Forbidden Falls (Virgin River #9)(62)

Noah went straight to the playpen. He was saying, “Hey now,” to the little ones, but he was thinking, Uh-oh. She’s sinking. Whether under the strain of two small children or the emotional distress, it was hard to tell at first glance. But something had to be done here. He lifted Mattie out of the playpen first because he was the biggest. And then, when Hannah put her fat little arms around his neck, with his forearm under her bum, he pulled her up. Both children held on to him, one head on each shoulder. He jiggled and talked softly. They quieted at once; they had only needed to be held. They were as tired and frustrated as Vanni.

Vanni had disappeared into the kitchen and Noah just held a couple of armfuls of kids until the crying was under control. And then he said to them, “Well, first things first.” And he went down the hall in search of a nursery.

He kept talking in a soft voice while he put Mattie in one of the two cribs in the room and Hannah on the changing table. This was new territory for him. He’d changed a baby or two, but not in a long time. He kept talking while he studied the disposable diapers kept in a diaper caddy that hung on the side of the changing table. There were two stacks in there and he took a smaller one for Hannah. He opened it, located the sticky tabs and held it up. Then he gingerly removed her diaper and said, “Ewww.” She giggled at him. “Yeah, I bet you think that’s funny. You should see it from my point of view. Hannah, that’s disgusting.” She giggled again while he looked around for wipes, finding them on a shelf underneath the changing platform. He was making a face that Hannah found hilarious as he gingerly wiped stinky poop off her rosy butt. It took a lot of wipes because he was reluctant to get too close.

He got her clean, but her bottom was pink, like maybe she wasn’t being changed often enough. And he had completely destroyed a new diaper in the process, tearing the sticky tabs clean off, but he was luckier with the second one, though it seemed to be listing to one side. Mattie was a simpler affair; he wasn’t muddy. With a child on each hip and one terrible diaper and one nontoxic, he found Vanni in the kitchen. She turned from the sink and saw the diapers and wrinkled her nose.

“Which one of you had the present for Pastor Kincaid?” she asked, taking the dirty diddies.

“It was madam,” he said. He watched as Vanni folded the dirty diaper and deftly taped it closed in a nice, tight, odorless package. “Wow,” Noah said. “That was slick.”

“Let’s put them in the high chairs,” she said, taking Mattie and leaving Noah to settle Hannah. “What brings you by, Noah? Checking on me?”

“In a way,” he said. “You’ve been on my mind and I wondered how it was going. I hope I’m not imposing too much. Looks like you could use a hand.”

“I could use nine hands,” she said, but not much humor seeped through.

Once the kids were settled in high chairs, she put some crackers on their trays and fixed up two sippy cups with juice.

“Hannah’s bottom is kind of pink,” he said. “Kind of too pink.”

“I’ll take care of that,” she said.

Noah pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down. “You could use a little help around here,” he said. “Just during the really busy times. Huh? So you can catch up a little, maybe steal a nap. Any friends or family available for that?”

She shrugged and although dinner makings were spread across the island, she poured two cups and sat down with him. “Everyone is willing, but everyone is also far too busy. Shelby’s starting school in a few days; she’s waited forever for that. Plus, she’s planning her wedding and I’m supposed to be helping her. My dad and Muriel are pretty caught up in running two ranches and doing some traveling for Muriel’s new movie. Believe me, I couldn’t be more pleased about that—I haven’t seen my dad this happy in years. Noah, I don’t want to impose on anyone. This is our problem. We need to figure it out.”

“Might be easier to figure out with a little help.”

Vanni just glanced into her coffee cup.

And Noah thought, she wants it to be hard, because she’s thoroughly pissed off. She’s having trouble caring about this infant because Paul brought her home and she’s angry with him, with the baby, and mostly with herself. And anger turned inward is depression. And depression can be deadly.

“Did Paul mention that he has crews working on the church now?” he asked her.

She shrugged and said, “I can’t remember. He may have mentioned it.”

“Well, it’s loud, and it’s going to stay that way for a couple of weeks, maybe a month. They’re scraping the outside of the church, sanding the sanctuary floor, tearing windows out of the frames, that sort of thing. I have this girl working for me now—nice young girl. Ellie Baldwin.”

“I think I heard about her,” Vanni said.

“Well, I have a million things to do every day that take me out of the church and I leave her to clean, paint, answer the phone, and I think she’s about ready to kill me. I’ll send her out here to help tomorrow. She’ll thank me for it.”

“A young girl?” Vanni asked. “Are you sure that’s going to help me?”

“She’s twenty-five and has children of her own. They’re with her ex-husband right now and she really misses them.”

“Why are they with her ex-husband?” Vanni wanted to know.