the mantel began to chime midnight. He had to be on duty in less than seven hours. He considered pulling the throw over himself and just sleeping where he was, but decided against it. Instead, he rose to his feet and climbed the stairs with Nikki at his heels.
He glanced down the hall and saw that a light still shone from under his mother’s door. He walked to the end of the corridor and rapped lightly on the thick oak panel. At her muffled answer, he eased the door open.
Elizabeth O’Callaghan was sitting up in bed reading by the light of a lamp on the bedside stand. She was dressed in a simple cotton robe of pale blue that matched her sharp eyes behind her bifocals. Her long white hair hung over a thick plaster cast covering her left arm from elbow to wrist, the result of her auto accident. Around her neck she wore a small gold chain and simple gold cross that glinted in the light when she moved.
She once told him that the cross had come all the way from Ireland with her mother. Like her own mother, Elizabeth O’Callaghan had spent her life praying for the less fortunate. And she hadn’t stopped with simply praying for them.
After his father’s death, Mick’s mother had worked to raise her own children and then went on to help other young women who were alone in the world. Mercy House had been her idea. Her work, her heart and soul had started it. With the help of several women and the local pastor, her work still went on. Mick’s heart swelled with love and pride when he thought of all she had accomplished. The Lord gave her a strong will, and she used it to help serve Him.
“Hi, Mom. How’s the arm feeling?”
“Not too bad.” She wiggled her fingers for his benefit.
“Has Naomi gone?”
“She helped me with my bath then I sent her home. I’m better now. I don’t need a sitter around the clock. A few more weeks and I’ll be able to move back to my own apartment.”
“You can move back when your doctor gives you the okay and not before.”
“I’ve put you out long enough. A man your age shouldn’t be saddled with caring for a feeble old woman. You should be looking to get saddled with a pretty young woman.”
“Where am I going to find one prettier than you?”
She grinned at him, laid her book aside and patted the mattress beside her. “You can’t sidetrack me with flattery. I’ve been waiting up for you. What kept you? Naomi said you had to rush someone to the hospital. Come here and tell me everything.”
She sounded like a schoolgirl eager for gossip. He crossed the room in a few long strides and bent to kiss her cheek. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere and neither are you until you tell me the whole truth and nothing but the truth, young man.” She grasped his arm and tugged until he sat on the bed.
“If you insist.”
“I do.”
“Okay. I was on my way home from Mercy House when an old bum stopped me to help deliver a baby, but we got the mother to the hospital first, and since the baby weighed only two pounds she had to go to intensive care, and the mother asked me to go with the baby and I did, only while I was gone she told everyone I was the baby’s father before she lapsed into a coma. Any questions?”
His mother’s eyes were wide with stunned surprise. “About a million. Why don’t you start at the top and go more slowly.”
He grinned and repeated the story with as many of the details as he knew, stopping often to answer her questions. At the end of his tale, he met her sad, concerned gaze and wished he hadn’t shared quite so much.
“This woman really doesn’t have anyone we can notify?”
“Not as far as I know. It’s the only reason I can think of why she would say I’m the father.”
“That poor woman. And that poor little baby. Thank goodness you were there for them. Is there any chance the mother will recover?”
“The doctor didn’t think so. I’m not Beth’s father but I can’t stand thinking of someone so tiny being all alone in the world. Frankly, I’m not sure what to do.”
“Why, you do the right thing! And don’t be telling your mother that you don’t know what that is,” she declared. “I raised you better than that.”
Mick rose and wished her good-night. On the way back to his room he considered her words. This time I really don’t know what the right thing is. I need Your guidance, Lord. What is it that You want me to do?
He got ready for bed and lay down, but sleep wouldn’t come. Each time he closed his eyes he saw Caitlin’s face. He saw her eyes wide with relief when he’d followed Eddy into her room, and he saw them filled with fear for her baby. Such beautiful eyes, closed perhaps forever, yet repeated in miniature, along with her fearsome scowl, in her daughter’s tiny face.
He barely knew the woman, but he kept hearing her voice. “Stay with Beth. Watch over her for me.” It was the last thing Caitlin had said to him.
Had she sensed that she was dying? Had she been asking him for something more? Was that why she told them he was the father? So her baby girl wouldn’t be left alone?
Mick threw back the quilt and sat up on the side of his bed. The light from a full moon cast a glow into the room. Rising, he crossed to the window. Nikki watched him from her spot at the foot of the bed, but she didn’t bother to get up.
Pulling the curtains aside, he looked out the second-story window of his home and stared at the shadows of the trees in the park behind his property. It was deserted now, but during the day it would be filled with neighborhood children playing on the swings and slides. On nearby benches, smiling young mothers would follow their play with watchful eyes.
Yet across that park and the railroad yards beyond it, there existed a world those happy children would only know in passing or see on TV. It was a world of intense poverty, where children played in filthy streets and lived in crowded, run-down apartments if they were lucky enough to have a home at all, and where mothers seldom smiled because they worried about where the next meal would come from.
Caitlin came from those streets. If she lived, she’d go back there and take little Beth with her. But if Caitlin died, where would her child go? Into foster care until she was old enough to run away and end up like her mother? Or would she be one of the lucky ones playing in a park like this?
He let the curtain fall back into place. None of the children in the park would ever be his. Facing that fact was more painful tonight than it had ever been. Perhaps because, for a moment, when Beth had grasped his finger and gazed up at him, he had known what it felt like to be a father.
He raked his fingers through his hair. He wasn’t responsible for Caitlin or her child, yet somehow the two of them had captured a piece of his heart. He felt connected to them. It wasn’t right that they were alone. They needed someone to care about them. They needed him. Before he could change his mind, he crossed the room to the closet where he pulled on a gray wool cable-knit sweater, a pair of jeans and his sneakers, then he headed out the door.
A fine mist fell as he drove down the dark streets. The swish-swish of his wiper blades was almost mesmerizing. Twenty minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. Wondering if he was being a fool, he hurried out of the rain and through the emergency room doors.
At the NICU he showed his wristband, and a nurse answered his questions. Beth was doing as well as could be expected. She invited him in, but he declined. He needed to see Caitlin.
When he entered the ICU and reached her room, he hesitated at the door. What did he hope to accomplish here? Maybe nothing. He pulled a chair up beside her bed. Reaching through the rail, he took hold of her hand.
“Caitlin, it’s Mick,” he said softly, and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. Glancing at the array of machines and blinking lights around her, he sighed. He didn’t know if she could hear him. But if she could, he wanted