I drove with the photograph on the dash, the face of my son catching the first pale light of morning as the town disappeared behind me.
Chapter Five
~ Hooper ~
The barn had a way of amplifying silence, especially in the hour after lunch when the world outside lost its appetite for noise. The wind chased itself in lazy circles through the gap under the rolling door, and every so often a disinterested moo would float in from the far pasture, but mostly what you heard was the echo of your own thoughts, stretched out to fill the cathedral of empty space.
I liked it. The barn was the one place on the property where my mind could shuck the last of its armor and just be. I could spread a flatbed’s worth of tools across the workbench, sing any ugly tune I pleased, or just stand with my hands in my pockets and watch the way the sun changed color as it fell through the high windows.
If I had a church, this was it.
Emilio was propped in a sling on my chest, snoring soft through his nose, the wisps of his breath fogging the canvas in lazy bursts. I’d wedged the sling under my jacket, so he rode high and close, a little astronaut in a pod of battered denim and thrift store flannel. Every few minutes, he’d flex his hands or jerk his head, then slide right back under, never more than a tick away from full REM.
It was almost three when Jasper showed, sneakers echoing on the packed earth, his medical bag tucked close at his side. He paused at the threshold, eyes adjusting from snow-glare to the amber gloom inside, and for a second I thought maybe he’d changed his mind and gone back to the house.
But then he stepped forward, walking with the careful, inward focus of a man who’d spent his life in the company of colicky infants and worse. He raised a hand in a wave, the other already going for the zipper of his coat.
“Hey,” he called. “Sorry I’m late. Jojo kept me busy with—” he made a vague gesture, “—whatever it is he obsesses about on Fridays.”
“Probably the apocalypse,” I said, deadpan. “Or the garden.”
He grinned, then let the smile fall away as he closed the distance. He glanced at the workbench, then at the flatbed, then finally at the baby in the sling, and the hard edges of his face went soft.
“Mind if I…?” He gestured, not quite sure if he was asking to touch or to remove the kid.
I unclipped the sling, easing Emilio out with one hand under his head and the other bracing his diapered ass. “He’s all yours,” I said, but my hands didn’t fully let go until Jasper had him.
Jasper cradled the baby like a borrowed violin, elbows locked close, eyes searching the newborn’s face for signs of disaster. He touched Emilio’s cheek, then his fingers, then pinched a fold of skin above the wrist as if testing for secret messages.
“He’s a little chunkier than yesterday,” Jasper murmured, more to himself than to me. “I see you’re not skimping on the formula.”
I shrugged, trying not to look as proud as I felt. “He’s got my metabolism.”
Jasper snorted. “God help us all.”
He set the medical bag on the scale—a cast iron number from the nineteen-fifties, polished to a dull gray from years of neglect and then five minutes of my half-assed restoration—and opened it with the mechanical precision of a man who once packed for a war zone.
He extracted a baby blanket, spread it on the scale’s tray, then carefully deposited Emilio, who immediately rolled a fist and whacked himself in the chin.
“Good,” Jasper said, as if the baby had performed a trick. He adjusted the weights, squinted at the needle, and frowned. “Nine pounds, ten ounces. That can’t be right.”
He looked at me, almost accusing.
I raised my hands. “I just feed him, Doc.”
Jasper shrugged, wrote the number on a dog-eared notepad, and then left the pen poised above the page for a moment, like he was waiting for something more important to arrive.
The wind picked up outside, shoving a draft under the rolling door and riffling the edge of the baby blanket. The smell of diesel and old hay pressed in. Emilio let out a soft, questioning grunt, and I leaned in to reset his pacifier, thumb circling slow on his belly.
Jasper didn’t say anything, just watched, his lips pressed thin and flat. He waited until I looked up, then finally spoke: “He’s healthy,” Jasper said. “You’re doing a good job.”
I let the compliment bounce off me, not sure where to put it. “Is that why you’re here?” I asked, careful not to sound like I was pushing.
He shook his head, a single, deliberate motion. “No. I’m here because…”
He trailed off, then started arranging his medical bag. The performance was so exaggerated it would have been funny, if I didn’t know the move myself—when you needed to talk but hadn’t worked out how to start.
I took mercy. “You wanna go outside and get it off your chest or just spill in here?”
