Page 28 of Sweet Thing

I blinked my way back into the conversation. Adeline was trying to get my attention.

“What’s that?”

“Did you have any additional questions for Janet?”

Janet.Candidate number four. Or was it five? I took a quick glance down at the clipboard Adeline had dropped in my lap several hours ago, observed wryly that I’d made zero notations, and decided to end this farce before I said anything that made me look more foolish than I felt.

“No, nothing.” Standing, I extended my hand, the same move that ended all the other interviews.

“Thanks for coming in.” Adeline smiled and led Janet toward the door. “We’ll be in touch with the agency when we’ve reviewed all the applications.”

The door closed and Adeline pivoted to face me. “She’s probably the best one of the bunch. Though the girl with the childhood education degree was nice as well.”

“Book learning,” I muttered. “What good is that without experience?” I could read a book. Would it make me a good father? Negative.

“She has experience as well with a family in Wisconsin. Good references.”

“If they’re to be believed.”

She squinted at me. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? We just spent ten hours?—”

“Three.”

Was that all? “Talking to these strangers about looking after this little stranger, who seesmeas a stranger. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“No weirder than a woman doing a drive-by after a hockey game and dropping your kid off in a bar. This is uncharted territory, Lars.”

She sounded so calm about it, but this wasn’t her life. She would go home and get on with her day, her week, her year. If Mabel was really my kid, and I suspected she was, then I needed to sack up.

I rubbed my mouth, wishing I could rub on a smile.

The baby monitor burst into life. During the interviews, I’d listened to it while Adeline asked the questions. Every now and then, there’d be a breathy murmur, and my feet would itch to investigate. But nothing much would follow, so I supposed Mabel was okay. Sleeping while everyone else worked their asses off to take care of her.

Babies, what a life.

“I’d better go check on her.”

I headed toward the kitchen where Adeline had stashed Mabel during the interviews, reasoning that we wanted her close in case we needed to spring into action. The baby was awake, her wide blue eyes gazing up at the ceiling. Did she have any idea what was going on?

Note to self: buy a book on baby brain development.

Her little cry had sounded more urgent on the monitor. Now, she was just gurgling away happily, clearly an attention-seeker like her mom. As a strategy, I couldn’t fault it. I stood over her, checking her out and making sure my instinct—that she was doing fine—was the correct one.

“She needs to be fed,” Adeline prompted behind me.

So much for instinct. Of course Mabel wanted something. I would need to learn this babble lingo of hers quickly.

Heating formula and using the bottle warmer was now officially in my daddy skillset yet I was still conscious of Adeline’s eyes on me as I went through the steps. Once I’d pressed the button on the warmer, I turned to her.

“How’d I do?”

“With what?” She had averted her gaze to the clipboard.

“Did I get the formula warming right?” I worried that the baby didn’t have breast milk. What was Vicki doing? Was she pumping and dumping, a phrase I’d always assumed was sexual, but now I understood in a different context? Because that sounded wasteful, and now I was mad at her all over again.

“You seem to be doing just fine.”

---