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“Such a pretty name for a baby with such a foul behind,” I teased.
A few minutes, I had her cleaned up and dressed in a clean outfit. By the time I snapped the last button on the one-piece with a woodland animal print, she was tuning up for a good fuss. I’d taken too long to get to the feeding part, no doubt.
“If you want to get to eating, you shouldn’t poop all over yourself,” I told her as I picked her up.
I grabbed the blanket, saw nothing had leaked through, and congratulated myself on having remembered to put it down.
I carried it and Juniper out to the kitchen, dropping off the heavily soiled blanket in the laundry room. Knowing she’d put up a royal fuss if I set her anywhere before getting that bottle made, I kept her in one arm and prepped her bottle with the other hand. It was awkward, but I was getting good at it.
And wasn’t that weird as hell.
As I carried Juniper to the recliner and settled in with her and her bottle, I shook my head and realized I was smiling.
Life was bizarre.
Never would I have imagined I’d be sitting here in the living room of my new house, in small-town Tennessee, a baby snuggled up against me drinking a bottle, content. Both her and me.
I closed my eyes, listening to the soft sounds of her drinking and not at all minding the weight of her on my chest. This was peaceful. I felt a contentment I hadn’t often taken the time to seek out in the past. Something about being forced to sit quietly, where the objective was to give a baby a safe place and a nourishing meal and nothing else. I didn’t hate it. Not even a little.
Would I feel the same if this became my new normal? My life?
Only time would tell, and that thought reminded me I hadn’t checked my email for test results since lunchtime.
Though Juniper was content with her bottle and not even halfway done yet, which meant if I carried her into my office, she likely wouldn’t mind at all, I stayed put. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to know the truth.
What if she was mine?
What if, from the time I opened that email on, I had a new identity as a father? Because I was certain that, if this was my biological daughter, I wouldn’t be giving her up.
In fact, if Gina came back for her, I knew I’d fight to keep Juniper with me for as long as Gina refused to get mental-health help.
If the test was positive, I’d be looking at eighteen years, make that a lifetime, of being Dad as much as I was Knox, maybe more. I’d always hoped to have kids someday if I met the right woman, but as a single guy, that hadn’t been foremost in my mind for some time.
On the other hand, what if shewasn’tmine?
I imagined driving this bundle of smiles and dirty diapers to some cold, institutional office building somewhere and handing her over and…
“Shit.” I said it out loud, then whipped my gaze to Juniper, as if she could understand.
I didn’t know if I could hand her over even if shewasn’tmy biological child. How off-the-wall was that? In that situation, it would mean adoption, and who was I to think I could adopt this baby who’d been randomly dropped off with me and give her a good life as a single dad?
The thought was ludicrous.
And yet I couldn’t shove it aside.
Before I knew it, Juniper had finished her bottle and held it out to the side, as if to say, “Get this thing away from me.”
I grinned and took it, then sat up with her and breathed in deeply.
“What do you say we go check email, June?” I said it casually, as if her entire future—and mine—didn’t bank on a message that, whenever it arrived in my inbox, would likely be clinical, indifferent, and irrevocable, one way or the other.
I sat down at my desk, Juniper on my lap, and opened my email platform. Somehow I knew it would be there, yet when I saw the lab name as the sender, I couldn’t get a deep breath in.
After staring at it for a few seconds, I clicked. “No big deal. Just another email,” I lied to myself. “Right, Juniper?”
She’d picked up a pad of sticky notes and stuck it in her mouth, completely unfazed.
I scanned the report, not breathing, then gasped.
