Alone in the Wild(6)

I see Dalton holding the baby, and then he looks over at me with this little smile that …

Nope, not thinking about that. Tuck it away. Lock it up tight.

“Am I doing it right?” he asks.

“Yep,” I say, a little brusquely. “Now I need to get the water into her. I don’t know how old she is, but she definitely isn’t weaned yet. She’ll want something to suck on, but unless you have a clean rubber glove hidden in our packs…”

“Yeah, no.”

I inhale. “It probably wouldn’t do any good. Suckling requires strength, and she’s weak. And I need to stop talking.” I take a deep breath. “From wild panic to overanalyzing.”

“The situation isn’t critical. We’re only an hour’s fast walk from town. We just need to get a little water into her.”

He shifts her, getting more confident in his hold. Then he stops. “She’s so…”

“Small?”

He laughs, but it holds a touch of nervousness. “Yeah, we covered that, didn’t we. I just can’t believe…” He swallows. “All right. I’m going to try to open her mouth so you can drip water in. Just a few drops into the back of her throat, and I’ll make sure she swallows it.”

“Done this before, have you?”

Another laugh, still nervous. “With a two-hundred-pound man. Years ago. Guy who ran away and passed out from dehydration. I had to get fluids into him before I hauled him to town for a saline drip. This is a little trickier. She won’t need as much water, though.”

“True.”

He puts a finger to the baby’s lips. Dalton isn’t a huge guy. About six feet tall. Maybe one-seventy, lean and fit, as he needs to be for life out here. That fingertip, though, seems like a giant’s, bigger than the baby’s pursed lips. He prods, and her mouth opens.

“Now let’s just hope I don’t get bit.” He wriggles his finger in and then stops. “Though I guess that would require teeth. How young do you think she is?”

“Babies can be born with teeth, but they usually fall out. They don’t get more until they’re at least six months. She’s well below that. Maybe a month?”

“Fuck.” He takes a deep breath. “Okay, here goes, I’ll prop—”

Her eyes fly open, and he freezes, as if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. She looks up at him, and it is indeed a picture-perfect scene, as she stares up at Dalton, and his expression goes from frozen shock to wonder.

I want to capture it … and I want to forget it. I want to pretend I don’t see that look in his eyes, don’t see his smile.

“Hey, there,” he says, and the baby doesn’t cry, doesn’t even look concerned. She just stares at him.

“Water,” I say, and I feel like a selfish bitch for spoiling the moment, but I can’t help it. I need to shatter it, and I hate myself a little for that.

“Right.” He wriggles his finger into the baby’s mouth. She starts to suck on it, and he laughs again, no nerves now, just a rumbling laugh that comes from deep in his chest.

“Reminds me of a marten I found, when I was a kid,” he says.

“A baby marten?”

He shrugs. “I had a bad habit of bringing home orphaned animals. My mom…” He trails off, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve heard him use that word. When he speaks of Katherine Dalton, he says “my mother.” That isn’t who he means here. He means Amy O’Keefe, his birth mother. The parents he never talks about. The ones he can’t talk about without a hitch in his words, a trailing-off, a sudden switch of subject. He lived with his parents and his brother out here until he was nine and the Daltons “rescued” him, from a situation he did not need rescuing from.

“Your mom…” I prod, because I must. Every time this door creaks open, I grab for it before it slams shut again.

“Water,” he says, and I try not to deflate.

I lift the pot, and then realize there’s no way in hell I can “drip” it from this suddenly huge pot into her tiny mouth.

“Take out one of our shirts,” he says. “Dip a corner in and squeeze it into her mouth.”

I’m not sure that’s sanitary, but I settle for taking a clean shirt of mine, one fresh from the laundry. As I dip it in, I say, “Is this how you fed the marten?”

“Nah, it’s how I fed birds. For the marten, I’d put food on my finger and hope she didn’t chew it off.” He looks at the baby. “You gonna chew it off, kid?”

“No teeth, remember?”

“These gums feel hard enough to do the job.”

I’ve relaxed now. He’s talking about rescuing orphaned animals, comparing them to the baby, and that eases tension from my shoulders. That’s what he sees this as—the rescue of an orphaned creature. Not picking up a baby and being overwhelmed with some deeper instinct that says “I want this.”

That would be silly, I guess. But we all have our sensitive spots, and this is one of mine: the fact that I cannot provide a child should he decide that’s what he wants. It’s an issue I never had to worry about because I did not foresee myself in a relationship where the question might arise. Now I do.

I wet the shirt and trickle water in the baby’s mouth. I’m being careful to have it close enough, so we can see how much she gets, and suddenly she clamps down on the fabric itself. She sucks hard and then makes such a face that we both laugh.