Page 2 of Rock the Cradle of Love
The jangle of a phone call startles him as he’s drying off. He hops into his underwear and scoops up the phone. He doesn’t recognize the number, but it’s a Big Spring/Ten Rigs area code. “Hello?”
“Hey, Noah, Marva Maple calling. Georgia told me about Julia Gilbert. How can I help?” Ms. Maple sounds pretty awake for two thirty in the morning, but he’s not going to question it right now.
Noah drops to a seat on the edge of his bed, relief making his legs weak. “Ms. Maple, I’m so sorry to wake you up in the middle of the night, but thank you for calling me back so quickly.”
“Noah, honey, calm down. Tell me what you need me to do.”
Her familiar, gentle voice and calm confidence eases his anxiety even further.
“Jules is in a bad way. I’m going to take the baby for a bit, but Jules was pretty distraught when I talked to her. She’s packing up some of the baby’s things, but I’d feel so much better if someone was there. I c-can’t ask her mom or mine, Ms. Maple. Will you help us? Will you help Jules and Emma?”
“Of course I will, Noah. Where can I find Julia and Emma?”
Noah gives her Jules’s address. “I can’t thank you enough, Ms. Maple. Whatever I can do to repay you, let me know.”
“Honey, you don’t have to repay me to help someone in need. Now let me get going and I’ll call you if anything comes up, all right?”
“All right. Thank you, thank you so much.”
Noah crawls up his bed and tugs a pillow beneath his head. He sets his phone off to the side and closes his eyes, breathing easy for the first time in an hour—for the first time in weeks really. Thoughts about keeping Emma whirl around and around in his head, but he needs rest. It’s been a long day already, and if he wants to be coherent when he’s got a baby in his care, he needs some shuteye. He forces his mind to go blank, and he counts hockey pucks until he falls asleep.
Banging on his front door startles Noah out of his cozy sleep. It takes approximately three seconds for him to remember what’s going on and to know who’s here. He throws back the covers he’d pulled over himself at some point and rockets from his bed to the door. He smacks the wall switch, turning on the entry light above him.
Julia shoves a box into his arms and drops a pink-polka-dotted bag inside the front door before whirling around and heading back down the stairs. Ms. Maple is standing on the landing holding Emma, who’s snuffling softly in her arms. Emma’s lashes are clumped together and her eyes look a little red, but she’s not actually crying at the moment. Her pudgy fingers are in her mouth and her big blue eyes peer up at him.
The sky to the east is the pinkish, bluish, purple of pre-sunrise. The streetlights still glare over the parking lot.
“Well, hello, Noah.” Behind the wire-rimmed glasses, Ms. Maple’s blue eyes sparkle with mischief as her glance drops slightly for a moment. “You’re looking…well.”
Heat suffuses Noah’s face and chest. He’s only wearing his underwear.Crap.“I wasn’t expecting you, Ms. Maple. My apologies. I’ll be right back.” Noah sets the box down and hurries to his room. He drags on a pair of basketball shorts and a tee shirt before returning to the living room. The wrought iron table lamps are now on, illuminating the mostly tidy room.
Ms. Maple is perched on the edge of his oversized green corduroy sofa, Emma on her lap. If Ms. Maple sat back, she’d probably get lost. His friends are mostly hockey players, and he’d bought furniture to accommodate their large frames.
Julia dashes in with another box braced against her hip, a tote bag slung over one shoulder, and grasping some sort of thing made of metal poles, plastic, and mesh in one hand. She stacks the box she’s holding on top of the one he’d set on the floor, sets the bag alongside them, and then pulls at the metal poles of the thing, and a moment later there’s a baby bed standing in the living room.
“That’s her travel bed,” says Julia. Her light brown hair’s in a messy ponytail, and she’s wearing a gray oversized Rotors hoodie and baggy dark blue sweats. Her brown eyes are tired and over-bright, red-rimmed.
Noah wants to hug her, but she’s giving off vibes like a super-nervous dog and he’s afraid she’ll snap if he touches her. He’s never seen her so freaked it out in all the years they’ve been friends, and aside from taking Emma and easing that burden, he doesn’t know what to do for her. He hopes taking the baby will be enough, at least for now.
“She’ll be fine sleeping in there for a while.” Julia tosses a blanket into the travel bed. “All the furniture I have belongs to other people, I have to return it.”
The implication is clear. Julia’s giving him Emma. There’s no question that he’s taking her. He and Jules will have to talk seriously, officially, about him adopting Emma permanently. He’ll put his cards on the table later, in a few days, but he doesn’t think Julia’s going to have any objections. He’ll have to buy baby furniture.
Noah nods. “I’ll come get the rest of her stuff in a few weeks maybe?”
“Okay, yeah,” says Julia, twisting her hands in the kangaroo pocket of the hoodie. “That works.”
Julia leaves again, and Noah looks at Ms. Maple. “You came with her?”
Ms. Maple nods. “I didn’t want her to drive three and a half hours alone with a possibly crying baby. I sat in the back and tended to Emma and let Julia drive distraction free.”
“Okay. Good, good. Thank you so much.” He slides his fingers through his hair and sits on a bar stool. “I really appreciate this. If I can’t do something to repay you, let me buy you dinner when I come home, at least?”
“You’re on, Puck Daddy.”
A smirk twists his lips. “Puck Daddy? That’s new.” She’d always called him Rinky Dink when he was younger.
Ms. Maple chuckles. “Seems fitting.”
