Heroes Are My Weakness(84)

The baby slid into his strong, competent palms.

“We’ve got a boy here,” he announced. He tilted the tiny, messy newborn to clear his airway. “Let’s give you an eight, little guy.”

It took her a moment to remember what he’d said about calculating the baby’s Apgar score in the first minute after birth and then again at the five-minute mark to assess the infant’s condition. The baby began to cry, a soft little mewing. Theo placed him on Kim’s abdomen, took the towel from Annie, and gently rubbed.

Kurt finally came into the room. He went to his wife, and they started to cry together as they took in the sight of their newborn son. Annie would have smacked Kurt in the head for not being there through the ordeal, but Kim was more forgiving. As she gathered the newborn to her, Theo massaged her abdomen. It wasn’t long before she had another contraction, and the globby mass of the placenta slipped out.

Annie tried not to look as she handed over the red disposal bag from Theo’s kit. He clamped off the umbilical cord and exchanged the soiled pad for a clean one. For a guy with a big trust fund and a lucrative book contract, he didn’t mind getting down and dirty.

The baby was a little small, but as a third-time mother, Kim handled him with confidence and soon had him nursing. Theo spent the rest of the night in an easy chair while Annie slept fitfully on the couch. She heard him get up several times, and once when she opened her eyes, the baby was asleep in his arms.

His eyes were closed, and the newborn curled protectively to his chest. She remembered the gentle way he’d dealt with Kim, saw his tenderness with the baby. Theo had been thrust into a daunting situation and handled it like a champion. Fortunately, there hadn’t been any complications, but if there had been, he would have kept a cool head and done what he needed to. He’d been a hero, and heroes were her weakness . . . Except this particular hero had once nearly killed her.


IN THE MORNING, KIM AND Kurt thanked Theo effusively as their older children—after Annie had fed them breakfast—climbed on the bed to check out their new brother. With the baby safely delivered and Kim doing well, there was no longer a need for helicopter evacuation, but Theo wanted Kurt to take his wife and the newborn to the mainland that morning to get checked out. Kim flatly refused. “You did as good a job as any doctor, and we’re not going anywhere.”

No matter how Theo pressed, Kim wouldn’t change her mind. “I know my body, and I know babies. We’re fine. And Judy’s already on her way back to help out.”

“Do you see what I have to deal with?” Theo said as they drove back to the cottage, his face creased with fatigue. “They have way too much trust in me.”

“Act less competent,” Annie suggested, instead of telling him he might be the most trustworthy man she’d ever known. Or maybe not. She’d never been more confused.

She was still thinking about him the next day as she climbed the steps to the Harp House attic. He’d told her to take whatever she wanted for the cottage, and she wondered if any of the seascapes she remembered remained up there. The hinges on the attic door moaned as she opened it. The place was right out of a horror movie. An eerie dressmaker’s dummy stood sentry over broken furniture, dusty cardboard boxes, and a pile of faded life preservers. The only light came from a grimy oriel window shrouded in tattered gray cobwebs and two bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling beams.

You don’t really expect me to come in here, do you? Crumpet squeaked.

Unfortunately, I can’t stay, Peter said.

Leo sneered. It’s a good thing somebody here has a backbone.

Your backbone is my arm, Annie reminded him, diverting her attention from a creepy plastic-shrouded doll collection that had once been Regan’s.

Exactly, Leo resneered. And here you are.

The attic held piles of old newspapers, magazines, and books no one would ever read. She stepped around a mildewed canvas sail bag, a broken patio umbrella, and a dusty Jansport backpack to get to some picture frames leaning against the wall. Cardboard boxes peppered with dead bugs blocked the paintings. As she began to move them aside, she spotted a shoe box labeled PRIVATE PROPERTY OF REGAN HARP. Curious, she looked inside.

The box was filled with photos of Theo and Regan as children. Annie unfolded an old beach towel and sat on the floor to look at them. Judging by the crooked composition, they’d taken many of them themselves. They were dressed in superhero costumes, playing in the snow, making faces at the camera. The images were so endearing that a lump grew in her throat.

She opened the clasp on a manila envelope and found it stuffed with more photos. The first was of Theo and Regan together. She recognized Regan’s NO FEAR T-shirt from the summer they’d all been together and vaguely remembered having taken the photo herself. As she gazed at Regan’s sweet smile, the way she leaned against her brother, she was once again struck by the tragedy of her loss. The tragedy of all the losses Theo had endured, beginning with his mother’s abandonment and ending with the death of a wife he must have once loved.

She took in the tousled hair falling over his forehead and the arm carelessly draped around his sister’s shoulders. Regan, I wish you were here to explain your brother to me.

All the photos in the envelope seemed to have come from that summer. There were pictures of Theo and Regan in the pool, on the front porch, and aboard their boat—the same boat Regan had taken out the day she’d drowned. Annie was overcome with both nostalgia and pain.