His Forever Family

“How sweet of you to come. Please, call me Hazel. All my friends do. Come in, come in. Shut the door behind you, if you don’t mind.” She turned and began to climb up a short flight of stairs.

Marcus made sure to shut the front door behind him, which took a little shove. The entryway contained another set of doors that led both upstairs and downstairs, and he had to wonder if this was a single-family home or if someone else lived in the basement.

Hazel and Liberty finally went through the upstairs door and Marcus followed, shutting it behind him. Then he looked around.

Wow. Once, when he’d been really little, he’d had a nanny who loved The Brady Bunch. His parents didn’t believe in television, so getting to watch any show was a big deal to him. The nanny—Miss Judy—let him catch a show if he got all his lessons done. She’d make a bowl of popcorn and they’d snuggle on the couch and for a half hour at a time, he’d gotten a glimpse at what normal might look like.

It’d been years since he’d thought of The Brady Bunch. But this was like walking into the Brady house. Everything looked as if it was original to the 1960s or ’70s—the pine paneling, the vinyl covers over the sofa cushions, the preponderance of autumn gold and orange everywhere. Marcus leaned over to catch a glimpse through a doorway—yes, there were avocado-green appliances in the kitchen.

This was one of the best foster homes in the system?

“He’s in the nursery,” Hazel was saying. “He’s still napping. Oh, they sleep so much the first week or so, but he’s starting to wake up.”

“Is he okay?” Liberty asked anxiously.

“I think he’s perfect,” Hazel said as she guided them through a small dining room and past two doorways that led to a bedroom and a television room. The third doorway was the nursery. “I understand your concerns, though. I’ve had children who were coming off drugs or the like and he doesn’t seem to have those problems.” She stopped and sighed. “His poor mother. One has to wonder.”

“Yes,” Liberty said. “One does.”

Hazel gave Liberty a maternal smile as she patted her arm. “It’s good you’ve come. This way.”

They all crowded into the small room. A metal crib was by one wall and a larger, wooden crib up against another. There was a dresser with a blue terry-cloth pad on it next to a worn rocking chair. Marcus had to wonder how long Hazel Jones had had these things—since her own children had been babies?

All over two of the walls were pictures of babies, he realized. Old pictures, with the edges curling and the colors faded to a gold and brown that matched the furniture in the rest of the house. There were hundreds of pictures of little babies all over the place.

Next to a window was an antique-looking swinging chair that squeaked gently with every swing. And inside the swing was the baby boy. He was clean and dressed and Marcus swore he’d grown in the past five days, but there was no mistaking that child. Marcus would know him anywhere. How odd, he thought dimly.

Liberty made a noise that was half choking, half gasping. “Oh—oh,” she said, covering her mouth.

Hazel patted her on the arm again. “You’re his guardian angels, you and your boyfriend. He would have likely died if it hadn’t been for you.”

“We’re not—” Liberty started to say, but Hazel cut her off.

“It’ll be time for his bottle in a few. Would you like to feed him?”

“Could I?” Liberty turned to Marcus, her brown eyes huge. “Do we have time?”

As if she had to get his permission. “Of course.”

“I’ll be right back.” In contrast to her slow climb up the stairs, Hazel moved quickly to the kitchen. “Don’t go anywhere!” she jokingly called out.

“Is this what you wanted?” Marcus asked Liberty as they stared at the baby.

“Oh, God, yes. He’s okay,” she said as if she still couldn’t believe it. The baby exhaled heavily and turned his head away from the window. Liberty gasped and flung out a hand in his direction and Marcus took it. He gave her a squeeze of support and she squeezed back. “Look at him,” she said in awe.

“Is this place okay for him, do you think?” Marcus looked around the room again at the worn, battered furniture. “They said it was one of their best homes...”

“No, it’s really lovely.” Marcus stared down at her, but she was still looking at the baby. “And it seems like she only has him right now. This is amazing.”

There was something in the way she said it, the way she meant it, that struck him as odd. But before he could ask about it, Hazel said brightly, “Here we are.”

He dropped Liberty’s hand and stepped out of the way. Hazel handed him a bottle and he took it, even though he had no idea how to feed a baby.

“Does he have a name yet?” Liberty asked Hazel.

“Oh, no. He’s still Baby Boy Doe.” As if on cue, the baby began to lift his little hands and scrunch up his eyes. “I suppose he should have a name, shouldn’t he?”

“William,” Liberty said without hesitation. “He’s William.” She said it with such conviction that again, Marcus found himself staring at her.

“Oh, that’s lovely. My husband was Bill. That’s a good name.” The baby began to fuss and Hazel deftly carried him over to the dresser and laid him out on the pad. She unzipped his blanket-thing—a blanket with arms? Was there a name for that? Hazel began to change his diaper with the kind of practiced motion that made it clear she could do this in the dark, in her sleep. Marcus wondered how many babies she’d changed just like that.

“We never had children,” Hazel went on as she got out a clean diaper from the top drawer, all the while never taking her hand off the baby’s belly. “But I loved babies so... I was offered an early retirement from my teaching position back in 1988 and I decided that I was going to be a grandmother one way or another.”

“All babies?” Liberty asked.

“Oh, yes. I just love this age. They’re such little angels. I can’t keep up with them when they start crawling and walking, though.” Hazel shook her head. “Babies are just my speed.”

Marcus watched as Hazel changed the diaper. She made it seem easy but the mostly naked infant was squirming and then there was the cleaning part and...

Suddenly, he was terrified. It wasn’t the same kind of terror he’d felt when he’d opened the box and found this child—that had been stark panic, with a life hanging in the balance. That danger was safely past, thank God. But when Hazel got the diaper on and asked Liberty if she wanted to help re-dress William, and Liberty still looked as if she might start sobbing with relief at any moment, the whole scene was so far outside his realm of experience that he might as well have landed on Mars.

Liberty got his tiny little feet back into the blanket contraption and zipped him up. “Here we go,” Hazel said in a singsong voice as she picked William up. “Dear, why don’t you sit in the rocker?”

Liberty sat and Hazel laid the baby in her arms. In that moment, everything about Liberty changed; it was as if he were looking at a different woman. This wasn’t his take-charge assistant—this was Liberty, the real woman.

Hazel took the bottle from Marcus and showed Liberty how to hold it. The older woman got a little pillow that had been next to the rocking chair and used that to prop Liberty’s arms up. “There we go. He’s been eating quite a bit, poor dear.” For the first time in a while, she seemed to notice Marcus. “Oh—would you like a chair?”

“I’m fine,” he insisted. He couldn’t take his eyes off Liberty and William. There was something about them—something he’d seen that first time in the park...

“You’re amazing with him,” he told Liberty and he meant it. Yeah, he’d found the child, but it was Liberty who’d cooled him down and got him to stop crying. It was because of Liberty that Marcus had used his clout to make sure the baby got into the best home.

It was Liberty who’d named him.

Then she looked up at him and smiled and everything that Marcus knew to be true about himself was suddenly...not true. Not anymore.

He was Marcus Warren. A trust-fund billionaire, gossip column fodder and a potential reality-television star. He had a business and a reputation to manage. He had to carry on the Warren family name.

And quite unexpectedly, none of it mattered. What mattered was seeing Liberty rock that tiny baby and smile at him with that silly joy on her face, as if she’d been waiting her whole life for this exact moment.

What mattered was knowing he’d made this moment happen. Because he wanted that silly joy on her face. He wanted to be the one who made her smile, who gave her everything her heart desired. Not because it would give him leverage, but because it made her happy.

His entire life had been about accumulation. Things, power, favors—more and more and more. Never enough.

What if...

William’s mouth popped off the bottle and he squirmed. “Oh, is he okay?” Liberty asked Hazel.

The two of them fussed over the baby and Liberty got him burped. Then Hazel took William back and turned to Marcus. “Would you like to hold him?”