toddler in her arms, staring at her. He didn’t seem afraid, merely curious. His little face, just a few inches from hers, was so cute she nearly laughed.
“Hi there,” she said to him.
He blinked his large blue eyes, studying her silently.
“You want to play?” she asked.
He still didn’t answer. She wondered if he understood her.
“How about if we read a book?”
At this, his eyes lit up and he smiled. “Book,” he repeated, enunciating the k. “Book.”
Melanie felt nothing short of triumphant. “Yes, book!” They were communicating. It was a great feeling. “Let’s find a book.”
She carried him over to a shelf of picture books and leaned over to pick one. “Oh, Goodnight Moon,” she said, in a tone of reverence. She took the familiar favorite off the shelf and looked at the picture on the front. She hadn’t seen it in at least twenty years and probably longer, but she knew every tiny detail right down to the number of stars out the window.
One of the clearest memories she had of her mother was of her reading Goodnight Moon to her when she was small. “And goodnight to the old lady whispering ‘hush’…”
She carried the book and the child to a large comfortable rocking chair and sat down to read. The boy settled in against her, his blond head warm against her chest.
Melanie smiled down at the top of his head, then opened the book. “‘In the great green room,”’ she started, then stopped for a moment, trying to swallow the lump in her throat.
The boy turned in her lap and touched her chin.
She reached up and twined the little fingers in hers. “‘There was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of the cow jumping over the moon.”’
The boy pointed a pudgy little finger and moved it across the next page to the picture of the little mouse. Melanie laughed with sheer delight, remembering how she used to do that same thing herself. Find the mouse in every color picture. She supposed it was something all parents passed on to their children.
He moved his finger to the picture of the window. “Star,” he said, pointing at the little white specks.
“That’s right, stars.”
She read the rest of the book, stopping to linger over the pictures on every page. It gave her a funny feeling to see them again. In a way, it made her melancholy, remembering the warmth of her childhood, and then the sudden cold when she’d lost her parents. But it also lit within her an optimism that she could feel that warmth again, with her own child. The fire would be rekindled and she would keep it stoked this time.
She finished the book and closed it. “Should we read another one?” she asked Dan, setting the book aside.
“Book,” he said, but he stayed where he was, leaning comfortably against her. She loved the feeling so much she didn’t want to move.
He tipped his head back and pointed to her ear. “Star,” he said.
“Ear,” she corrected.
Dan was insistent. “Star.” He touched her diamond stud earring.
“Oh, I see. It looks like a star, yes.”
“Star,” he said again, nodding and pushing his finger against it.
“Hey, Dan,” a familiar voice said next to them. “Melanie. How’s it going?”
Melanie looked up, surprised to see Jared Cross again. Was he checking up on her already? He’d only been gone for about twenty minutes. “Fine,” she said in a clipped voice.
“Good.”
“Did you come back hoping I’d given up?” she asked, certain that he’d done exactly that.
“Star,” Dan said again.
“That’s right, honey, star,” she said, hoping Jared would notice the instant rapport she had with the child, the ease with which she dealt with him. “Well?” she asked Jared in a low tone.
He was looking at her strangely. Or so she thought. “What are you doing there, Dan?” he asked.
“He’s looking at my earring,” Melanie told him. “We just read a book and talked about the stars in it and now he’s telling me that my earring looks like a star.” She looked at Jared steadily. “Everything is under control.”
He frowned. “You’re not wearing an earring.”
“What do you mean I’m not wearing an earring? Yes, I am. Right here.” She lifted her hand to her ear and felt for it.
It was gone.
She looked at Dan, just as he raised his pinched finger and thumb to his mouth. The diamond caught the light for an instant and flashed.
“Oh, my God, Dan, no,” she said, panicked.
Unfortunately, the child also panicked at the tone of her voice and he jerked his hand into his mouth.
Melanie saw it just as it went in. “No!”
The child began to cry.
The blood drained into Melanie’s toes. “Dan, honey.” She tried to sound calm but she could clearly hear the mounting hysteria in her voice. “Let me have that back. Open your mouth, honey.”
The baby stopped wailing and poked his lip out, still sniffling softly.
“What’s going on?” Jared asked, leaning down. “What’s he got?”
“My earring,” she said a little shrilly. “A diamond earring.”
“He’s got your earring in his mouth?” Jared bent down to try to get it out.
She poked her finger into the child’s mouth and felt around. Nothing. “No,” she said, pulling a shaking hand back and looking at Jared in terror. “Not anymore. He swallowed it.”
Three
“He swallowed it?” Jared picked the child up from Melanie’s lap. He was still calm, but there was an undercurrent in his voice.
She nodded, kneading her hands in front of her. “One-carat diamond stud. Oh, my God, what am I going to do?”
He gave her an impatient glance before turning his attention back to the child. “I’m sure your insurance will cover it.”
His words didn’t compute. “Insurance?”
He set the child on top of a table and told him to open wide. “Yes,” he said into Dan’s mouth, poking around with his finger. “You can get yourself a new— What did you say it was? One carat diamond?”
Melanie understood his implication. “I’m not worried about the diamond,” she said, drawing herself up. “I’m worried about the b-o-y.”
Dan looked at her with wide blue eyes. Oh, no, could he spell? She didn’t want to alarm him any more than necessary.
“The earring wasn’t huge,” she continued in a very soothing tone, with half an eye toward Dan, “but it wasn’t exactly a strawberry seed, either.” She took the other earring out of her ear and showed it to Jared. “It was this size. Can this hurt him?”
Jared took the earring and examined it. “It’s a short post, that’s good.”
She nodded eagerly. “I have them made that way because I don’t like getting poked when I sleep.”
He gave her a puzzled look.
“By the post, I mean,” she explained. “They’re sharp.”
“I see.”
Silence hung between them.