. Hope it’s enough. Speaking of renovations, how’s the extension on the police station coming along?”

“Slowly, but it’s getting there. I’ll be glad when I don’t have to dust my desk for sawdust every morning.”

Darcy rearranged the swatches once more. “Which do you like best, the green and brown together or the peach and blue?”

“Mate, you’re asking the wrong person, but I’d say neither.”

“Paula makes quilts, doesn’t she? She must be good at fabrics and color combinations. If I took these over to your house one night, would she give me some advice?”

“I’m sure she would—if she was around. She went up to Tinman Island for a couple of weeks to visit John and Katie and Tuti.”

John Forster, who’d given Darcy half the cruise ticket, used to be in charge of the police station until he’d left to take up a position on a remote island in tropical North Queensland with Katie, his new wife, and Tuti, his half-Balinese daughter from a previous relationship.

“I had an email from John last week. Sounds like he and Katie like it up north.”

“He’s glad to be back on active duty. Paula called today to report in. Katie’s working on her third children’s book, and Tuti’s learning to boogie board. Apparently they can’t keep her out of the water.”

“Excellent,” Darcy replied distractedly. He leaned his elbows on the bar and studied his color swatches.

Riley sipped his beer. “Emma did a good job decorating your old house. Have you asked her?”

“She’s got too much on her plate. Anyway, neither of us is interested in getting involved again.” Darcy pulled himself up. No one had mentioned getting involved. Was that a Freudian slip?

“I was talking about decorating. But now that you mention it, you two have a child together. It doesn’t get much more involved than that.”

Darcy stared at Riley. What was this backflip on Riley’s part? “You were against me having anything to do with Emma. You said she was bad for me.”

“I’m not talking about you and Emma. I meant you and your son.”

“Oh.” A muscle in Darcy’s jaw twitched. “I tried to offer her child support and she wouldn’t hear of it.”

“Money isn’t the only thing a kid needs.”

“I’m not father material.” How many times did he have to say it? “I’m never around. I’m not good at the hands-on stuff. I make more work for Emma when I do try to help. No, I don’t want to screw the kid up. Having no father is better than having a bad one.”

“I don’t believe for one second that you don’t care about your own kid. Even if Emma doesn’t want you to play an active role, you don’t have to accept that. And you weren’t a bad father to Holly.”

“I wasn’t there for her enough. I wasn’t competent enough to do things for her, change her diapers, feed her, bathe her. I was the playmate. Kids need more than that.”

“Nobody’s born knowing how to care for children. You have to learn. You were absent for Holly because you had to work, but when you were around she thought you hung the moon and the stars. I saw you. You were a great dad. In fact, I remember thinking that if I ever had a child I hoped I could be as good a father as you were.”

“If by
good
you mean I gave a lot of horsie rides, yeah, I was a great dad. Can we drop the subject?” Darcy didn’t want to get into this. There were some things he didn’t tell even his best mates. Like the fact that when he’d been changing Holly and she’d fallen off the changing table she’d landed on her head on a wood floor. She hadn’t gone unconscious, in fact, she’d barely cried and hadn’t seemed fazed in the least. He’d rushed her to the hospital where Emma had met him. Holly had been checked out by a doctor and pronounced fine.

He’d felt so badly afterward that he’d driven Emma nuts asking if Holly was acting normally, if she was on course for being at the right developmental stage for her age. Emma hadn’t reported anything amiss, but Darcy had always been waiting for the injury to manifest itself in some horrible, irreparable way.

Now Holly was gone and there was no point telling this particular story. But the experience had frightened the hell out of him as a new father.

“I saw Emma the other day at the gas station,” Riley said after a moment.

“How was she?”

“Not great. She has a bad cold or the flu. She could barely talk...she was too busy coughing up a lung.”

“I told her that would happen. What about the baby? Is he sick, too?”

“I peered through the car window because
I
haven’t seen the mystery kid yet. Even though I was godfather to your first child. His nose was running but that could have been because he was crying.”

Darcy didn’t want to feel a tug at his heart. But he did. Damn it, of course he cared about his child. Billy was a little over two months old. He must be starting to smile, and doing other stuff. He, Darcy, was missing out on all the stages of his child’s life.

He swept up the paint and fabric samples and put them in a big manila envelope. He hated to think of Emma trying to cope with everything and being sick, as well. It was one thing for her to play around with her own health, but she had no right to put his son’s health in jeopardy. “I’m going to go see Emma and Billy.”

Riley sipped his beer. “I thought you might.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

D
ARCY STABBED
E
MMA’S
doorbell outside her apartment building a second time. She was taking ages to answer. Maybe she wasn’t home. Maybe she was feeling better and had gone out. But he didn’t think so.

“Hello?” she croaked over the intercom.

“It’s me. Can you buzz me through?”

“This isn’t a good time, Darcy.”

He couldn’t tell her he knew she was sick or she would deny it up and down. But if she thought he needed her—if she thought anyone needed her—Emma wouldn’t refuse.

“I’m renovating the pub. I was hoping you could give me some advice on the color scheme.”

There was a long silence. Darcy kicked a pebble off the mat, took two paces away and came back. Pressed her bell again. “Emma, are you still there?”

“Come up.” She pressed the buzzer.

Darcy didn’t know what he’d expected but the sight that met his eyes when Emma opened her door left him speechless. She had deteriorated significantly in the two days since he’d seen her. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her hair lank. Thick wool work socks protruded beneath her quilted dressing gown. She held a tissue pressed to her pink, chafed nose. Her movements were slow and stiff, as if every joint and muscle ached.

“You look like death warmed over.”

“I’ve got a spring cold.”

“I’m no doctor, but I think what you have is more than a cold.” He glanced over her shoulder into the apartment. It looked as if a bomb had exploded in a clothing factory. There was laundry everywhere, on the furniture, on the floor, not all of it clean.

Without waiting for her to ask him in, he walked into the living room. Nursing textbooks and papers covered the dining table, along with dirty dishes and used coffee mugs. He peeked into the kitchen. More dishes were piled on the counter and in the sink. The garbage was overflowing. He discreetly sniffed. Dirty diapers. Food left out on the counter.

This wasn’t like Emma. She was an immaculate housekeeper. Even when Holly had been a baby the chaos had been controlled. At times the house might have been untidy but Emma always kept things clean. He’d tried to do his share of housework but she preferred to do it herself so she knew it was done to her standards. Now, her living space looked like a homeless person’s nest under a bridge. Magnified a hundred times.

In the nursery, the baby was crying. Emma paid no attention. She blew her nose on a tattered damp tissue.

Darcy stepped out of the kitchen into the hall. “Aren’t you going to pick him up?”

“Why?” she said listlessly, shoulders slumped. “It won’t make him stop crying.”

Okay, this was truly worrying. Emma loved being a mother. She was a nurse. She would never neglect her child, especially one who was sick. He’d seen her give out bandages for a kid who scraped his knee in the park, and dispense cough drops to an elderly woman at a bus stop. Strangers in need got her attention, but she left her baby to cry piteously? Something wasn’t right.

“Does he have a cold, too?” Darcy asked.

Her eyes closed and she nodded.

Darcy could hear the tiny heart-rending cough in between wails. “Have you taken him to the doctor?”

That got a spark out of Emma. Her eyes blazed to life. “Of course I took him. Do you think I’m a bad mother?”

Was that a note of hysteria in her voice? Before this he would never have considered that possibility for a second. But now she was ill and crumbling under too great a workload.

Darcy headed for the nursery. Billy was lying on his back, red in the face and hacking between wails.

“Oh, my God, Emma. How could you leave him like this?” Darcy picked the baby out of the cot. His sleeper was damp from sweat and a leaking diaper and stained with vomited milk. Darcy had no idea where to begin with a baby in this much distress. Emma had always taken care of Holly when she was sick.

Darcy held him out to her. “You need to clean him up. Feed him. Give him medicine. Give him whatever it is he needs.”

Emma rocked the baby and patted his back but her motions were mechanical. She didn’t hold Billy close or make a real effort to comfort him. “Shh, Billy. Be quiet. Please.”

“You should have called someone if you couldn’t cope. Alana, or one of your friends.”

“I can cope,” Emma said shrilly. “Of course I can cope. As soon as I get over this cold I’ll be fine.” She started hacking, deep rattling coughs that Darcy felt in his own chest.

Or maybe that was the ache from seeing Emma and his son in such a pitiful condition. What was going on? Was she having some sort of nervous breakdown as well as being sick? Was she suffering from postnatal depression? Should he take her to the hospital?

“Where’s your phone? I’m calling Tracey.” Another nurse would at least know what to do.
He
should know what to do. It bothered him that he didn’t.

“Tracey’s in Bali.”

“Alana, then. Or who’s your other friend—Sasha?”

“Sasha’s at home taking care of her kids, who are sick, too. Alana’s working. Anyway I don’t want to risk her catching this. She can’t afford to be sick, and she certainly wouldn’t want Tessa to get it.” Emma jiggled the baby and coughed away from his face. “Don’t call anyone. We’ll get through this, won’t we, Billy?”